Medea’s Child–tell the CC that you need somebody else. Also, does your student health center have a psychiatrist on staff? If so, see them instead of, or in addition to, the CC people.
Another thing–When I was depressed, I could not remember what it was to be happy. I remember that it could happen, but not how it felt. I didn’t laugh or smile hardly at all, or even have any positive emotions at all.
And I got people telling me to just cheer up, when I could not remember what that was.
Clinical depression can be really hard for involved non-sufferers to get to grips with (I know a handful of sufferers); there are times when it really does look for all the world like they simply aren’t trying as hard as they could and it is the hardest thing in the world to remain composed and be useful in the face of this.
Reacting to what “Niblet” said (I don’t feel like quoting the post) regarding time off from work. I really, really wish that someday things like clinical depression, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc., could be accepted the same way MS or diabetes or any other health problem is. Some insurance coverage is vastly insufficient, allowing a very paltry number of visits, within which you must be “cured.” Not to mention the stigma often attached. We are just getting to the point where you can mention that you’re taking an anti-depressant medication without having people look at you like you’ve got cooties. Or thinking that you’re going to be “doped up” or “high” all the time, whereas what you’re just trying to be is able to react to normal problems logically without falling apart. Or whatever.
And the “just get over it, already” or “Hey, cheer up” is ridiculous. I mean, do you scold diabetics and tell them, “Stop goofing off and make more insulin, dammit!”?
“You Just have to set your mind against it” “You just using it as an excuse for laziness” “I manage to get through my life without being Drugged Up” 15 years and my family still doesn’t get it. They can’t understand how a person can spent an entire day and end up in tears because they can’t decide which of two places to go for the weekend. Decision-making is often just impossible.
I would know I needed to do dishes, but sit there too overwhelmed by the task do it. Then of course I would beat myself up about not doing it. Now at least I know that it’s not my failing, but an illness that can be treated. There is some hope.
I was diagnosed as “severely depressed with suicidal ideation.” I was lucky enough to draw a good psychiatrist after my second suicide attempt. I was even luckier that Marcie saw enough in me to stick it out with me. When I say that Marcie saved my life, I am not just saying it—she really did.
I know now that I’ve been severely depressed since about the age of fourteen–I didn’t get treatment until my mid-fifties. As others have said, I didn’t think I had a problem because I didn’t know any better. I thought all the other folks had the problem.
Living with clinical depression isn’t all that easy. Even with good medication, I have days where I am literally unable to get out of bed. Those days are few, now, they used to be common.
Help is available, but sometimes it has to be really looked for.
I’m clinically depressed too. I currently take Celexa, Neurontin, and Xanax.
My health insurance (HealthPlus) covers me just fine, thank goodness. But what you might not know is that depression is now covered under the Family Medical Leave Act. It’s a chronic illness. You might want to look into it with your employer. Here’s more information.
Hope it helps!
niblet_head, I can certainly identify with job problems that result from a lack of understanding. When I was teaching, I had several bouts of depression. I have had principals refer to my “so-called chemical imbalance.” Another gave my phone number at the hospital to my substitute teacher so that she could complain about my fifth period class! (This same principal later expressed his suspicion that I had been sick at all. (I had been in the hospital for five weeks!)
Fourteen years ago I was able to apply for and receive a disability pension from the State and also Social Security disability. With the pension from SS, I also get Medicare.
Another teacher in our department also developed depression and was missing a lot of school. The principal began to harass her about it. Teaching was her life’s joy and she was really good at it, but the principal’s lack of understanding just made it worse. She became so depressed that she did not see a doctor when she found a lump in her breast. She was dead before graduation.
If I were still teaching, I would try in my spare time (ha!) to document everything.
Just this past year my school system began handling psychiatric illness “almost” like they handle other physical illnesses. They now pay 80% instead of 50%. Other physical illnesses are paid at the rate of 90%.
