The purpose of this session is to share knowledge about depression and useful/helpful responses to it (and questions about it.)
We have listed below some common questions/misunderstandings/myths/oversimplifications/problems to get the conversation started. If you have any others that you think should be added let us know.
If time allows TBAT will edit this post while the thread is active in order to incorporate questions/answers/suggestions that arise in the comment thread. The final document will be kept in a "101/useful information" section of the website.
Remembering that "every (depressed) person's experience is different" is important. Some people don't need meds, others do. For some people, the depression ends; for others, it doesn't.
MYTHS ABOUT DEPRESSION
- Depression isn't really an illness. People are just feeling sorry for themselves.
- If people who said they were "depressed" made more of an effort to cheer up they would get over it.
- a. Anti-depressants are just "happy pills" and people who take them just want to avoid feeling what the rest of us do.
- b. Anti-depressants turn you into a zombie and subdue your real personality.
- c. Anti-depressants are just pushed by Big Pharma to make a profit.
- d. Antidepressants are interchangeable so it doesn't matter if one's health insurance plan will only cover particular medications or demands that that you take "generic equivalents."
- If people just (exercised more/ ate differently / read different books / watched different movies) they would get over it.
- All depressions are caused by experiencing abuse--if the depressed person tells you that nothing "caused the depression" or "they had a happy childhood" they are lying or in denial.
- Depression is just a women's thing.
- Depression is less severe than other mental illnesses.
- Clinical depression is worse than situational depression.
- Needing a therapist/psychiatrist to overcome depression means that person is weak.
- Depression is the same as Bipolar Disorder (Manic-Depression), and people who suffer from Bipolar Disorder "enjoy" their "up" periods.
- Depression is an expected prerequisite / consequence of a "creative" personality or lifestyle.
- Children can't get depressed.
- You should stop taking anti-depressants as soon as possible so you don't get addicted.
- You can't be depressed, I've seen you act happy.
- Good Christians don't get depressed.
- You can't take antidepressants if you're breastfeeding. Don't be so selfish.
- You're not suicidal if you're not actually planning to kill yourself.
- People who talk about suicide never actually kill themselves; they're just being manipulative.
- People who survive a suicide attempt are always glad.
- If you can get out of bed, you aren't depressed!
Depression is a physical illness that causes damage to the brain. Emotional pain and/or numbness is a symptom of it, just as physical pain is a symptom of other illnesses.
Depressed people generally are making a considerable effort: when you're depressed, it's very hard to make it through the day at all. It is not, however, possible to simply will away an illness. This applies to mental illnesses as much as to physical ones.
A depressed person is not feeling 'what the rest of us do': the experience of depression is not like the normal stresses and strains of life. Likewise, anti-depressants don't actually make you happy. (It's notable, for example, that there's pretty much no street trade in them. This is because if you're not depressed, they don't make you experience anything beyond the side effects.) Their exact effect is something of a 'black box' in medicine - that is, more is known about their end result than how they work - but their main function is to stop the destruction depression is wreaking in someone's brain. They don't stop a depressed person feeling what everyone else does; they make a depressed person capable of feeling more 'normal' emotions.
Before tricyclics and SSRIs, the only way to treat depression was with sedatives, which would indeed just dope someone. Modern anti-depressants, however, don't sedate people. Rather than subduing someone's personality, when properly prescribed, they give the real personality a chance to resurface after being buried under depression.
The pharmaceutical industry can indeed be an aggressive marketer, and anti-depressants have been sold as a 'cure' for a wider and wider range of illnesses. How effective they are for those illnesses is a matter of debate. However, the fact that a medication is sometimes wrongly prescribed doesn't mean it's always wrong to prescribe it. While they aren't a cure-all for every problem, if the right anti-depressant is prescribed for someone depressed, they are an appropriate medication, and sometimes a life-saving one.
Sometimes it takes more than one try to figure out what medication(s) work(s) for a particular person. The side effects are also important to consider. When one of our authors first started on the medication zie is on now, zie come back from class (zie was in college at the time) and sleep for hours at a time. The medication was only accepatable worked because zie was in school and had a schedule that accommodated random napping. Another of our authors got relief only from a medication that also caused tinnitus and dehydration so severe zie had trouble swallowing and hir skin would rip.
WARNING: Other medications can seriously interact with (to the point of negating their effects) anti-depressants. The medication that one is prescribed for something such as strep throat could have a serious impact on medications one routinely takes including birth control pills AND anti-depressants.
Exercise can have an anti-depressant effect, and a healthy diet is good for anyone. The fact remains that depression is a genuine illness that causes organic damage to the brain, and many people cannot recover from it without medical intervention, either by medication or counselling or a combination of the two.
The causes of depression are complicated and still not fully understood. As far as current understanding goes, some people seem genetically predisposed to be more vulnerable to it than others; likewise, stressful experiences (including abuse) can precipitate it. These stressful experiences can vary widely, though, and some people simply come down with depression for no very clear reason.
Depression may be more commonly reported in women than men; however, a great many men suffer from depression. There is, in fact, some discussion of 'male depression', also referred to as 'covert depression'. While some women show typically 'male' symptoms and vice versa, in a society where women are socialised to be passive and men active, depressed women commonly present as weepy, self-hating and inert while depressed men commonly present as aggressive, angry and antagonistic. This 'angry' presentation can often lead to men being diagnosed with other problems or treated as antisocial; many depressed men develop substance abuse problems because in the absence of a proper diagnosis they resort to alcohol or drugs as a form of self-medication. Women are also at risk for substance abuse. Depression is a human problem, not a female one, and men and women both suffer when men go undiagnosed because of stereotypes.
Depression is in many cases more treatable than some other mental illnesses, but that doesn't mean it's less severe.
Depression is a life-threatening illness. People with severe depression often kill themselves: it is a potentially fatal disease. 'Potentially fatal' is about as severe as diseases get. Even when not suicidal, depressed people can become unable to work, to take care of their families, even to take care of themselves. And even in survivors, its potential to destroy quality of life is just as powerful as other mental illnesses.
In the first place, drawing a distinction between the two is very difficult. What causes the depression is no guide to how bad the depression will be. Some clinical depressions are relatively mild; some situational depressions are very severe. It varies from individual to individual. Someone who experiences situational depression for a long enough time will likely become clinically depressed. Even when it can be drawn, situationally depressed people can become suicidal, or unable to work, take care of themselves, etc. just as easily as clinically depressed people.
This is a common belief of people with depression (and other mental illnesses) who do not want to seek help. Depression is an incapacitating illness that needs treatment, and seeking out help isn't weak, any more than it's weak to seek out a physiotherapist if you injure a muscle. If someone breaks their leg, we do not regard them as weak for needing someone to set the bone, for wearing a cast, or using crutches. We see these as the logical steps to take when a leg is broken. We would look askance at someone who claimed they were going to fix the leg “on their own.” Depression is an illness, for all it occurs in the head instead of the body, and it requires treatment just like any other illness or malady.
A good therapist is a person who helps the patient find their own strength and become independent.Therapy itself can be a challenging and uncomfortable experience that requires a lot of courage to go through, and likewise it takes courage to defy the stigma attached to seeing a therapist in the first place.
There are many different approaches to therapy, and you have to find a therapist who works for you and with you. For example, one might have to choose between therapist who adhere to the (often competing) schools of thought of psychotherapy and CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). Most therapists use a mix. Again, it often depends on the person, and the approach that works for one person may not work for another--a bit like the diet and exercise thing.
Bipolar is an affective disorder, which is to say it deregulates the emotions. So is depression, which is also known as unipolar depression. They are not, however, the same illness: their impact on the sufferer's life can be very different, and they require different medication and treatment. While some bipolar sufferers experience the "up" period as an enjoyable high, for others the "up" period is a nightmare of emotional chaos, just as dark as the "down".
Some creative people suffer from depression. So do a lot of people who aren't particularly creative; depression is a common illness. There is no evidence to support the idea that creativity and depression are connected, any more than there's reason to suppose that TB and creativity are connected - an idea that the myth of the 'consumptive artist' used to advance. Stress can bring on depression, and artists are often poor, which is stressful; it's just as likely that the connection is as simple as that. Depression is not an inspiring experience: it slows down thinking and numbs out feeling, and many artists with depression have killed themselves, putting an end to the possibility of any further creations. Likewise, many artists with depression become too sick to work, leading to unproductive years that, had they been well, could have been spent creating more beautiful works. Depression doesn't cause creativity; it eats it. Artists who produce great work are just as likely to have produced it despite their depression as because of it.
Not true. Depression is no respecter of age, and children are psychologically vulnerable. A person whose depression begins in childhood is most at risk for having their illness mistaken for a personality trait, which can cause lifelong problems for them.
While people going off anti-depressants can experience 'discontinuation' symptoms, most modern anti-depressants are not addictive. This is an issue discussed in the medical community; what is not questioned is that going off anti-depressants too soon brings a serious risk of relapse. The minimum recommended period for taking anti-depressants is six months followed by a gradual decrease of dosage; doctors generally advise that you should continue to take anti-depressants at least six months after you stop experiencing any depressive symptoms. Some people go off anti-depressants comfortably; some people - usually people who were depressed for a long time before they were diagnosed - need to take anti-depressants for many years, or even for the rest of their lives, in the same way that people with high blood pressure may need to stay on medication. If that's what's medically necessary, there's nothing wrong with it.
