Re: TELL ME ABOUT DEPRESSION.............

This article is in response to the article posted by BERF at
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977298740
and the many interesting comments that article has inspired.

Depression and Me:

I received my diagnosis in 1990, after 6 years of wondering why I was so different from the other kids. It seemed to hit with my first period, and just never went away.
It bugs me that even in the 21st century, people are advocating going without needed medical treatment for a medical issue just because it has to do with the brain.
Nothing helped until I got medication, and believe me, I tried everything else, including long discussions with my pastor.
Sometimes, as with any other medical condition, faith needs to be combined with modern medicine. It was my faith that led me to give the medicine a chance before totally giving up on life. God always provides a way. God gave mankind the intelligence and wisdom to learn about our physical bodies so that when those bodies are injured or do not function at full health, our doctors can help us bring our bodies back to a healthy state through their use of the knowledge and understanding that God has allowed them to achieve. To say that acceptance of a need for medicine to treat mental illness represents a lack of faith or belief in God is no different that to say that acceptance of a need for medical treatment of other disorders, such as heart conditions, broken bones, etc. equals such a representation. Such statements are a symptom of a lack of understanding of the fact that the human brain is as much a part of the physical body as the organs and extremities, and as such it is subject to injury and infirmity just as any other body part may be... and just as with any other body part, the variety of possible injuries and infirmities which may occur in the brain, as well as the timing of occurrence, is very broad. Brain disorders such as mental illness may never be fully understood, but that does not make them any less real, or any less MEDICAL than any other illness or injury. You would not try to heal a burst appendix strictly with prayer and faith, ignoring the availability of, and need for, medical attention. Neither should you try to "get through" a chemical imbalance in the brain without medical attention. It is as simple as that.

Depression, for me, is part of a larger disorder. I have been diagnosed Bipolar II with Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.

On the depression end, I experience a sense of lethargy, purposelessness, worthlessness... a complete lack of motivation. There isn't so much an overwhelming sense of sadness as there is something like a damper pedal put on my whole being. It's like being a ghost of myself. The only thing not dampened is a portion of the "negative" emotional response most people have to every day life. During a depressive episode, I do not get angrier than usual, but things which cause me emotional hurt seem to hit harder. Grief, sadness, embarrassment, guilt, frustration, emotional fatigue... these emotions get bigger. Joy, excitement, enthusiasm, anger... all of the "doing" emotions... these seem to shrink away.

The OCD seems to become more active during a depressive episode, distracting me from daily activities so that I find myself focusing on stupid little things such as how many squares of toilet paper I am using or whether or not I've stepped on a crack in the sidewalk.

Problems look bigger than they really are from inside a depressed psyche. Molehills look like  mountains... mountains look like entire planets.

Don't get me wrong... I was not a wimpy kid. I was involved in a lot of activities in school; I sang in the choir, ran on both the track and cross country team despite asthma which (according to 2 doctors) was supposed to have killed me about 14 years ago, photoedited the yearbook, was president of the photography club, won prizes for my photography and for my activities on my church's Bible quiz team, etc. I was raised to drag my butt out of bed whether or not I was feeling crappy, and live life anyway. Besides that, I went to school with a classmate who had Muscular Dystrophy.
You can't look at a boy like Doug, who showed up daily until the week before his death in 7th grade, who participated in PhysEd in his electric wheelchair, even playing dodgeball (the wheelchair was off limits as a target, of course, since no one else was carrying one around), and who never complained about his condition, and then claim anything is too hard to do. I believe that every member of my class, including me, bettered ourselves in response to his presence in our lives. Doug's strength of spirit lent me strength, as well, helping me to battle the symptoms of my illness by giving me an example to follow. Knowing him and remembering him was one of the many things that supported me through the time between when the first bad mood swing hit and when I was finally able to get treatment, lending me that much more strength so that I might hang on until I found some relief of the worst symptoms.

The medicine helped when I got it, but even that is not a cure-all for an emotional imbalance. Just as some types of injuries and infirmities require physical therapy to overcome, brain infirmities such as Depression, Bipolar disorder, and OCD are things one has to manage on more than a single level.
When, for instance, I find myself exhibiting an OCD behavior, I will deliberately break it, just to stop. This is something I learned in therapy, when my psychiastrist made me walk an entire city block stepping on all of the cracks because of the lengths I was known to go to in avoiding stepping on any of them while walking.
Lack of motivation means it's time to bring out the Ray Stevens CDs. It is hard for me to stay in a dark mood while listening to The Streak or The Mississippi Squirrel Revival, especially when my kids are there listening to it with me.
When a Manic episode strikes, I combat the lack of focus by taking a few moments at a time to force myself to concentrate (concentrating is terribly difficult when I am manic... think ADHD) on my breathing. Reduciing my focus to a tiny, mundane thing helps to clear my thoughts for a moment, and often that will carry over into the next moment, and the next, and so on. When it doesn't, I go on to my next calming method, and the next. Most of the time, I am able to gain some level of calm and focus. On the very rare occasions when I can't, I shorten my list of What I Have to Accomplish Today to only the true top priorites. Tomorrow is another day.
I have learned to keep caffeine to a minimum or avoid it altogether, as it makes both ends of the disorder worse. There are several other small things I do which help me keep my moods in check, but the biggest one is paying attention to my own behavior and whether or not it is healthy. Maybe I can't always control my mood swings, but I don't have to let them control me, either.

Yes, I do still take medicine... I am not going to deny the physical side of this illness... but as with the asthma that was supposed to kill me and failed, giving in to the symptoms makes them worse, creating an endless spiral of unnecessary pain. Yes, I do still have bad days, too. It is my good fortune to have supportive family and friends who help me through those days, and faith to help me help myself.

Is it a real disorder... a real disability? I have to say yes, absolutely. I have seen many cases which are much worse than mine. I have friends and acquaintances who do not function as well as I am able to function, for various reasons. One woman I used to know from college has invisible (to the rest of us) stalkers... hallucinations which scare the crap out of her all the time. It is really not an easy task for her to tell the difference between the "real" people and the "imaginary" people... both look, sound, and sometimes even feel the same to her. Her diagnosis is the same as mine... just more severe.

Does the disorder disable me? On that note, I have to offer a resounding no. I have the good fortune to not suffer many of the more troubling symptoms of Bipolar disorder... no hallucinations, no delusions of grandeur (I am quite happy to just be me... no need to rule the world here!), and (after years of medicine and months of behavioral therapy) I've been able to learn to control the temper that comes with manic episodes. I have never needed time in an institution for my illness. When depression hits, it weighs me down, but it does not pin me. I am lucky. I am not disabled, only challenged.
Faith gives me the strength to rise to that challenge with the aid of the many tools available to me, including those medicines made available to me through the divine gift of humankind's ability to learn and adapt.