Medea’s Child, are you in college? Can you ask to be assigned to another counselor? (Don’t worry about hurting your current counselor’s feelings. They know that some matches are better than others.) Do you have insurance? Is your family close by? Whatever you do, don’t blame yourself for this. And be aware that it may take as long as six weeks for medication to begin working.
If a non-depressed person takes something like prozac, they don’t notice a difference in their moods. Yet some call it a “happy pill.”
Mangetout said:
I’m sure it does look that way. I don’t think that you can tell by observing whether a person is depressed. I think that the lower seratonin sometimes shows up in blood tests, but I’m not sure.
When I married, my husband was uneasy about how he would be able to help. Now he has learned to ask what he can do. Sometimes there is nothing. At other times he may get me a cold towel for my face during an anxiety attack or reassure me with words. When there is nothing that he can do, he has learned not to blame himself – and that in itself is a relief to me.
Some of the worst times for me have been when I just felt nothing. It is as if I have shut myself off from all emotions. I refer to those times as “going away.”
racinchikki, would it help at all to show Gunslinger this thread? You also might consider talking privately with his regular physician.
Have any of you experienced selective mutism? I think that that usually happens in childhood, but I stopped talking for a while when I was first ill.
BTW, one of the signs of teenage depression is feeling lots of guilt. Ever experienced that?
Lilairen, thanks for mentioning the B vitamins. I didn’t know about their connection. I think that I will ask my doctor about taking them.
I cannot express enough to each of you how much it relieves me to be able to talk about this with people who understand.
Payne, the rest of your life does not have to be like this. The reason the statistics show that is because people who have been through it a couple of times have a higher tendency to start thinking it’s normal, and then to not make the effort to seek adequate treatment.
Another thing about these kinds of illnesses is that you have to be your own advocate, as hard as it seems. Especially if your only resources are these general health clinics. Medea’s Child, I guess you’re a student. Most student health services I’ve seen amount to quick-fix solutions. You need to insist on special attention, and make it understood that you won’t compromise when it comes to your health.
Another depressoid checking in. I was lucky enough to hit the bottle also and end up in AA. They saved my life. I was lucky enough to be in an AA group that had a lot of activity so I had to get off my ass and go places.
But the depression remained after I got sober, even though my life got better in many ways. The worst feeling I have is that I am a FRAUD. I saw Mike Wallace describe that same feeling when he was hospitalized for his depression.
So when I feel fake, I don’t feel like doing the things that I really enjoy (creative pursuits) so I muddle along putting one foot in front of the other and earn a living (although that was a bad problem for a long time).
Then I read an excellent book by a psychiatrist who also suffered from depression and she found that if she took b vitamins, multi-vitamins and L Tyrosine (an amino acid), that it really helped. I took them and I swear it made me look at life from a completely different place, just as has been already shared by others in this thread. They raise the seratonin level in my pea brain.
Then, I get these fucking allergies which wear me down and i am depressed again. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
I swear that when I am not depressed I am a different person. I even look different and strangers react to me differently. They smile or talk to me more. It is almost scary. I flirt with women and they like it. I do things and if I make a mistake, IT IS NOT A BIG DEAL. I take more chances and become more creative and actually WANT to do things instead of just making myself do things. (although this is very good that I do, make myself do things even when I don’t feel like it.)
Now I live in mild allergy depression so that I actually enjoy life more than I ever have. But I have been in bad places where I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror or I thought (more like felt) that there was some weird conspiracy against me.
Also a friend gave me a good book (horrible title) called “Feel Good Therapy” It had 10 things that depressed people did in their thinking such as “all or nothing thinking” , meaning that I feel I must be perfect or I am worthless. I “should” be doing this or that. Overgeneralizing everything. Blowing everything out of proportion, etc etc.
I know that a lot of people suffer from “real” depression where they have to be hospitalized but the milder doses are bad also because you don’t feel like getting help because “it’s not that bad” I feel guilty that I feel this way when there are people who literally can’t function.
ok thats my story, now I’m depressed again.
(scott evil raises hand)
I’m currently on Celexa, which works great for me, and with this SSRI, I don’t have the pesky sexual side-effects. 