Depression flattens out the emotions, but it doesn't mean someone is always in the exact same mood. A depressed person is still a human being, and human beings react to things around them. It's not so much that depression locks you in one mood; it's more that it makes it harder and harder to feel and/or sustain positive emotions: a depressed person may feel happy for a while, but then the depression drags them back down. In addition, there's a social expectation that people should act pleasantly to one another; a person who acts happy may be putting on a brave face because they fear rejection if they tell people honestly how they're feeling. Finally, if someone has been suffering from undiagnosed depression for a long time, they may simply assume that everyone feels the way they do and describe themselves as 'happy' on days when they only feel pretty bad instead of terrible. A depressed person doesn't always act in a stereotypically 'depressed' way, any more than a person with a cold sneezes with every breath.
Depression is not an infallible sign of backsliding, sinfulness, insufficient faith, or an inadequate prayer life, any more than cancer or influenza is a sign of sinfulness.
Small quantities of antidepressants can get into the milk, which will be passed on to the baby. If the baby is premature or has a low birth weight, this may be a factor to consider. However, if the baby is healthy, small quantities of antidepressants are very unlikely to harm hir: the UK's NHS website on depression states that all tricyclics except doxepin and the SSRIs paroxtene and sertraline can be safely prescribed, and other antidepressants may be continued if the woman has been taking them with good effect before.
Like most issues in parenting, there's a balance to be struck, and what shouldn't be forgotten is this: it does a baby no good at all to have a severely depressed mother. Such a mother will have less energy to take care of hir, will be modelling unhappier facial expresses and affect, can be less inventive in finding ways to stimulate the baby, may have less patience in dealing with hir, may cuddle less because she takes less pleasure in physical contact, will be more easily overwhelmed, and generally speaking will be giving the baby a different and less joyful experience of being mothered. This is as likely to affect the baby as antidepressants in the milk.
A new mother suffering from depression needs to find a sympathetic doctor who doesn't write off the problems she faces and take a rigid view of what's 'best for baby'. If she's severely depressed, taking antidepressants is not selfish: she's upping her game and making herself a better parent, which benefits the baby as well as herself.
In addition, a new mother with depression will be feeling full of guilt and inadequacy as it is. Calling her selfish or implying she's neglecting her responsibilities to her baby is a terrible thing to do.
When a doctor asks if someone is 'feeling suicidal', they don't necessarily mean 'Are you in the process of arranging your own death?' There's a spectrum between 'not suicidal at all' and 'a day away from death'. Many depression sufferers are haunted with what are known as 'suicidal ideations': thoughts of death or wishes to die that might, but do not necessarily, turn into an active plan.
It's very common, for instance, for someone depressed to think such thoughts as: 'I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up tomorrow,' 'I can't think of a solution to this except just dying,' and 'Everyone would be better off without me.' These are suicidal thoughts even if they don't go any further than thinking, and are a sign that someone's seriously sick.
There may be people who use threats of suicide to manipulate others, but if someone depressed is telling you that they feel suicidal, they are almost certainly not trying to manipulate you. If they're depressed enough to be feeling suicidal, in fact, they're probably too punch-drunk to make the kind of clear plans than manipulating somebody involves. A person revealing suicidal thoughts is trying to express how bad they feel and asking for help - sometimes clearly, sometimes confusedly, but asking for help nonetheless. And if they're thinking suicidal thoughts, there's a non-negligible risk they may later make a suicide attempt. The myth that talking about and attempting suicide don't go together is just that: a myth.
Some people may be. Others may wake up filled with despair that they're still alive. The fact is, many people who commit suicide have already made several previous attempts. The fact that someone has attempted suicide is not reason to assume they'll never try again; in fact, common sense as well as statistics suggest that if someone feels bad enough to try and kill themselves they're more likely to try again if they survive the first attempt than someone who feels perfectly all right.
(As a side-note, psychologists recommend avoiding the phrases 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' when talking about suicide attempts. The reason is that someone attempting suicide is usually filled with despair and shame, and the idea of a survived attempt being 'unsuccessful' just reinforces the belief that they had better make absolutely sure they die so they don't wake up hearing that they 'failed' to even kill themselves properly. 'Completed suicide attempt' is the suggested alternative to 'successful'.)
Very few people have the option of not getting out of bed. The ability to drag oneself out of bed and out of the house in order not to starve is not in itself an indication of mental health.
FAMILIES OF THE DEPRESSED
- It is your fault that your child/parent/sibling/significant other is depressed.
- Why are you complaining -- you are not the person who is depressed, what difference does it make to your life?
- All they need to cure them is love/support.
- They'll feel better if their life situation improves. Have you tried...?
- Depression always destroys the sex drive.
Nobody knows for sure what causes depression. Sometimes it just happens. Blaming people is neither accurate nor fair. In fact it is potentially harmful to both the person without depression and their relation with depression.
When you blame someone for hir brother's or mother's depression it means that person cannot count on you for help or support for hir and hir family. Depending when this comment is heard, it can put long-lasting strain on the non-depressed relation. If you overheard as a child that you were the cause of your mother's depression, you might have taken it to heart and felt horribly guilty that "you" were somehow causing your mom so much pain.
Also, there's a good chance that the person with depression will hear about the comment and, depending on the person and disease, blame themselves for their non-depressed relation being blamed, attempt to hide their depression from others and the non-depressed relation, or agree with the comment. The first two put more emotional pressure on the person suffering from depression by adding guilt or the attempt to seem "normal." The last two make it harder for the depressed person to get treatment, by either hiding their need for it or blaming their depression on the non-depressed person instead of getting help.
Best-case scenario, the difference it makes is the difference between seeing a much-loved person well or dangerously sick. Depressed people suffer terribly, and some depressed people kill themselves. The relation is going to grieve and worry, just as they would if a loved one had any other painful and life-threatening disease. Worst-case scenario, the relation has to deal with all this and with mistreatment from the depressed person. Among the possible symptoms of depression are anger, irritability, hypersensitivity, aggression and negativity. While this is the symptom of a disease rather than a deliberate behaviour, a depressed partner or parent can be an abusive partner or parent. Emotional, verbal and even physical violence can be going on behind closed doors. This isn't a universal reaction, but it can be a factor, and if it does happen, it can be very difficult for the family member to talk about it; if they sense that the abuse is being caused by pain and sickness, they can fear that others will write off the depressed person if they talk about it.
We pick up on the moods of people around us. It's not at all unusual for the partner of a depressed person to come down with depression themselves. Even if they don't, they're dealing with an extremely difficult and frightening problem affecting someone they care about. Depression in families is a serious thing.
Someone suffering from depression does indeed need love and support, just like any sick person. But that support has to be the foundation for more effective treatment, just as for any other disease. We can't love away depression any more than we can love away cancer. Telling someone that all their family member needs is support is effectively making them responsible for an illness that's not under their control, which puts them in a position of helplessness while putting the depressed person in a position of dependence, which does neither party any favours.
There's a difference between feeling 'depressed' in the colloquial sense, meaning discouraged and fed up about something. A change in life circumstances can fix that. But while clinical depression can be triggered by bad circumstances, and may be harder to fight as long as the circumstances remain bad, it is not the natural and healthy response to circumstances that colloquial 'depression' is. Changing the circumstances won't cure the illness. And in fact, the more depressed someone is, the more likely to be incapacitated or self-destructive they are, so in many cases it's the other way round: they need to fix the depression before they have the energy, concentration, or emotional balance to be able to fix their life circumstances in any way that lasts.
For many people, depression destroys all interest in sex, which can be hard on partners. However, some depression sufferers use sex to self-medicate, turning to pornography in an attempt to get their libido kick-started, committing infidelities in the hopes that a new person will help them feel something, or insisting on sex with their partners in an attempt to kick-start feelings of love and connection that they're struggling to feel. This last can also be very hard on partners, especially if the depressed person is suffering from numbed empathy and hence is having difficulty treating their partner well and reacts badly to the idea of rejection. Some partners of a depressed person can end up feeling sexually neglected; others can end up sexually betrayed; others still can end up feeling pressured and objectified. These are all consequences of the disease rather than bad character, but all can be very harmful to spouses.
RESOURCES
The National Institute of Mental Health has information pages on the subject of, depression among men and depression among women, both of which include links to other resources on the subject.
Information about bipolar disorder is available online: The National Institute of Mental Health's online booklet about bipolar disorder
Suicide prevention hotlines:
United States, the National Suicide Prevention Helpline (with a sub-line for veterans and soldiers) 800-273-8255, Trevor (for LGBT youth) 866-488-7286.)There are also numerous local helplines (NSPH routes you to the nearest one in your area, actually).
In the United Kingdom (dial 08457 90 90 90) and the Republic of Ireland (dial 1850 60 90 90) people in distress can contact the Samaritans
Befrienders Worldwide provides links to local help resources in countries around the world..
--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community
The Board Administration Team(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)
Thank you to our wonderful TeaBats and all the contributors for this piece!
With respect to: "Depression is an expected prerequisite/consequence of a creative lifestyle," I have read material where people wonder if we're "destroying" the creative potential of artists or geniuses by prescribing antidepressants. My response is that asking "What if we're keeping the next Mozart from writing music?" is the wrong question. The right question is, "How much more would Charles Darwin have been able to do if he hadn't had severe untreated depression?"
Posted by: Literata | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:12 PM
I know that when I started going on antidepressants I was afraid they'd make me stop being me. It was the wrong fear to have. They didn't do anything. We tried various drugs and combinations for years, nothing worked.
Does anyone else find it odd that the NIMH thing for men is in second person (e.g "How to Help Yourself") while the thing for women is in first (e.g. "How can I help myself")? I'm sure that there probably a well thought out reason, but it seems strange to me.
Posted by: chris the cynic | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:26 PM
And if it's a choice between having someone create a revolutionary work of art, or helping that person live a healthier, happier life? Why is this even a question, bring on the antidepressants already.
Posted by: BrokenBell | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:27 PM
BrokenBell - yeah, exactly. When I shared that comment with a friend of mine, she said, "Actually, the right question is, 'How dare you tell me that I need to suffer unimaginable lifelong horror on the infinitesimal chance that I might make some art that amuses you?'"
