Depression and I (My Experience of Depression)

Member Name: leicesterpaul

Product:	My Experience of Depression
Date:	19/01/09 (63 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Advantages of depression? Well, I might not have discovered Radiohead otherwise.

Disadvantages: It's futile, painful and bloody unreasonable.

This is not a guide to coping strategies for depression, and should not be seen as such. It is an exploration of my own experience of depression and my thoughts on how depression is seen by others. I'd be interested to know how it squares with other peoples' experiences and opinions, and if it helps anyone so much the better.

Mental illness is a subject on which a lot is said, perhaps more than is actually known. Certainly there seems to always be a lot of ill-informed comment and portrayal of such illness in the media, and a general lack of understanding.

As a sufferer of clinical depression, diagnosed over a decade ago but with tendencies certainly pre-dating that, it has always irritated me when I see depression portrayed as a syndrome that causes the sufferer to sit in a darkened room hugging their knees and reaching for a pill bottle. This is a simplistic, cartoonish caricature of an illness that is far more complicated than most people can imagine.

The last "job" that I had before I went self-employed, I had to resign from because my depression was so severe, and was aggravated by the duties of the job. My performance suffered massively and in the end it was a case of jumping before I was pushed. In the end it was a massive relief to leave the job, but in the last few weeks the panic and fear that I felt were indescribable, as were the thoughts triggered by even having to sit down at my desk and call people.

I mention the above not to try and elicit sympathy, but to set the scene for what my then boss said to me on accepting my resignation. He shook my hand and said "I'm only sorry that I couldn't understand, and couldn't help you more". This showed a level of awareness that I wish more people would allow themselves. It's not a simple thing, depression. It's very, very far from simple, and even as a sufferer I'm quite a ways away from understanding it fully.

The only people who seem to even imagine they understand depression entirely are the sceptics. The people who, on hearing the word "depression", immediately click into gear with responses such as "pull yourself together" or "there's plenty of people worse off than you". People who, in short, don't feel that depression is actually an illness. Well, it IS. Blasé cynicism will not change that.

Do I wake up some mornings wanting to die because it's a pose? No. Do I go hours without moving from the same spot because it is easy? No. Have I spent longer than I'd wish to imagine trying different medications, which have had some enormously profound side-effects, because of something I'm imagining? No. There are plenty of people worse off than me. I'm fully aware of that - and I've probably done a good deal more to redress the balance than most of the people who trot out that line.

I do not spend hours upon hours in a darkened room contemplating the pill bottle. In company I talk at length about subjects that take my interest, I listen attentively and I even make jokes when the circumstances permit. I laugh, I sing, I shout at the screen when there is football on. In short, I behave like a normal human being. Sometimes, beneath the surface, something arises that makes me so angry with myself, so disgusted and hateful towards myself, that it terrifies those who know me. Am I putting it on to get sympathy? You'd better believe I'm not. I hate seeing what it does to those people.

I'm not currently in treatment - medication had various effects ranging from mood swings (!), excessive tiredness (I was sleeping for 16+ hours a day at one time) and listlessness of a kind that the depression never managed to place on me in ten years of trying. Counselling - I missed too many appointments and was discharged. I feel like I'm managing the risk well, and my wife would frogmarch me to the doctors herself if I moved towards the extremes which I once inhabited. But I still get the self-loathing from time to time, and the chances are I still will be twenty years from now.

The difference between now and a few years ago is that I fully expect to still be here twenty years from now, and want to be. And believe me, that makes a big difference.

Summary: The idea of giving a star rating for depression did tickle me, though.