I can really empathize with those who’ve had problems with employers. I was more or less squeezed out of my last job because of depression. I got off Prozac after I first got sober (oh yeah, I’m an alcoholic). I had been sober two years - and a star employee - when I suddenly just flipped out. I had to take one week, then four weeks, off work, while meds were tried, dropped, added, adjusted, and so on. At the time I was also having incredible anxiety, so I needed to take benzodiazepines and sleep meds as well. Finally things started getting better, and I was able to return to work.
Well, I wasn’t given enough work to do. It was always “Don’t stress scott!” :rolleyes: My asshole boss made the three of us in the graphic design department keep a log of time spent on work and charged. Of course I couldn’t reconcile 7.5 hours a day with the amount of time being spent on work, because they weren’t giving me enough to do. Asshole boss used my supposed slacking as an excuse to fire me. 
(Well, I left voluntarily, but I wasn’t given much of an alternative.)
I’m lucky at my current job, where I spent my three-year slip from sobriety. My manager never gave up on me, and gave me several “last chances.” I finally stopped drinking again, and my job performance improved dramatically - but I’ve stayed on medication, unlike the first time I got sober. I’m not going to toy with this. It’s not worth it. My manager knows I’m on an antidepressant, and is very supportive. She knows that this medication (and my sobriety, but I haven’t come out and told her that I’m in recovery from alcoholism) helps me be a good employee. In short, the guy that they hired, before things went downhill.
djf750 wrote:
Yes! I had the same book, I’m sure of it. The treatement is called precursor therapy, and the basis of it is that for some reason you need more of those components that your body needs to make seratonin. It did help a lot. Unfortunately, one part of the set of stuff was L-tryptophan, which has been banned now in the U.S. because somebody got sick from a bad batch made overseas. The L-tryptophan helped to relax you to go to sleep.
My doctor prescribed Desyrel (or the generic version, Trazadone) for that purpose. This is an older anti-anxiety med that is not used much for anxiety because it has the side effect of making most people sleepy, and it only lasts a few hours. Which makes it excellent for helping you drop off to sleep and wake up without a sleeping pill hangover, and it’s not addictive.
I’m also a recovering alcoholic. 25 years sober. I think alot of people with depression who don’t know whats wrong with them use alcohol to dull the pain. Unfortunately it just makes the depression worse.
Thank God my depression is not as severe as most. Technically, I’m not even diagnosed with it, though I recognize the signs. My grandmother had a touch of it too, so I guess that’s where I got it from. I’m fortunate in that I can usually “feel” my body chemistry change, and realize it within the first 5 minutes of an episode. It gives me a chance to get away from people, or at least explain what’s going on if I’m around someone who knows.
Also, for mild sufferers, I find that chocolate helps relieve the symptoms quickly. This doesn’t work for the more severe episodes though.
Thank you for posting this informative thread. I had a friendly acquaintance who killed himself two weeks ago. He was manic depressive and hated taking his medication. If you need medication, for God’s sake TAKE IT, damn the stigma, your life is more important!
A google on “niacin depression serotonin” will pull up a bunch of links that are probably more informative than I’m capable of being at this hour of the night. 
I think that the B-vitamin treatment is contraindicated for people with some sorts of kidney and/or liver problems, but the RDA and the danger level dosages for the things are a couple of orders of magnitude apart for most of them (which would be why my vitamin gives 6666% of the RDA of B1 and 5882% of the RDA for B2, and similar stuff). It also doesn’t work for everyone, but if you’re one of the people it does work for. . . wow.
It was sort of freaky, how I got utterly convinced that the vitamins worked. I had the niacin connection mentioned to me by a friend, and did a little research, and basically decided “Can’t do any harm.” So I got a bottle of a B complex and started taking it, and I thought it might help, but I had no idea if that was because the episode I was in when I started was breaking, or psychosomatics, or it making an actual difference.