Posted by: Literata | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:31 PM
Thanks, TBAT! This is an excellent 101 already. I don't know what to add, but I might be able to answer people's questions.
Posted by: Nev, who was into depression before they got that record deal and sold out | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:32 PM
@chris: I found that being on anti-depressants, and ESPECIALLY being on anxiolytics, made me feel more "me" than I'd ever felt before. Then again, I don't have a strong sense of identity, so take that with a grain of salt.
And yeah, my first anti-depressant (Paxil) had HORRIBLE side effects for me--hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, not a fun time. My second (Prozac) worked well, and shortly before starting college I went off meds. After college I went through another bad patch (neither unemployment nor teleworking turns out to be healthy for me) and went on a third med (Cymbalta), which worked great except for the teensy little side effect that I could not sleep. At all. After four days without sleep, they found a tiny dosage of another anti-depressant (I forget the name) before bed not only made sleep possible, but allowed me to get a good night's sleep for the first time in my entire life.
Seriously: I hadn't even realized I had sleep problems. I thought everyone took two to four hours to fall asleep, woke up multiple times in the night, and felt awful in the morning. I thought that was just what sleep was like, and couldn't understand people who actually *liked* to sleep.
So, yeah, took quite some time to find the combination of medicines that worked for me. I'm not on any at the moment; I turn out to be one of those lucky people who can safely go off their meds when times are good. I have relatives for whom that's very much NOT true--going off their meds is how, typically, times *stop* being good.
Posted by: Froborr | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:37 PM
The thing about losing creativity isn't just something from the outside though. The idea that you might have something to say and then be unable to say it because of antidepressants could be pretty devastating.
I don't remember that coming up for me, I don't think I ever associated depression with artistry, but if someone had told me that they could make me have normal moods, just take this pill, but the price would be that I'd never be able to write the stories I've thought of with the quality I wanted, that all of the characters that managed to make me feel when everything else had turned dull and lifeless would be doomed to never being communicated to the world in anything other than mediocrity, OR I could not take the pill, remain depressed, but become a great writer capable of sharing them with the world in stories worthy of them ...
I have no idea what I would have done, but it would have been a devastating choice to make.
-
Of course in real life the pills never worked for me, and I don't think I'm on my way to being a great writer. So either outcome of that devastating choice would have been better than what I ended up with.
Posted by: chris the cynic | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:43 PM
I have a teenaged son on anti-depressants (fluoxetine and risperidone). He currently has strep throat, and has had fever and diarrhea for several days. (Unfortunately we hit one of the cases where the quick test for strep was negative but the two-day test was positive, which means it *is* strep and we missed two days' chance to start antibiotics.)
This is a sample size of one, but my household's impression is that something--fever or diarrhea--has stopped his anti-depressants from working, because the symptoms look very much as though we'd stopped them cold turkey. Crying jags, panic attacks, outbursts of rage.
I post this in the hopes that it will be a heads-up for other people on antidepressants. I don't know what's to be done about it, but even knowing that it might happen could be helpful.
Posted by: Mary Kaye | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:45 PM
Sorry, that should be "The thing about fear of losing creativity"
Posted by: chris the cynic | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:45 PM
The side effects are also important to consider. When one of our authors first started on the medication zie is on now, zie come back from class (zie was in college at the time) and sleep for hours at a time. The medication was only accepatable worked because zie was in school and had a schedule that accommodated random napping.
Much like the meds I'm on now. Wonderful things in some ways, but with the side-effect that I am getting very sleepy, and surviving with extended naps. Gonna be having an early bedtime until November...
Some clinical depressions are relatively mild; some situational depressions are very severe. It varies from individual to individual.
*nods* It also varies from person to person. I've had situational depression twice, and one was way more severe than the other - which wasn't a reflection on the severity of the situation that brought on the depression. The first situation was, IMO, initially much more major, but gave me a much milder case of depression; the second wasn't that problematic a situation (at least to start with) but totally incapacitated me for a while there.
Posted by: Deird, who is recovering | Jul 13, 2011 at 06:54 PM
After four days without sleep, they found a tiny dosage of another anti-depressant (I forget the name) before bed not only made sleep possible, but allowed me to get a good night's sleep for the first time in my entire life.
Was it amitriptyline (Elavil, Endep, Vanatrip)? Because I started that a couple of years ago, and the effect was MIRACULOUS. Just like you, I never realized that I *had* sleep problems until I started it.
Low dosages of amitriptyline are often prescribed for those with fibromyalgia, on the theory that some of the physical pains are caused by interruptions in the body's self-repair cycle during sleep.
Posted by: hapax | Jul 13, 2011 at 07:00 PM
I don't know if it's relevant to any questions, but I find it an interesting anecdote.
When I was in middle and early high school, my depression (relatively mild, and I was never officially diagnosed beyond having some form of unspecified mood disorder) expressed itself with rage. If my switch got tripped, I would be completely unreasonable, screaming and hitting, and one particularly bad night I wasn't even able to speak. After I went on and off of meds, I still had the same triggers and switch, but I find that it comes out as crying now. Instead of screaming, I start to cry. Which has its own problems socially, but is much easier on me.
I find two different forms of whatever disorder I might actually have. There's the times when it comes out in front of others, usually when I'm frustrated and at the end of my rope. But I'll also have bouts where I'm just down, and nothing is going to make me feel better. I can distract myself from the mood for a while, but it comes back as soon as the distraction is gone. Eventually, it passes, and I'm back to normal.
What I have found is that it's immensely comforting when I can figure out that it's just a Mood, it's just one of those times, and I can't do anything but wait it out. Until I realize that, I get myself stuck in trying to fix the problem, and making myself even more upset. Once I have permission from myself to just frown and lie around and do nothing, I find that the mood passes much more quickly.
Posted by: Samantha C | Jul 13, 2011 at 07:03 PM
I'm not sure if I've ever had situational depression, but I have been diagnosed with clinical depression more than once. And to be honest, I think I've been cycling in and out of it since about age 10. The doctor I have here in Maryland is the first person who ever suggested perhaps I should go on medication. Since I was already on medication for ADD, and for anxiety attacks, I decided not to add a third medication to the mix, because how could I tell what it was doing or not doing.
I definitely concur with others about the effect depression has on my creativity -- it makes it disappear entirely. Even if I still had creative impulses, though, I would not have the emotional energy to do anything with them. And creating art requires *a lot* of emotional energy. I've lost years to being too depressed to do anything but go through the motions of my life.
I encouraged a friend who had (perhaps situational) depression to go to a doctor and get medication or counseling or whatever, no matter what her family said about "weakness" and the stigma and all that. She got medication, and it made a huge difference. Which was a really good thing, because she'd been feeling suicidal. BTDT.
Posted by: Laiima | Jul 13, 2011 at 07:11 PM
One of the things I found most devastating about depression is what my household calls the "horizon effect."
When I am in a normal state of mind, I can cheer myself up on a difficult day by noting that I'm going horseback riding this weekend, I seem likely to get this paper turned in by next week, and the sick child is now on antibiotics and rated to see improvement within a few days.
When I am depressed, a "horizon" sets in where anything fun more than a short time in the future is meaningless. At its worst the horizon is only a couple of hours away. Tomorrow's pleasures might as well not exist for all the good they do me. The only thing that can possibly seem to help (subjectively) is pleasure RIGHT NOW, or at most within an hour or two. This leads to obsessive behavior, insomnia (because next morning is past the threshold), and general incapacitation. You don't realize how much of life is "I'll do this unpleasant thing now in return for fun later" until the fun-later part stops working.
For milder depression, like where I am now, the horizon is a couple of days away, but far enough I can't "see" the weekend from Monday. (I think things will improve when my son is no longer feverish and I can get some proper sleep.)
You can't reason with the horizon effect: I can know intellectually that fun things this weekend really do exist, but they still don't help me function today. We have found that a certain amount of benign bossiness from a non-depressed partner ("I know, I know, but now you have to go to bed") can help get through this if it is short-term. (Long-term horizon problems would be a cue to seek treatment again.)
Posted by: MaryKaye | Jul 13, 2011 at 07:32 PM
My brain chemistry is fucked up toward anxiety rather than depression, but: word. I feel way more myself on Lexapro--not just more content, but happier, and somewhat more spiritually connected as well. If there's been any problems with my creativity, I haven't noticed: the third novel's going quite well. (If anyone has a good link to photos of the countryside in Southern Wales, BTW, I would love you forever.) And I always have really vivid dreams on it, which is just strange.
Now, if only they'd make a SSRI that doesn't fuck with my sex drive. Er, pun not intended. Lexapro thankgodfully stops having the worst side effects after a month or so, but still.
Posted by: Izzy | Jul 13, 2011 at 07:32 PM
Yeah, the sex-drive thing stinks.
I was on sertraline, which is an anti-obsessive-compulsive as well as anti-depressant. This may have been specifically helpful for my depression, which had a lot of 'stuck in a train of thought' qualities. But I really, really missed the ability to hyperfocus when I wanted to. And one of the things that doesn't happen (for me) without hyperfocus, it turns out, is orgasm.... So I still had plenty of sex drive, but I'd just lose focus and never could climax. Everyone said "Orgasm is overrated, you shouldn't be so focused on 'reaching the goal', just enjoy the journey." But prolonged arousal without orgasm left me so physically miserable it was better to avoid getting aroused at all. It felt like having a bad head cold in my crotch. I was glad to be done with that particular medication. It did the job, and I'd do it again under similar circumstances, but the side effects were really unpleasant.
