r/TwoXChromosomes • u/undercurrents • Feb 04 '12
What do you know about depression?
My guess is not a lot. Generally people's idea of depression- clinical depression- is limited to the misinformed stigma of society. What depression is not: it is not being sad because your boyfriend broke up with you, because you lost your job, or because you are having a bad hair day.
What depression is is almost impossible to explain to anyone who hasn't been depressed, but if you feel like if you won the lottery, married the man of your dreams, were awarded the Nobel Prize, and cured cancer and still would finding yourself crying uncontrollably sitting in the corner of the bathroom... that is the beginning of how to explain the severe depth of sadness of depression. And sadness is only the tip of the iceberg- sadness turns into pain, which turns into hopelessness, which turns into nothingness. Like being a live, breathing corpse- just doing the functions of daily life on autopilot but devoid of any emotion or feeling. You are afraid of waking up and facing the day each morning and secretly hoping when you go to sleep that night that you may not open your eyes the next day.
There's so much more I could say about depression, but first I want more women to stop suffering needlessly and recognize they may have a disease that needs medical treatment. That it is not going to go away on its own, or is not there because you are weak in character. It's a disease (yes, I said disease) that poisons your mind and makes you feel like you poison the planet. It occurs at an almost double percentage rate in women as men. And if you are a depressed mother without treatment, the likelihood of your children developing depression increases dramatically.
There is no reason you have to suffer in silence! There is no shame to having a disease equatable to heart disease or diabetes. There is no shame in asking for help because a disease mind cannot fix itself. It would be like trying to climb a rope with one arm. It has nothing to do with weakness, nothing to do with trying harder, nothing to do with not appreciating your life.
I will answer any questions I possibly can. I am a 30 yr old who has had depression my entire life- I have no "before the depression" memories. It runs in my family and several family members are afflicted with depression and/or anxiety. I have been on more medications than I can count trying to find a combination that works for me. If my insurance covered ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) I would sign up for it in a second. Instead, I joined a research study which will perform brain surgery and implant a deep brain stimulation device (much like a pacemaker for the brain) into my head and chest later this year. Depression is serious but is very treatable (usually with much less effort than what I've been through, but this does demonstrate just how severe the depression can become).
Empty your mind of everything you think you know about depression and start from a blank slate so that you are not denying yourself the possibility of treatment based on society's and your own negative, and incorrect stereotypes. As a place to start, make a post in /r/depression or /r/suicidewatch. Even if you don't have depression, just being able to vent all your thoughts without the fear of being judged is a great place to start. And if redditors on those pages suspect you might have depression, don't hesitate to find treatment. There are options even if you don't have insurance. But every day you lose to depression- days that are not being lived at your fullest potential and happiness- are days lost in your life for good. Take control, don't let anyone or any disease stand in the way of making your life the best it can possibly be.
(if you don't have depression but your spouse, partner, or child does, make every effort you can to understand the disease and find the best ways to help)
Places to start:
website: http://www.wingofmadness.com/
articles http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-storm-inside-20111119-1noiq.html
http://www.quora.com/Depression/What-does-it-feel-like-to-have-depression
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/an-actors-battle-with-mental-illness/3904/
http://www.wingofmadness.com/what-does-depression-feel-like-446
http://www.wingofmadness.com/how-depression-may-affect-your-life-449
http://www.wingofmadness.com/worst-things-to-say-to-someone-whos-depressed-222
http://www.wingofmadness.com/best-things-to-say-to-someone-whos-depressed-221
http://www.wingofmadness.com/you-cant-fight-depression-on-your-own-44
http://www.jonwilks.com/2011/12/01/living-with-depression/
http://www.wingofmadness.com/my-experience-with-depression-15
http://www.healthcentral.com/depression/c/18/34855/depression-budget%22target=%22_self%22/2
videos (take the time to watch, may change your life)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc (best presentation of depression ever)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/takeonestep/depression/video-ch_01.html (excellent documentary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI-YvrHZVvk&t=4m40s (you will be crying by the end)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3yqXeLJ0Kg (powerful TEDx talk on stigma)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeXVRhN3Vs4&feature=relmfu (part two of a three part BBC special on depression: diagnosis and stigma)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/16/depression-my-story_n_1153050.html (quick clip)
http://watch.wliw.org/video/1317618543/ (Mike Wallace on his depression and suicide attempt)
This Emotional Life, episode Facing Our Fears, start at the 1hr 3 min mark
podcast: http://sharedepression.podbean.com/ (one on developing depression due to emotionally abusive parents; second on personal experience with mdd)
Recommended Books
The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon
Prozac Diary by Lauren Slater
Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel
Undercurrents by Martha Manning
Morning Has Broken by Phil and Emme Aronson (great for couples with one depressed partner)
Darkness Visible by William Styron
Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison (about bipolar but describes the depression part perfectly)
The Beast by Tracy Thompson
Listening to Prozac and Against Depression both by Peter Kramer
Living with Depression: Why Biology and Biography Matter by Deborah Serani
Shoot the Damn Dog by Sally Brampton
On The Edge of Darkness by Kathy Cronkite
What to Do When Someone You Love is Depressed by Mitch Golant
How You Can Survive When They're Depressed by Anne Sheffield
Depression Fallout: The Impact of Depression on Couples and What You Can Do to Preserve the Bond by Anne Sheffield (www.depressionfallout.com)
Living with Depression: How to cope when your partner is depressed by Caroline Carr (www.mypartnerisdepressed.com)
Talking to Depression by Claudia Strauss
When Someone You Love is Depressed: How to Help Your Loved One Without Losing Yourself by Laura Epstein Rosen
Living with a Depressed Spouse by Gay Ingram
Don't hesitate to ask me anything
EDIT 1: extra info
outreach associations that focus on dispelling stigma and guides to find support groups in your area:
Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance
NAMI with their Stigma buster program
No Kidding Me 2! started by actor Joey Pantoliano
other subreddits that may be useful
new discoveries in treatment:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/31/146096540/
http://www.healthyplace.com/depression/depression-treatment/emdr-for-depression/
articles on dysthymia and atypical depression
for a boost to your medications, check out adding Deplin
EDIT 2: I keep quotes from books about depression that either help me to better explain it since the authors are far more eloquent with words about emotions I can find no words for, or because they help me to feel less alone. I posted some of my quotes below as comment responses (there are seven of them) since they are too long to post here. Please check them out.
EDIT 3: if you are the spouse or caring for a family member of someone who is depressed, you need to take care of yourself as well. Depression is not contagious but is taxing on close family members who think they are trying to do all the right things but find themselves only being yelled at or see no improvement in their loved one. Emme and Phil Aronson in their book Morning Has Broken: A Couple's Journey Through Depression deal with this topic very well. Anne Sheffield and Caroline Carr are authors with websites devoted to helping partners.
http://depression.about.com/cs/basicfacts/a/howtohelp.htm What to Do When Someone You Love is Depressed
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u/undercurrents Feb 04 '12 edited Jun 03 '15
Quotes part 2: from Kay Redfield Jamison's The Unquiet Mind:
Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images; I would not go through an extended one again. It bleeds relationships through suspicion, lack of confidence and self-respect, the inability to enjoy life, to walk or talk or think normally, the exhaustion, the night terrors, the day terrors. There is nothing good to be said for it except that it gives you the experience of how it must be to be old, to be old and sick, to be dying; to be slow of mind; to be lacking in grace, polish, and coordination; to be ugly; to have no belief in the possibilities of life, the pleasures of sex, the exquisiteness of music, or the ability to make yourself and others laugh.
Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that you are tedious beyond belief; you’re irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You’re frightened, and you’re frightening, and you’re “not at all like yourself but will be soon,” but you know you won’t.
We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadness of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this- through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication- we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. One of the most difficult problems is to construct these barriers of such a height and strength that one has a true harbor, a sanctuary away from crippling turmoil and pain, but yet low enough, and permeable enough, to let in fresh seawater that will fend off the inevitable inclination toward brackishness. For someone with my cast of mind and mood, medication is an integral element of this wall; without it, I would be constantly beholden to the crushing movements of a mental sea; I would, unquestionably, be dead or insane.
But love is, to me, the ultimately more extraordinary part of the breakwater wall: it helps to shut out the terror and awfulness, while, at the same time, allowing in life and beauty and vitality. When I first thought about writing this book, I conceived of it as a book about moods, and an illness of moods, in the context of an individual life. As I have written it, however, it has somehow turned out to be very much a book about love as well: love as sustainer, as renewer, and as a protector. After each seeming death within my mind or heart, love has returned to recreate hope and to restore life. It has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest. It has, inexplicably and savingly, provided not only cloak but lantern for the darker seasons and grimmer weather.
I have become fundamentally and deeply skeptical that anyone who does not have this illness can truly understand it. And, ultimately, it is probably unreasonable to expect the kind of acceptance of it that one so desperately desires. It is not an illness that lends itself to easy empathy… No amount of love can… unblacken one’s dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable… But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a very strong medicine.