I had a couple months of hell, and I got a bit erratic about taking my pills. I was having a near-complete stress breakdown and a fight with my boyfriend, and basically shouted in his direction, “Not that it’ll help, but I’m going to go take my fucking vitamins!!” I was in one of those hysterical choice-paralysis hopelessnesses, completely overwhelmed, completely unable to deal with anything. I took the vitamins. About an hour later . . . I could cope. All the stress and angst was still there, but I had maneuvering room, I could find the edges of it.
One of the bright sides of that episode is that my boyfriend now has something he can do when I get wiggy; he asks me if I’ve taken my vitamins. I tend to be pretty good about them now (a good sharp shock like that can teach even me), but sometimes I haven’t. And even if I have taken the pills, it does us both good for him to ask after them.
First of all, let me those of you who don’t know about it the obligatory link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Cecils_Place/
This is a support group specifically for depressed Dopers which got started a couple of years ago when I came to the Pit to complain about the way my employer’s EAP reacted when I had a depressive episode and found an incredible level of support. In case I haven’t told you folks lately, you are the greatest.
Payne, I also wanted to give you some encouragement. I didn’t get formal treatment for depression until I was in my late 20’s, after I wound up flat on my back near catatonic with depression. I was treated for a little over a year, but then I moved and stopped therapy. I started again about a year ago and, thanks to one of the best therapists in the business (in my opinion, of course), I am, if not cured, at least in a position where I don’t need anti-depressants and can drop down to seeing her once a month. Then again, as far as I can make out, my tendency toward depression is as much the result of somewhat nasty circumstances growing up as well as a chemical imbalance.
The worst thing about depression for me is that it resurrects all the horrible old things I used to believe I was. Ironically, when I first read this thread yesterday morning, I was coming off a nasty depression caused by undone taxes and an unpleasant incident with my family. I was feeling useless, stupid, wrong, irreparably broken, and undeserving of life. One indication that I have improved since a year ago is this time I was able to reach out for help and I was not suicidal.
That said, I lost a lot of this winter to depression, including some much needed tax forms (don’t worry – I did get my taxes done!). I honestly did not expect to live to see this spring. I didn’t tell you folks here because I didn’t want to look like a whiner; I just did whatever I could to get through.
In addition to a good therapist, I’ve also got some very good friends, some of whom also suffer from depression. Two of them encouraged me to get back into therapy, and provided a bit of moral support when the first 5 I called weren’t taking new patients. For me, faith helps, too. I’m a little hesitant to mention this, because I know there are people here who’ve been wounded by Christians and/or Christianity, but I thought I’d throw that out. When I’m in the throes of depression, I’ll take comfort anywhere I can find it and, if it’s in what some have called an imaginary invisible pink unicorn, well, it’s better than nothing!
Depression is awful. I have described it as being like having your soul slowly ripped from your body inch by painful inch. I don’t have much experience with physical pain, so I can’t compare it to that, but to me it is appalling. I have lain in bed, a telephone inches from my hand, a phone number running through my head, but still been unable to move my hand those few inches to call for help. My body is fine; it’s my spirit that’s paralyzed. Normally, I walk in such a way that people routinely think I’m taller than I am. When I’m depressed, my body sort of shrivels up and curls in on itself. For a long while I thought part of my soul was dead. It turns out it wasn’t – I’d just cut it off in self-defense, but I was aware of an emptiness. Useless, stupid, worthless, subhuman, ugly, unworthy of the least consideration or kindness, unworthy of anything, including life, hopeless. That is what depression makes me think I am. That is what I hear myself being called, not in the sense of a hallucination, but in the sense that these are the words conjured up from old memories. Even now, on a beautiful morning, they have some power to hurt.
To me, depression is not a moral failing or a spiritual flaw; it’s an ailment like diabetes or heart disease which can be made worse by some outside circumstances. I’m lucky enough not to need medication, but just as diabetic friends mind their blood sugar levels, so I keep an awareness of my own condition. The therapist I’ve been seeing is very big on cognitive therapy – being aware of why a person reacts the way they do. It’s something I’ve learned to apply.