Posted by: MaryKaye | Jul 13, 2011 at 07:44 PM
Yes, Izzy--the sex and antidepressants thing is something that's important to point out. Not only can depression interfere with one's sex life, so can antidepressants--most often by reducing the ability to climax, but also sometimes by reducing sex drive. Augmenting with another antidepressant called Wellbutrin can help with that, but it's a very frustrating side effect for many people.
Posted by: kisekileia | Jul 13, 2011 at 07:46 PM
MaryKaye: Everyone said "Orgasm is overrated, you shouldn't be so focused on 'reaching the goal', just enjoy the journey."
I have to wonder, would anyone say that to a man?
Posted by: Laiima | Jul 13, 2011 at 07:59 PM
One quick comment on medications: I'm of the opinion that medication alone isn't enough. Medication plus some type of therapy really is the long-term solution. One of the benefits of having the right medication is that, psychologically, you're in a relatively stable, safe mindset where you and a trained professional can address issues that otherwise might be tough to tackle alone.
Posted by: Rodeobob | Jul 13, 2011 at 07:59 PM
I've got a lot to say on this topic, because I suffer from depression-related ADHD, and I hope you don't mind if I relay my story with it. It'll explain a lot about why I am like I am. Anyway, I'll break it up into two parts:
PART I
For the majority of my life, I fought with ADHD. I was diagnosed at an early age, and my parents didn't do anything, because at the time (way back in the 90s) ADHD was overdiagniosed, and I was not the type of child who would "have" ADHD (i.e., I didn't fit the stereotype: I was extremely diligent in my school work, I didn't appear to have any problems focusing, and I understood things quickly even if I didn't have the patience for you to sit down and really describe them to me.) My ADHD made it difficult for me to function socially, because you just don't have the time for people; you've always got a response to them, because you know what they're saying before they finish it. I dealt with ADHD my entire school career.
Then, when I hit 18 and graduated, and started college, it was someone dumped a whole shitload of dark on me. Really, it was all at once, and it was DARK. I really can't remember anything about my life from that year after HS, because I was so depressed, and I was in such a deep hole and it happened so much at once, it's hazy. About that time was when I started writing - my ADHD always meant I'd been intelligent and creative, and my depression allow me to take my writing to a whole new height (low, really). I secluded myself, I developed a social phobia because I just could not have fun while being out and I didn't want to be a weight on anyone else while they were with me because I was keeping them from having fun, and I focused exclusively on two things: my writing and my school. There were days when I was surprised I could function. I tried telling my parents I was depressed but they told me exactly what TBAT stated: If I'd just get out and do more things, or if I'd just get away from the computer, or if I just did one extra thing, I would feel better. Getting out is a nice thing to tell someone when they have a social phobia, because they don't like being a weight on someone and drag them down and because they have a reputation as an asshole for cutting people off in mid thought.
Humans are social animals. I wanted to be a social animal, but you know what? I couldn't be. My social phobia was absolutely crippling. I began to feel all alone, and that's not a good way to feel when you're suffering from major depression.
That was when something strange happened. See, when you're depressed, it's a weight on your soul. I often describe what happened as that weight being so great it burned a hole through my soul. It turned into a black spot I still have, and inside of that black spot is nothing but complete anger and rage.
I'm a nice fellow. I'm very sweet and sensitive, and I didn't want to loose that reputation. I somehow managed to hold on, but I probably got involved in something I shouldn't - politics. As time went on, I developed a real, true, honest hate towards individuals involved in politics, politicians, and by extension, the world as a hole. People will talk about how they hate something, but it's nothing like what I experienced. Mine was a visceral, sick-to-your-stomach hate. It filled that hole in my chest quite nicely, thank you.
Posted by: Josh (Enigma32) | Jul 13, 2011 at 08:00 PM
MaryKaye: Everyone said "Orgasm is overrated, you shouldn't be so focused on 'reaching the goal', just enjoy the journey."
Laiima said: I have to wonder, would anyone say that to a man?
My psychiatrist took me off a medication that left me unable to climax*, so not in my case. And that one was hell on me. Not being able to climax I could live with, but the ramped-up sex drive it also gave me made the inability to climax unbearable.
*I use climax instead of orgasm because I haven't had an orgasm since I was around fourteen, well before my depression started
Posted by: Leum | Jul 13, 2011 at 08:21 PM
(Sorry if this is a double post.) And the problem with Wellbutrin is that it can exacerbate the anxiety features of depression. So you might be interested in sex again, but you worry about it a lot. Irony, good for the blood. Or so they say.
Froborr, it might also have been trazodone that helped with sleep.
Samantha, I too have two different manifestations. One is depression, in general, and the other is PMS/PMDD. I was actually originally put on Prozac for PMDD, and it made me feel so much more like myself that I wanted to stay on it all the time. I now take a base dose of Prozac all the time and then raise it during my premenstrual period, so it's like a combination of regular Prozac and Sarafem (a/k/a Prozac for PMDD). With PMDD, knowing that it's primarily my hormones, and it's going to be okay, and if I can get through the week, the world will be a much better place are critical to me being able to cope with it.
Mary Kaye, the horizon is an interesting way of putting it. I'll have to think about whether and how I have effects like that.
Mods: I don't know if we want to address PMDD as a sub-type of depression in this or not, but I think it would be good to debunk a myth like "It's just your hormones!" as a way of dismissing women's mood disorders. Um, sometimes it's hormones, and sometimes it's not, and sometimes it's both, or a lot more than that. If you are not my doctor, you don't get to even begin to diagnose that, and you definitely don't get to dismiss me on that basis.
I'm on my way to bed, see y'all in the morning! Hugs to everyone who wants them!
Posted by: Literata | Jul 13, 2011 at 08:21 PM
Original post: There is no evidence to support the idea that creativity and depression are connected, any more than there's reason to suppose that TB and depression are connected - an idea that the myth of the 'consumptive artist' used to advance.
From context, I think you meant "TB and creativity", not "TB and depression".
I can't think of any questions I want to ask, and I've no first- or second-hand experience with depression.
Posted by: Brin | Jul 13, 2011 at 08:22 PM
PART II
Hate is a very attractive emotion. So is anger - sometimes there are times when you just want to let go. That rush is so amazing; when you get angry, and you go into that rage, there's something amazing about it. I'm just not entirely sure how to describe the rush of endorphins associated with being angry. There's a lot said about how hate eats you alive. It does.
It's even less health when you take all of that and bottle that up, and just keep it inside. I let go of that anger only when I was writing, and boy did I let go of it.
I completed most of my college career. Most of my friends distanced themselves from me, because I became just too much to deal with. You can't go anywhere with me because of the tag-team inability to have fun and that social phobia. I lost contact with a great many people, and all I had was my school and my writing. I would like to say I had my family, but I didn't. They got on my nerves. They got under my skin in a way they don't anymore. I continued to experience that visceral anger and hatred, and there were mornings when I was worried I would just break out crying in the middle of class. I was afraid someone would ask me what was wrong, because I didn't want to tell them. And despite all of this, I remained an interpersonal individual - because, you see, there's this thing called "the Mask." When you're depressed, you wear that mask so other people don't know. So they don't judge. And that mask does not help, because eventually you become that mask.
I never drank. I never did any kind of narcotic. I developed into a major control freak over every little thing that I did (not so much others - that was unbecoming, and I would scare off what friends I had left doing that), because I knew what was just under the surface, and I didn't want it to come out. I knew, in my psychological state, I would develop an addiction incredibly easily. I'd lost a lot. I didn't want to lose what little bit I had left.
And then came the student teaching experience. My mentality was NOT healthy or conducive to being a teacher. I just wasn't. It probably still isn't. But I had that experience, I my cooperating teacher was a wall. Seriously, this woman was a wall. I was ground down to nothing, and by November (I started in August) I was in the middle of a complete and total emotional break down. That was when she suggested to me that I get help, and I start doing things on my own. I was reluctant at first - for exactly the same reason as described in the first comment by Literata. I was afraid I'd lose my creativity if I got treated. I didn't have much of a choice, though - it was an uphill battle for me just to admit to myself that I'd been right all along, and that I was really depressed (you sorta know, but I never admitted it to myself), and that I did really need help.
I did get that help. I was shocked when they diagnosed me with ADHD, simply because I didn't fit that mold, even in my own mind. Looking back on it now, it's so incredibly obvious, but then... well, you know what they say about hindsight. I did finish my student teaching, and I graduated college with a 3.5, Cum Laude and on the Dean's List. I'm 26 now. I spent 21 years fighting ADHD and close to 10 years fighting depression, by myself, without anyone to help. I grew up in a place that slowly turned to Hell, and I'm sure that Michigan Winters are not healthy for the depressed (it's cloudy here for most of the year. When it snows, it snows. I live in a neighborhood near the slums, so it gets dark and lonely, and everything is dead. I can't think of a better way to put it. That is not healthy on the psyche, I don't care what anyone says.) The medication they put me on treats both my ADHD and my Depression - they treated the ADHD first, because that's where the depression and the social phobia came from. I still have traces of that social phobia, and I do have a difficult time approaching new people, but for the most part, it's mostly gone now.
And about that hate and anger. I don't have nearly as much of it as I used to. But it's still there. It still fills that hole I have, that will probably never go away. And there are things that will cause me to flip, and I do go to the extreme and I will say and do things that I deeply, deeply regret. Anger, rage, and hate are as much a part of depression as sadness, helplessness, and the inability to have fun are. I'm more vocal towards people when I'm starting to get irritated now, and I've actually admitted I have that burning hate and anger there in my heart, so I'm doing pretty good about keeping control of it, even if there are moments when something hits me and I just go totally apeshit (usually this happens online, and I end up coming across as an intolerant, boisterous asshole rather than hateful, nasty person, because I do keep that hate in check). I have to wind down, and I usually end up with apologies all around after I'm calmed down. I do make startling, sweeping statements without thinking as a direct result of that latent anger and rage, especially about ideologies and beliefs I do not like.