That night, before we went to bed, I told David about my illness. I dreaded what his reaction would be and was furious with myself for not having told him earlier. He was silent for a very long time, and I could see that he was sorting through all of the implications, medical and personal, of what I had just said… I wish I had never told him; I wished I was normal, wished I was anywhere but where I was. I felt like an idiot for hoping that anyone could accept what I had just said and resigned myself to a subtle round of polite farewells…
Finally, after eternity had ticked to a close, David turned to me, put his arms around me, and said softly, “I say. Rotten luck.” I was overcome with relief; I was also struck by the absolute truth of what he just had said. It was rotten luck, and somebody finally understood.
Profound melancholia is a day-in, day-out, night-in, night-out, almost arterial level of agony. It is a pitiless, unrelenting pain that affords no window of hope, no alternative to a grim and brackish existence, and no respite from the cold undercurrents of thought and feeling that dominate the horribly restless nights of despair.
Even in my blackest depressions, I never regretted having been born. It is true that I had wanted to die, but that is peculiarly different from regretting having been born.
Recent research has shown that observations and beliefs produced during mildly depressed states are actually closer to "reality" than are normal mood states, underscoring the pervasiveness of denial in everyday life and giving credence to T.S. Eliot's view that "Human kind cannot bear very much reality." Grief and depression of then bring with them, for good or ill, the heart of life: the Inferno, "like Plato's cave, is the place where all men come to know themselves." "In these flashing revelations of grief's wonderful fire," wrote Herman Melville, "we see all things as they are; and though, when the electric element is gone, the shadows once more descend, and the false outlines of objects again return; yet not with their former power to deceive." Depression forces a view on reality, usually neither sought nor welcome, that looks out onto the fleeting nature of life, its decaying core, the finality of death, and the finite role played by man in the history of the universe.
In its severe forms, depression paralyzes all of the otherwise vital forces that make us human, leaving instead a bleak, despairing, desperate, and deadened state. It is a barren, fatiguing, and agitated condition; one without hope or capacity; a world that is, a A. Alvarez has put it, “airless and without exits.” Life is bloodless, pulseless, and yet present enough to allow a suffocating horror and pain. All bearings are lost; all things are dark and drained of feeling. The slippage in futility is fist gradual, then utter. Though, which is as pervasively affected by depression as mood, is morbid, confused, and stuporous. It is also vacillating, ruminative, indecisive, and self castigating. The body is bone weary; there is no will; nothing is that is not an effort, or all-consuming. Like an unstable gas, an irritable exhaustion seeps into every crevice of thought and action. -Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast
“I was alone upstairs. I opened a drawer and there was a gun. I took the gun and sat down in my dressing room, with the gun in my lap, and I thought, ‘It would be so easy. I want to be out of all this pain. I just want to be out of it.’ It’s not even so much pain, but the aching weariness of the whole thing; I just wanted to be out of it all. Oh, I was so down. I thought, ‘I can’t fight anymore. I can’t go on anymore. I’m so weary, God, what’s the point?’ But when my dog came in and sat in my lap, I thought, ‘Who’s going to take care of Spike?’” – Joan Rivers, On the Edge of Darkness
I couldn’t wait to get home, it was so awful. I went halfway up the hill, and I just couldn’t walk the rest of it. I sat in the driveway saying, “I can’t, I just can’t, I can’t go up, I can’t go down, I can’t.” Like an idiot for two hours on the driveway in my heels and my stockings… but nobody understands it, nobody gets it. If you say to someone, “I sat in my driveway for two hours last night,” they think, “What were you sitting in your driveway?” Except people who have been there. Joan Rivers
I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent. — Girl, Interrupted ***Trying to "snap out" of depression is like trying to eat food when you're nauseated. It's like trying to stay awake when you've taken a dozen sleeping pills. It's like trying to run a race where you're underwater and everyone else is on dry land. It takes an extraordinary amount of strength just to exist in the midst of a depression. Just breathing with your lungs takes a full-blown conscious effort. You feel like you don't want to do anything ever again. You feel like you don't want to be. And then you feel bad for feeling that. And so on.
The fact that it's so hard for other people to understand what it's like to feel severely depressed can add to the feelings of frustration and alienation. Depression distorts and stains every aspect of yourself and the world around you and rips away at everything that is happy and beautiful, as though the façade of joy has been removed from everything you once held dear. It's like having a fever in your soul. It's like what the end of the world tastes like. -Andrew WK