When I came to this website for a fix of Cecil Adam’s columns, I never dreamed I’d wind up finding so much more, including a community of good, supportive people. You have helped me not feel so alone.
Thank you,
CJ
Funny that this should come up. I’ve been thinking about starting my own thread for a long time.
I don’t know if I’m lazy, depressed, or have AADD (or a combo platter!). I won’t get into my symptoms (The kicker was this morning I had to really convince myself that getting out of bed was the best thing to do.) as I know that everyone here will tell me to talk to someone, so I’ll pick up the phone instead.
Thanks to Zoe and everyone else for posting great info. Depending on what the therapist says I might join “Cecil’s Place” as well.
The only other thing I can think of is that I’ve been on Atkins for a while (1.5 years now), and I may not be getting in my normal eating the B vitamins that have been mentioned here. Interestingly enough, this is how long I’ve been feeling “off”. Maybe coincidence… I’ll call anyways, but I’ll pick up some vitamins on the way home. Can’t hurt.
Re: B Vitamins. In case it hasn’t been mentioned before, it’s important to get a balance of them. Several manufacturers make a B-50, which is a combination of several at the same level. As I understand it, they all have to work together, so if you have lots of one and not enough of another, you might just as well not have either.
Another “me too” post. Man, this is weird to see so many people who really know. I feel like I can’t describe this to anyone, and it’s very frustrating.
For me, the best way that I can describe it tis that my “brain is dipped in wax” nothing gets in - I can’t remember or understand anything, it seems sometimes. Also, nothing gets out. I used to be able to write really well. In every english class I took in university, the prof would read one of my papers out loud as a good example of how it should be done. I don’t mind telling you that it made me proud as a peacock, and rightfully so. Writing was always something that I jumped into with passion and joy. Now, just a few years later, I’m staring at a take home exam where I have to write paragraph answers. Not papers, essays or anything like that - 2-3 paragraphs per answer fer cryin’ out loud. "What are three elements of good urban design?"I haven’t a frickin’ clue where to even start. And then, the fact that I’m agonizing over what should really be a 20 minute (at the most) project makes me feel like a complete loser. Which makes it harder to get a grip on what I need to do. Which makes me feel worse, which makes…well, I think you all understand the spiral.
But hey, there is some positive to this - I’ve had a prescription in in pocket for weeks, but haven’t filled it because I can’t afford to pay the full cost of 'em. I do have a student health plan, but then I’d have to go to the school to pick up the card and find out how it works. Then I’d have to make some phone calls to see where the lowest price on this prescription is, because the costs vary widely from place to place. Then I’d have to go get them. It’s ironic that I need these meds but the condition that I need the meds for makes it almost impossible for me to go out and get them…
But reading this, I have been inspired and decided to conquer the “getting of the benefits card” step, and may even do the “comparison shop phone calls”! Wish me luck on this massive endeavour!
You know, I truly do love the SDMB Community. (Even if I am a bit of a lurker most of the time!) You all have really expanded my view of the world, and as far as I know, that’s the best possible gift that anyone can give. Thanks!
Just wanted to let you know that extreme reactions to everyday situations could also be a symptom of ADD. ADD is often co-morbid with depression. The following is a checklist of ADD symptoms, and even though it’s from a site for ADD women, you may find it useful.
http://www.downdraft.net/addwomen/symptoms.html
I don’t have a definite diagnosis for what I have, but my current psychiatrist is exploring the ADD aspect, as well as Bipolar II, and trying different meds. I started on Effexor and Wellbutrin, and a small amount of synthroid since I was slightly hypothyroid. I was still having mood swings, so she put me on Trileptal, which is actually an anticonvulsant, but it is being used now as a mood stabilizer (doesn’t have the nasty weight-gain side effects.) We are going to try small doses of Dexedrine and/or Adderall next.
It’s definitely hard, all the trial-and-error stuff. Not to mention I now feel like a walking pharmacy.