My world is a lot lighter now, even if I've only got less than 1/3 the friend count that I had back in HS. I sigh - I've got a life to rebuild, that I should've been trying to build all along but couldn't because depression stole those years from me. The economy doesn't help, and the people running around and hurting the way things are make them worse. But I'm trying, and I stand a better chance now than I did before.
Here's the irony, though: I'm an atheist/agnostic - I treat it like a sliding scale and it very much depends upon how I feel. The reason I'm this way? It has nothing to do with my depression forcing me to give up God. It's got nothing to do with that inner anger or rage. It's just because I came to that conclusion logically, and gave it up peacefully. It's a sad irony that giving up belief in a god was the most peaceful thing to happen in my life since I turned 18.
Posted by: Josh (Enigma32) | Jul 13, 2011 at 08:32 PM
I know from firsthand experience what depression is like, though I'd have a lot of trouble describing it or remembering a particular feeling; I imagine that would hold even more if I managed to overcome it altogether. I do wonder, though, what the long-term effects of having had depression on one's actions (or skill in the arts) are. I think it's led me to understand some things better than I otherwise would.
Posted by: Shay Guy | Jul 13, 2011 at 08:32 PM
@ Literata: I'm on wellbutrin; they're using it to treat my ADHD and Depression. The social phobia, which was an anxiety disorder, has pretty much melted away, but I need to force myself to go into public. I just enjoy myself more. I can safely say I haven't had any major issues with it, but just because I haven't doesn't mean others won't. Every depressed person's brain chemistry is screwed up in a unique way; mine is tied to my ADHD. Kill the ADHD, free from the depression. Others are not that way.
Posted by: Josh (Enigma32) | Jul 13, 2011 at 08:51 PM
Amen. I've got depression and ADHD in my family (schizophrenia too, on the maternal side, but that's another story) but I've done pretty well until now. I'm not formally diagnosed with ADHD, but I think it answers a lot of questions about issues I've been having.. After hearing my story, the doctor was most concerned about my anxiety issues, which exacerbated the ADHD. So I'm now on generic Prozac, and feel great. And, I now get to bond with my dad over antidepressants.
Posted by: Liz Coleman | Jul 13, 2011 at 08:57 PM
Like Rodeobob said, medication alone may not cut it. Medication and exercise and/or talk therapy will probably work better.
(Of course, it's not always that easy. What if your depression causes fatigue that prevents regular exercise, or you have mobility issues or other physical disabilities, or there are no sidewalks to jog on? What if you can't afford counselling?)
I've been thinking a lot about how mental illness intersects with poverty. You might be so depressed you can't work, or can only find precarious employment, and have to rely on disability or unemployment or welfare, which require lots of paperwork and having to be on-the-ball, which is a lot harder when you're depressed, and then you're poor, which is depressing. Seriously, the constant stress and strain of poverty can't be good for anyone's mental health.
...which is depressing me just thinking about it* so I'll stop.
* How can I possibly explain to a social worker that I just couldn't make myself pick up the phone / mail in that form / leave the house? How can I explain to a psychiatrist that unless there's a pill for next month's rent, I'll still have these symptoms?
Posted by: Nev | Jul 13, 2011 at 09:05 PM
@MaryKaye
I've definitely been dealing with the horizon thing, forwards and back. It doesn't seem to apply to bad feelings though. Even years after the fact a negative experience can get to me.
-
wrt side effects, I was lucky never to suffer any significant side effects. In fact I think I only suffered one. Something (abilify? paxil? I have no idea) gave me a facial tic. Other than that no side effects at all.
-
Not really related at all, but after a decade I finally have actually managed to reach my goal of having puzzles* for sale. Basically 3-d printing makes it so that there's no longer the part where I have to make silicon molds and polyurethane parts by hand. Given the difficulty I have in sticking to a task that's where everything tended to break down in the past.
Probably no one here would be interested, because paying $100 for a Rubik's Cube like puzzle isn't something most people are willing to do, but I feel like announcing it. So puzzle shop here.
*Only one design at the moment, but in theory I could sell multiple copies.
Posted by: chris the cynic | Jul 13, 2011 at 09:08 PM
Gah! I had a huge comment, and typepad ate it. (or it got held in moderation) So, shorter version:
*In my experience, the best description for what depression is like is that "awful" is the new "normal". A really good day, with friends and good fun and things you enjoy... that might get you back to what a normal day before depression felt like. My entire emotional range was shifted down for a prolonged period of time.
*Depression is irrational; it doesn't always have external causes and the cognitive dissonance between how I felt (always awful) and how my life looked in a rational light, (new house, great job, great wife, everyone healthy, lots of money) well, that conflict led me to some self-sabotaging behaviors. When I got fired from my job, I felt palpable relief because then, at least, my feeling bad made sense.
*Because depression is irrational, our reactions to it can be as well. Self-medicating is extremely common, and the person self-medicating isn't pleasure-seeking or necessarily acting from addiction. They're in pain, and they're trying to help that with whatever tools they have at hand. The danger of self-medication is that the most common tools (alcohol, illegal drugs) just aren't very good tools, but it's wrong to say "Why would that depressed person be getting drunk? Don't they know alcohol is a depressant?" What that person knows is that they're in pain, and getting drunk makes it hurt less. The right response is to get them better tools for coping.
*Very few people find the right medication/therapist/treatment course on their first try. Just because it doesn't work doesn't mean you should stop trying. The right medication can work wonders. I went through three or four before I found one that worked with tolerable side effects.
*Anecdotally, for clinical depression, there is often a pattern of initial diagnosis, treatment until symptoms abate, discontinuing treatment, and then a very unpleasant return of symptoms before accepting this illness requires long-term treatment. That second 'dip' is a very dangerous one, because the person knows what's happening, and often believes that if they had continued treatment, it wouldn't have re-occurred. That piles a fresh round of self-blame, guilt, and shame onto the existing negative emotions of depression.
*There are a lot of treatment options, and nothing is guaranteed to work for everyone, but Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has one of the best success rates. I still work with a therapist, but CBT gives me tools to recognize when I'm experiencing depressive states, identify negative thought patterns and feedback loops, and it keeps me functioning on a day-to-day basis.
*Antidepressants have an adjustment period. It can be scary the first time, but it's short and you will come back into equilibrium. The first time you wear a knee brace, you walk like a mummy for a while, but after the adjustment period, you're moving normally, and your health is better protected for it. Any scary stories people throw around about antidepressants are usually from second-hand observation of a person inside that adjustment period. Yup, there was a week where I could not stop smiling, where my brain felt like it was in a jacuzzi of bubbling happiness and nothing, no matter how horrible, would make me feel anything less than bliss. Scared the hell out of me, but it wasn't permanent, and I got back to "acting normal" after not very long at all.
Posted by: RodeoBob | Jul 13, 2011 at 09:14 PM
One of my problems during my most depressed phase was that exercise would set my thoughts racing, which meant that every time I got on the bike I'd start to get suicidal. This did not make the exercise that I supposedly needed look at all attractive.
Posted by: Leum | Jul 13, 2011 at 09:25 PM
MaryKaye - what you wrote on horizons seems like verbatim from one of my mom's experiences with depression. When she's not in a good place, everthing collapses in on the instant. She can't wait until morning for things to be better, it has to be now. Of course, that means she doesn't really sleep, so she can't solve the problem in the morning sometimes, so it just gets worse.
Posted by: aravind | Jul 13, 2011 at 10:06 PM
Trazodone! That was it.
On sex: Decreased sex drive and self-medicating with sex/porn aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. The same person might go back and forth between the two at different times, or even experience both at once--disinterested in sex with another person but self-medicating with porn, for example.
Posted by: Froborr | Jul 13, 2011 at 10:35 PM
My most-senior-aunt is bipolar and an artist, so I'd go with 'no'.
Posted by: P J Evans | Jul 13, 2011 at 11:22 PM
You missed a common misconception about depression: "Good Christians don't get depressed." I've run into this attitude in a number of settings and heard it from people (including doctors) who should have known better.
Depression is not an infallible sign of backsliding, sinfulness, insufficient faith, or an inadequate prayer life, any more than cancer or influenza is a sign of sinfulness.
Posted by: Wordweaverlynn | Jul 13, 2011 at 11:34 PM
I remember that my mother, after we moved back from Texas, tried two or three antidepressants before she found on that worked and didn't have side effects that made her unhappy. I wish I knew which one she found to work for her; that's the one I'd choose to start with. (Hell, yes, I know what depression feels like. 'Lump on a log' is one way to describe it: wanting to vegetate because doing anything is too much effort.)
Posted by: P J Evans | Jul 13, 2011 at 11:38 PM
In respect to depression being a sign of weakness: "If you're depressed, it's not a sign of weakness. It's a sign that you've been strong for too long."
I don't remember exactly where I got the quote, but I used it in my novel I'm working on (one character said it of another.)
Posted by: Josh (Enigma32) | Jul 13, 2011 at 11:40 PM
Haven't read the whole thing, because I kept forgetting which day it was, but...
chris the cynic, you are so wrong. Whether you every write for a living or not, you write brilliantly and inspire and entertain folks around here quite often.
Posted by: Lonespark | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:16 AM
Wow, MaryKaye, that description of the horizon effect is so spot on.
Posted by: Lonespark | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:21 AM
So, I meant to be involved in this, but I have an interview tomorrow. (yaaaaay.) So, I guess I can work on contributing later in the week.
Posted by: Lonespark | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:23 AM
When I got fired from my job, I felt palpable relief because then, at least, my feeling bad made sense.
