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User	silent strings | 2008-01-24 |
Subject	untitled
Message	very true, sd. well, i’ve always thought so too.

User	silent_death12 | 2008-01-21 |
Subject	untitled
Message	" Writers in general seem to be a depressed lot. " that can be said about all kinds of artists though :]

User	Blue Monk | 2008-01-21 |
Subject	Depressed?
Message	Or perhaps manic instead? Interesting enough, one does not need to range from depression to mania to be considered bipolar. Any shifting between moods can qualify within the ranges of depressed, to "normal", to elevated/mania. The absence of any one state does not matter, it still gets the "bipolar" tag. Perhaps some can even qualify as "tripolar"? That said, statistics put one out of three of us as suffering from some degree of "mental illness", so that counts for having some pretty good company!

User	joeyalphabet | 2008-01-21 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Writers in general seem to be a depressed lot.

User	machine dream | 2008-01-21 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Wow, everyone is depressed!

User	mae | 2008-01-21 |
Subject	untitled
Message	I went through several years of depression, also, though mine was more situational, I think. I grew up with abusive parents, got married to get away from it and wound up in an abusive marriage. When that began crumbling around me, I slipped into a deep depression. I was also hospitalized and was prescribed a whole medicine chest full of pills - BIG MISTAKE! My husband wound up flushing them when he woke up in the middle of the night one night to find me arranging all gazillion of them with several glasses of water and ready to take the first handful. Even if there was not a lingering clinical depression, it took medication and years of therapy to get out of it. And for a long time, it was way too easy to slip back into it. I always knew when it was coming, too. I’d get a hanging-on-by-my-fingernails feeling. It has been several years since I’ve felt like that and every day I am thankful for the freedom. mae

User	Caity | 2008-01-20 |
Subject	untitled
Message	I’m still going through it. It started for me with the loss of a friend, resulting in a spin off eating disorder, recovery, loss of a family member, abuse, really bad family issues, new eating disorder and complicated love situation, feelings of worthlessness, many other smaller imperfections that I can’t let go of. That is my life..in a nutshell and I..am still depressed.

User	BeautifulSoul | 2008-01-18 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Thanks to all of you who wrote back. I understand what you mean, Joey. After I went through depression the first time I have had to struggle with keeping my emotions in check. It is a very serious epidemic in our society and many teens and even adults go undiagnosed every year. Depression isn’t something you can just "get over". I agree with you. It is a battle.

User	joeyalphabet | 2008-01-18 |
Subject	untitled
Message	The symptoms of depression are behavioral and in order to be classified as depressed by a professional, you have to have most of these symptoms and they need to occur over a period of several weeks. Some people are only depressed by a major life event (like the death of a loved one). People like me are depressed chronically - I have had serious periods since I was 14. They went undiagnosed because the symptoms weren’t recognized back then (mid-70s). Through the years I felt depressed on many occasions but not always because of something bad happening. That is what clinical depression is. A lot of writers suffered from chronic depression (Plath immediately comes to mind), and a lot have committed suicide.

User	machine dream | 2008-01-18 |
Subject	untitled
Message	That’s not a definition of depression however. Cancer has a good scientific definition, rather than a bunch of vague symptoms.

User	latentlylyrical | 2008-01-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	from the Mayo Clinic: Depressive disorders range in seriousness from mild, temporary episodes of sadness to severe, persistent depression. Doctors use the term "clinical depression" to describe the more severe, persistent form of depression. Signs and symptoms may include: -Loss of interest in daily activities -Persistent sadness or feeling of emptiness -Sleep disturbances -Significant weight loss or gain -Loss of concentration -Fatigue -Suicidal thoughts or behavior Treatment for depression depends on many factors, including the severity of the condition, the persistence of the symptoms, and the person’s personal history with the illness. For many forms of depression, a combination of psychotherapy and antidepressant medications can be an effective treatment. Antidepressant medications can relieve symptoms of depression, while psychotherapy may help you cope with ongoing problems that may trigger or contribute to depression. There are still many people who believe that depression is something that a person merely has to ’get over’ and not get professional medical treatment for. To me, this is like telling someone with cancer to ’get over it’. Mental illness can be as deadly as any physical illness; and, the sooner the population as a whole can face that fact, the better off we will all be.

User	machine dream | 2008-01-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Define depression?

User	Blue Monk | 2008-01-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Blue knows...

User	joeyalphabet | 2008-01-17 |
Subject	untitled
Message	I became aware of it, but it was my wife who made me go to the hospital.

User	Blue Monk | 2008-01-16 |
Subject	untitled
Message	Although I’ve never experienced depression, I have lost two very good friends to suicide because their medical condition which might have been treated went undiagnosed. Check that, if I’ve ever had the blues, it was after Phil. Yeah, I still cry when thinking about it, many years later. Awareness is power. By definition, the one who suffers from depression will not recognize the symptoms of clinical depression nor will he seek help on his own. It takes friends and family - now! Awareness is power.

User	joeyalphabet | 2008-01-16 |
Subject	untitled
Message	You can publish mine. I’m very open about my struggles with depression. I had a breakdown in 1998 which required hospitalization (I was 36). I didn’t realize until then I’d suffered from serious depressive episodes since I had been a teenager, and gone undiagnosed all these years. I had all the symptoms but until that time I hadn’t put it together. And I’m not talking about a ‘my girlfriend dumped me’ thing; I see a lot of that here with teens (especially the girls) – that’s not the kind of depression I’m talking about. I’m talking about serious, deep, and chronic depressive episodes, which is different from being depressed about, for example, a death in the family. It’s still a struggle, even all these years later. I still fight with bouts periodically, but the medication has helped. So has therapy. Joe A.