Wow, this is really spot on for me too. Ditto other things, like marriage problems, getting kicked out of school... What a satisfying feeling for the whole world to see what a worthless piece of crap I really am.
(Uh, TBAT? I'm assuming this whole thread is basically TW'd? If that's wrong, I'll slap warnings on specific parts.)
Posted by: Lonespark | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:31 AM
Apologies if this doesn't work, but here's an introductory video.
Posted by: animus | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:33 AM
I've got another one:
- You can't take antidepressants if you're breastfeeding. Don't be so selfish.
Small quantities of antidepressants can get into the milk, which will be passed on to the baby. If the baby is premature or has a low birth weight, this may be a factor to consider. However, if the baby is healthy, small quantities of antidepressants are very unlikely to harm hir: the UK's NHS website* states that all tricyclics except doxepin and the SSRIs paroxtene and sertraline can be safely prescribed, and other antidepressants may be continued if the woman has been taking them with good effect before.
Like most issues in parenting, there's a balance to be struck, and what shouldn't be forgotten is this: it does a baby no good at all to have a severely depressed mother. Such a mother will have less energy to take care of hir, will be modelling unhappier facial expresses and affect, can be less inventive in finding ways to stimulate the baby, may have less patience in dealing with hir, may cuddle less because she takes less pleasure in physical contact, will be more easily overwhelmed, and generally speaking will be giving the baby a different and less joyful experience of being mothered. This is as likely to affect the baby as antidepressants in the milk.
A new mother suffering from depression needs to find a sympathetic doctor who doesn't write off the problems she faces and take a rigid view of what's 'best for baby'. If she's severely depressed, taking antidepressants is not selfish: she's upping her game and making herself a better parent, which benefits the baby as well as herself.
In addition, a new mother with depression will be feeling full of guilt and inadequacy as it is. Calling her selfish or implying she's neglecting her responsibilities to her baby is a terrible thing to do.
*http://www.cks.nhs.uk/depression_antenatal_and_postnatal/management/detailed_answers/choice_of_antidepressant_during_breastfeeding
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 03:25 AM
To give an idea of just how much depression can vary between sufferers, my experience with medication is almost the polar opposite of Pthalo's. When I finally realized my emotional problems were probably medical and went to the doctor, I was prescribed Effexor; the idea was I'd take the low 37.5 mg dosage for a week, and then graduate to the 70 mg dosage, and we'd see how it worked. As it turned out, it worked beyond anyone's wildest dreams.
Prior to medication, I was prone to what I called fits, or "being in the hole", that were triggered by upsetting thoughts or perceived failures on my part. These could keep me up well into the morning with my thoughts racing, or render me essentially nonfunctional for the remainder of the day until I could fall asleep - it largely depended on whether the triggering thought was focused outward (fear of death was a big one - I could not think about mortality at night if I wanted to sleep) or inward (my unemployment at the time was a major trigger, but any personal shortcoming could do it). Whichever kind of fit it was, the experience was like being sucked into a whirlpool. I could feel it coming on, I knew what was going to happen, I knew I didn't want it to happen, but there was no way of stopping it. I tried distraction, I tried self-talk, I tried raw willpower, but I could just never do it - and that inability to control my own brain fed into the self-hatred, which of course only made the fit worse. It was absolutely horrible, and could be triggered by the most minor of incidents, like slight social missteps. Which I was /also/ prone to, being that I was poorly socialized in my childhood and am still trying to learn a lot of what I missed out on.
Almost exactly seven days into my newly-prescribed medication, I experienced what would have been a triggering event. A small social misstep online. It was inconsequential - embarrassing, but no real harm to anybody. I still got upset, still felt afraid that my friends would OMG HATE ME now, but instead of being sucked into the whirlpool, I was able to get a leash on my emotions and hold them back enough to let me do something useful about the situation, which was subsequently resolved to the satisfaction of all involved. And afterwards, I felt pretty okay about the whole thing.
I had never been able to do that before. Never once, in all my life.
Words fail me when I try to describe how it felt when I realized what I'd just accomplished. It was like angels singing. It was like the sun had come out when I'd never realized it was overcast before. I knew I had been depressed, and I knew that was playing hell with my brain, but that was the first moment I actually realized what it was like /not/ to be depressed, and it was sublime.
So, suffice it to say, the Effexor worked. On the lowest dose, barely a week after starting it, I was already starting to function more normally. And if that doesn't sound fairy-tale enough yet, I didn't even have side effects. There was a brief blood pressure spike, which with my cardiac history was especially worrying, but that subsided on its own and I haven't had a problem since.
I would probably benefit from therapy as well for a variety of reasons, not least of which being that I probably spent my entire life being depressed and learned all of my thought patterns, associations, social strategies, coping mechanisms, etc. through the smoked lens of depression, but the medication on its own has made enough of a difference in my mind that I can actually function. It's been really amazing.
As far as creativity goes, I haven't noticed much change - I'm about as creative as I was before. Less productive, but that's more due to the fact that I'm lazy and a lot of my art before was produced in classes, and my current schedule affords little opportunity to just sit down with my tablet and Photoshop and do something.
One thing I /have/ noticed about my creativity is interesting, though: I no longer identify with the self-portraiture I did while depressed, because the depression was part of my self-image back then. I look at these self-portraits, and I can't imagine feeling that way anymore. I can't imagine being the person who saw herself as a colorless line drawing in a crowd of beautiful, vibrant people.
And yet despite that rather marked shift in self-image, my personality is... still pretty much me. People who knew me before medication were surprised by the change in my demeanor, how much more sociable and pleasant and /happy/ I was; and I was surprised by their surprise, because I still felt like the same person. Just, without the uncontrollable black moods and the thoughts of suicide and the need to ask my mom to hold on to my pocketknife for safekeeping due to fear of what I might do with it. Those things vanished like mist when I got medicated; my likes, my dislikes, my opinions, my ethics, my values, my quirks, my ideas, my jokes, my affection for others? Those stayed. They were the real "me". They'd been shackled by the black cloud I was living under, the thing that had its hooks in my brain for so many years, and now they were free.
It's a weird experience; being the same person, even when your life experience has changed from night to day. But I like it.
Posted by: Lyssiechan | Jul 14, 2011 at 04:35 AM
Rodeobob, often when people do experience euphoria from antidepressants, it's a sign that they're actually bipolar.
Phthalo, my mind is blown by how abusive that psychologist was. Not letting a teen use the toilet alone is such an invasive measure that I feel it really should only be used in circumstances that are life-threatening, e.g. an eating disorder severe enough to require hospitalization. Non-life-threatening self-injury does not justify such potentially traumatic invasion of privacy. And not addressing abuse issues? That's incredibly counterproductive, especially with issues like eating disorders and cutting that can be responses to trauma.
Posted by: kisekileia | Jul 14, 2011 at 05:42 AM
Lyssiechan, that's a very good description of some of the things I've been through. When I get drawn into one of those endlessly-repeating-issues times, I call it "spin cycle" or being "wrapped around the axle." The feeling of being able to take a step back and think about the emotion is exactly one of the benefits I get from my meds, too.
I often compare meds to a stepping-stone that helps somebody get out of the swamp of depression. Maybe after that you can clean off your feet and legs and walk carefully (stick to exercise, light therapy, whatever floats your boat) enough to stay out of the mire in the future. A lot of people can't, because their life is swampy all the way around (predisposition, permanent neurological imbalance). But in the middle of the swamp, you have to have somewhere dry to stand to even begin to figure out how to clean yourself off, and often, medication is that stepping stone.
The point that depression feels like pain is also a good one. I'm very in tune with my body; I have an innate sense that "something is wrong" that gets triggered in a lot of different ways. PMDD often feels like every "alarm" related to my body is going off at once, but I can't find any physical symptoms. Deep depression can have instances of that, or the opposite, where I can't sense what is going right, so it's a weird blend of pain and numbness in my internal awareness.
Posted by: Literata | Jul 14, 2011 at 07:09 AM
"Spin cycle" is a fantastic term for that mental tail-chasing. That's exactly what it's like.
To go off on a bit of a tangent: There was one particular thing I experienced during my depression, and it's just occurred to me to wonder if anybody else here has experienced it. Specifically, it was the sense of having a kind of mental "tether". I found that no matter how deep that whirlpool sucked me down, no matter how convinced I became that everyone I knew would be better off without me or that I would never amount to anything, there was this... whatever it was, in the back of my head, that acted like a safety harness. "You don't want to die," it would tell me. "You do belong here. You are loved, even if you don't believe it right now. This won't be fixed in the morning, but it'll feel better, so just hang on."
And it worked. I don't know what it was, but it felt like there was one tiny part of me that was still just sane enough in the midst of the mental clusterbomb of agony to keep me safe. It was steady, and it was reliable - enough so that I knew it was time to go to the doctor when my suicidal thoughts started to become more frequent, and I felt the tether starting ever so slightly to fray.
My depression is/was relatively mild and manageable, and I think my suicidal ideation was probably a good deal less severe than a lot of people's, but I still wonder what would have happened if I didn't have that tether. I'm really curious as to whether anyone else has experienced something similar.
Posted by: Lyssiechan | Jul 14, 2011 at 07:29 AM
Mary Kaye, you're in my thoughts. Having a kid with strep is bad enough without the meds issue you've got. With the LARGE disclaimer that I'm not a doctor, I have read and been told that diarrhea and fever can interfere with the absorption of many medications. I'll be sending good thoughts.
Posted by: Karen | Jul 14, 2011 at 08:35 AM
"Spin cycle" is a fantastic term for that mental tail-chasing. That's exactly what it's like.
Yep. And often ended, in my experience, in thoughts of suicide - not because I wanted to die, but because I was just so tired of going round and round and so badly wanted to stop feeling like that. But at the same time, I couldn't feel anything positive, so I couldn't really believe I'd stop feeling like that. 'You could always die' was pretty much where the cycle always ended up as the only solution to the problem.
Which brings me to some other myths:
- You're not suicidal if you're not actually planning to kill yourself
When a doctor asks if someone is 'feeling suicidal', they don't necessarily mean 'Are you in the process of arranging your own death?' There's a spectrum between 'not suicidal at all' and 'a day away from death'. Many depression sufferers are haunted with what are known as 'suicidal ideations': thoughts of death or wishes to die that might, but do not necessarily, turn into an active plan.
It's very common, for instance, for someone depressed to think such thoughts as: 'I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up tomorrow,' 'I can't think of a solution to this except just dying,' and 'Everyone would be better off without me.' These are suicidal thoughts even if they don't go any further than thinking, and are a sign that someone's seriously sick.
- People who talk about suicide never actually kill themselves; they're just being manipulative.
There may be people who use threats of suicide to manipulate others, but if someone depressed is telling you that they feel suicidal, they are almost certainly not trying to manipulate you. If they're depressed enough to be feeling suicidal, in fact, they're probably too punch-drunk to make the kind of clear plans than manipulating somebody involves. A person revealing suicidal thoughts is trying to express how bad they feel and asking for help - sometimes clearly, sometimes confusedly, but asking for help nonetheless. And if they're thinking suicidal thoughts, there's a non-negligible risk they may later make a suicide attempt. The myth that talking about and attempting suicide don't go together is just that: a myth.
- People who survive a suicide attempt are always glad.
Some people may be. Others may wake up filled with despair that they're still alive. The fact is, many people who commit suicide have already made several previous attempts. The fact that someone has attempted suicide is not reason to assume they'll never try again; in fact, common sense as well as statistics suggest that if someone feels bad enough to try and kill themselves they're more likely to try again if they survive the first attempt than someone who feels perfectly all right.
(As a side-note, psychologists recommend avoiding the phrases 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' when talking about suicide attempts. The reason is that someone attempting suicide is usually filled with despair and shame, and the idea of a survived attempt being 'unsuccessful' just reinforces the belief that they had better make absolutely sure they die so they don't wake up hearing that they 'failed' to even kill themselves properly. 'Completed suicide attempt' is the suggested alternative to 'successful'.)
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 09:04 AM
I have had several friends that have dealt with depression. Most of them are better now.
I'm concerned that one of my friends has undiagnosed depression. He has bounced from temp job to temp job in the last few years and is currently unemployed and living with his parents (who he does not get along with) at 35 year olds and he's not making much effort to find another job, despite the fact that he is miserable in his current situation. He's also very, very sensitive to any type of criticism even the most gentle constructive criticism. He usually responds to criticism by making passive-aggressive status updates on facebook.
Also he has a rather creepy and annoying tendency to be a "Nice Guy." The more we've discussed "Nice Guys" here, the more I see him doing it to whatever woman in our social circle he's currently singled out.
I don't really know what I can do for him, but I'm concerned for him. I also hid him from my facebook feed, because I couldn't take any more of the passive aggressive comments aimed at whatever random person has upset him. Maybe not the best idea.
Anyway any advice on how I could help him out would be appreciated.
Posted by: Jason | Jul 14, 2011 at 09:26 AM
On suicide:
Individuals who are about to commit suicide may actually be happier than usual, because they've finally found a way out. No all suicidal individuals will take steps to kill themselves - a recurring fantasy of mine when I was really depressed was a sequence of heroic events that eventually lead to my death, but I convinced myself I enjoyed life too much to even try (I didn't at the time, but it's easy to lie to yourself if you try hard enough). And no, many will not tell you about these things, because they're either ashamed (like me; I always thought they were selfish, because I was trying to put all of the attention on me) or because they don't want you to step in and stop them, among other reasons.
Posted by: Josh (Enigma32) | Jul 14, 2011 at 09:44 AM
@Jason - have you raised the possibility of depression with him? You might try addressing some very specific things he's said about his own feelings - steer clear of the self-destructive/antisocial behaviour and focus on the stuff that's hardest to hear as criticism - and tell him that it reminds you of other people you know who've suffered from depression.
It's also sometimes suggested that you keep in mind a list of notable people who've suffered from it, picking out people your friend admires* to emphasise how common it is.
If you can keep it specific, focused on things he's said himself and on concrete examples, that's probably the best.
The other thing to remember, though, is that depression can be a whirlpool. There's a huge temptation to 'fix' someone who's depressed, but if they aren't prepared to accept that they're depressed and work hard to get better, no outside help will stick. It's a good idea to try to help him, but if he won't accept it, he won't and you can't make him, however frustrating that may be.
*You can almost certainly find some here:
List_of_people_with_major_depressive_disorder
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 09:44 AM
Oops, bad link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_major_depressive_disorder
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 09:45 AM
Pthalo, I can empathize; in my case, the abusive parent married the abusive psychologist, and it took me five years to get out.
On the other hand, there may well be a medication that'd work for me; I wasn't subjected to nearly as many, so I really don't know anything except that the ones they tried on me didn't do anything but have side effects.
I dunno. I know I need something, because my depression is about to cost me my job -- would've already, if not for the fact that I've worked here for almost a decade and my boss thinks highly of me, or once did at any rate. He's cut me more slack than I'd have imagined anyone would, but it's starting to imperil the business, and that can't go on.
But I haven't yet mustered the courage to take my broken leg to the doctor, because it was a doctor who broke my fucking leg.
(Literata: I've used the phrase 'wound around the axle' for years myself to describe it; the connotation of energetic futility fits better than anything else I've found.)
Posted by: Aaron | Jul 14, 2011 at 09:47 AM
The problem with being subject to mild depression all my adult life is that I don't know what 'normal' is. I'd always assumed everyone felt like I do, and wonder why I am the only screw-up who can't seem to get it together, stick to a project, keep a clean house, or just manage adult life capably. Everyone else seemed to manage fine.
Of course, that is an illusion--when I got to know other people, I learned that everyone has tough times and situations now and then. They just don't show it in public. However, they manage to accomplish things that elude me. I can't stick to things. I'll start out with good intentions, then after a week or two weeks or a month, I start letting things slide, then the to-do list accumulates until it's overwhelming and I can't deal with it so I just chuck it.
I've been told by my spouse that I don't seem to know how to be happy, that I take no joy in life, and I think he's right. I had at least one severe depressive episode in the past, and I'd been congratulating myself on getting over it... yet I find myself doing nothing for hours on end when I know I need to do stuff, because I can't bring myself to do anything. I'm always tired, yet I stay up late at night because I can't bring myself to go to bed without trying to find something to entertain me, to make the day not a total waste of lifespan. So of course I'm tireder the next day and less inclined to do anything worthwhile. It's a vicious circle, and I'm sick of it.
Yet even now, since I don't know what 'normal' is, there's those nagging, jeering doubts that tell me "you just need to exercise more / lose weight / sleep better and you'll be fine, it's just sleep deprivation that's making you this way." Food is comforting, but I need to lose weight, so I hate myself whenever I eat more than a little, I hate myself for staying up late and sabotaging my chances to recover from sleep deprivation, I hate myself for being "too tired" to exercise. I'm a failure at really basic stuff, like walk over to the frickin' exercise bike and peddle it for a while. I just can't bring myself to do it. I can't bring myself to set an alarm for a reasonable bedtime and just go there.
Am I depressed, or am I just a loser? Or will 'loser' turn out to be a pejorative for people who were undiagnosed depressives?
Posted by: Dragoness Eclectic | Jul 14, 2011 at 09:54 AM
Dragoness, to the extent that Internet diagnosis by non-medical people has any meaning at all--you're depressed. The symptoms you are describing are pretty much spot-on for depression, and are familiar to a *lot* of people here. This is not a moral failing, this is an illness.
The good thing about this is that it's frequently treatable, and treatment could improve your life hugely.
I would strongly recommend that you see a psychologist or psychiatrist if you can possibly afford to do so, and look into resources for free counseling if you are broke. This is more important than pushing yourself to exercise or sleep, because you've *tried* that and it is not working. Rather than beating yourself up about a non-working solution, change the game plan. It sounds like you may be able to enlist your spouse to help, and that could be very good--you may need support in making and keeping appointments at first.
I have been *exactly* where you are now. It does not mean you are a loser, it means you are ill and need to get better.
Posted by: MaryKaye | Jul 14, 2011 at 10:07 AM
@wordweaverlynn: You missed a common misconception about depression: "Good Christians don't get depressed." I've run into this attitude in a number of settings and heard it from people (including doctors) who should have known better.
I was away for part of this discussion but I am going to start adding some of the excellent suggestions for additions into the 101 factsheet. If you would like a longer answer/response we can later add it.
Posted by: Mmy | Jul 14, 2011 at 10:20 AM
Dragoness , I'm with MaryKaye. I'm not a doctor, but you sound very much like you're depressed. (The 'tired but can't face going to bed' thing, for instance, was one of my issues when I had PND. The real reason I stayed up, I think, was that when I was in bed I was alone with my thoughts and feelings, and that was very painful.)
You're not a loser. When you're depressed, it is hard to do things. I'm not surprised it's hard to exercise: when I was under it, it took all the energy in the world to walk across the house and make my son lunch, never mind work out. (Also, exercise can help with depression, and depression can function like a living parasite that works hard to discourage you from doing anything that might weaken it.) Don't give yourself a hard time. If you want to motivate yourself to exercise, the best method I used was to say to myself, 'I only have to do five minutes.' That wasn't too frightening a block of time, and once I'd got past five minutes, I could carry on if I chose. But that's just me.
See a doctor. You aren't going to believe me when I say this because you've got a monster on your back that eats good thoughts, but this is not your fault, you're not a failure, and your life doesn't have to be like this.
Hang in there. If you need to talk to someone, my e-mail's kitwhitfield at hotmail dot com.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 10:21 AM
@MaryKaye: I post this in the hopes that it will be a heads-up for other people on antidepressants. I don't know what's to be done about it, but even knowing that it might happen could be helpful.
Good point. I have added a "heads up" to the worksheet.
Posted by: Mmy | Jul 14, 2011 at 10:27 AM
DragonessEclectic, about this: "I'd always assumed everyone felt like I do, and wonder why I am the only screw-up who can't seem to get it together, stick to a project, keep a clean house, or just manage adult life capably. Everyone else seemed to manage fine... I can't stick to things. I'll start out with good intentions, then after a week or two weeks or a month, I start letting things slide, then the to-do list accumulates until it's overwhelming and I can't deal with it so I just chuck it."
I'm wondering if you have ADHD as well as depression. ADHD in women manifests exactly like what you're describing in the section of your post that I quoted.
Posted by: kisekileia | Jul 14, 2011 at 10:38 AM
The 'tired but can't face going to bed' thing, for instance, was one of my issues when I had PND.
Caveat: have not read most of this thread yet.
The thing about going to bed is, all that does is bring the next day on top of you when it all starts all over again. Putting off going to bed is putting space between me and "another day, another dolor."
Posted by: Amaryllis | Jul 14, 2011 at 10:51 AM
I know I've mentioned that I'm afraid to try anti-depressants again. I've been on Paxil and Lexapro, and when they worked they worked fairly well. However, the side-effects to both were miserable. I was on a very high dose of Paxil when I took that, and if I ever missed a few days (three on the outside) the withdrawal symptoms were horrific. Electric shocks, the world spun, suicidal thoughts, paranoia and anxiety. Lexapro worked much better, but there were still side effects. I partially blame the loss of my very good memory on that.
I can relate to the fear of going to bed. I was in Japan during the massive quake in March. The area I was in was relatively unaffected, luckily, but getting news was confusing and frightening. The reports were contradictory from all sources, and the divide between them from the Japanese and American sources was crazy. A friend of mine, when I asked exactly how far away we were from the Tohaku reactor, said 'not far enough.' I felt like I was waiting for the end of the world and I had to stay for it.
Going to bed at a reasonable time when you have to wake up to more of that just... doesn't seem reasonable.
Posted by: Asha | Jul 14, 2011 at 11:15 AM
The idea that you might have something to say and then be unable to say it because of antidepressants could be pretty devastating.
Being depressed makes it pretty hard to say anything at all. For me, anyway. Hard to get up, hard to think of words, hard to do anything that requires energy.
As well, the act of keeping a lid on the painful part (in order to "act normal", to "put on a brave face", to "pretend like I wasn't just staring at the wall for an hour because I couldn't move") means that all the other stuff - non-depressed stuff - is also under that lid. Repression doesn't discriminate.
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 11:34 AM
Although of course I disagree that depression is *good* or *necessary* for creativity, I do propose that some of the traits that set a person up for being creative are also the same traits that are associated with predisposition towards depression. Things like being hyper-sensitive, being introverted, being a bit deviant from the norm, or various different ways that the brain is wired. None of these traits are good or bad, per se, and none of them cause depression. But it seems to me, in my experience and with others, that every different trait has potentially helpful and problematic aspects, depending on the circumstances and the task at hand.
I would love to not be a person who struggles with depression. But I'm not. And a lot of the things that I value about my personality seem to be related to the factors that make me more vulnerable to being depressed. I wouldn't give those up ... Aside from a little dose of self-loathing, I actually think I'm pretty okay. I'd love not to have (hereditarily) bad knees, but that would mean having a different mother and grandmother - and not having, oh, good skin. In any case, it is what it is and you can only work with what you've got.
I think of drugs as a knee-brace for my brain. Sometimes my knee gets bad - because of hiking or for no discernable reason - and at those times I ought to put my knee-brace on to help me walk around and prevent doing further injuries to myself. At the risk of torturing this metaphor, I also think of my therapist as the physio for my mind. He/she helps me stretch it out and strengthen it so I can do the things I want to do.
There is so much we don't know about brains, though, which means that at the moment finding a chemical that works as a good brain-brace is mostly trial-and-error. Hopefully this will change in the near future. (Fund biomedical science!) (Says the biomedical scientist.)
/wall o' text
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 11:35 AM
The problem with being subject to mild depression all my adult life is that I don't know what 'normal' is. I'd always assumed everyone felt like I do, and wonder why I am the only screw-up who can't seem to get it together, stick to a project, keep a clean house, or just manage adult life capably. Everyone else seemed to manage fine.
Dragoness, this was /exactly/ what I thought about myself. Often. Whenever I couldn't sufficiently bury myself in escapist entertainment or otherwise distract myself, in fact. Whenever somebody asked me if I was looking for jobs. Whenever I had any reason to think about the future in any capacity. It would usually trigger one of my "fits"; and if I was already in a fit triggered by something else, it would soon become all I could think about.
So yes, this sounds /very/ much like clinical depression. I'm going to second everything Kit Whitfield said, and also offer my address for talking: I'm alyssafew at gmail dot com.
Amaryllis: I experienced this too, to a degree; but it was also a relief when I could go to sleep, especially on a night of acute depression - if only because when I woke up, the pain was comfortably displaced into the realm of Not Now. As long as it was Not Now, and I wasn't suffering a black mood right that very instant, I could deal. I got very good at distracting myself from all but my lowest lows.
It also helped that I really, really like sleep. I am one of Nature's couch potatoes.
Posted by: Lyssiechan | Jul 14, 2011 at 11:39 AM
@MaryKaye, et al. Re: the Horizon thing-
That's an interesting way of describing it. I have a similar state, although I interpret it as more of a feeling of disconnection. Like, today is both the first and last day that has ever happened. I'm sitting astride a very thin peak, riding through time, and on either side (forward or backward) there is a narrow but infinitely deep chasm that seperates the moment in am sitting on from the past and from the future.
It's as scary and disconcerting as it sounds; more.
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 11:48 AM
MaryKaye - what you wrote on horizons seems like verbatim from one of my mom's experiences with depression. When she's not in a good place, everthing collapses in on the instant. She can't wait until morning for things to be better, it has to be now. Of course, that means she doesn't really sleep, so she can't solve the problem in the morning sometimes, so it just gets worse.
This sounds like the experience of a person very close to me. He gets anxiety tunnel vision. The image of him in this state is of a car trapped in a dead end of a labyrinth; he just keeps bashing and bashing into the dead end because he isn't able to stop, back up slowly, and turn the car around.
My experience, although the disconnection is common, is different. For me, it's like I completely lose all filtering abilities. My field of view doesn't constrict, I just cna't stop noticing things. Doors and doorknobs; lightswitches. It's so overwhelmingly exhausting to know that between me and the room I need to go to and the thing I need to do there are: getting up from chair, open door, open another door, open another door, thr a lightswitch to turn on, a drawer to open, another chair to pull up, another door to open (freezer), another drawer to open. Seriously, I had no idea until I got very depressed just how many, many things I am blissfully unaware in the normal run of things!
I think this and the tunnel vision are both based on a loss of perspective, just different manifestations. (Which maybe says some interesting things about how our various brains function when they are well.)
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:00 PM
I've been depressed since I was 14. I'll be 28 in November. So that's almost half my life.
I...really don't like talking details. Suffice it to say that it was ugly at times. Medication and therapy have helped.
It's good to know that there are others out there, even though it's hard for me to read this thread.
Posted by: sarah | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:03 PM
Julezyme, I agree with the "therapist as analogous to physiotherapist" comparison. It makes good sense when you use the physical analogy, and it even continues: the therapist may teach you exercises (whether stretches or meditation or calming techniques or CBT) that you can continue to do later on to help keep yourself healthy.
Also, just like physiotherapy can be painful and exhausting, psychotherapy sessions can take a ton of work, not all of it easy, and leave one as tired as after a long workout.
Posted by: Literata | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:09 PM
{{{sarah}}}
Posted by: Raj | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:12 PM
Thanks, Raj :)
Posted by: sarah | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:14 PM
Pthalo and Aaron, I am so so sorry that happened to you.
{{hugs}}
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:15 PM
I do propose that some of the traits that set a person up for being creative are also the same traits that are associated with predisposition towards depression.
Based on my own experience, I'm not sure I agree with this. I'm a professional novelist, so I think it's reasonable to call myself creative. And I have suffered from depression, but...
Well, I've lived through some extremely stressful experiences that I've seen cause depression in other people, and it never happened to me. I finally did come down with depression - but that was after a horrific childbirth, which is to say, a combination of untreated PTSD, sleep deprivation and a hormonal coshing. And while it was severe as long as it lasted, it receded very fast on the lowest dose of antidepressants.
Putting all that together, I'd say I was fairly resistant to depression. I'm inclined to suspect that creative people are likely to be more self-expressive or self-revelatory, and so just hide depression less than some others.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:19 PM
@Dragoness - it does sound like you're depressed. What you've described is incredibly common to a lot of people. You're not a "loser" and you're not a failure, you're in the same boat with a lot of people. You are doing the best you know how with the tools you have; the
goodgreat news is that there are better tools you can learn to use. I mentioned Cognative Behavioral Therapy (CBT) upthread, and I'll mention it here again because I really do think it would help you a lot, not just with feeling bad but also with finishing projects and keeping on top of things in generall. CBT is very good at identifing unhelpful thought patterns and distorted thinking and breaking those patterns. If you're not ready to find a therapist just yet, (and I understand the apprehension and reluctance) consider starting with this book. Medication helps, and therapy helps, but in my experience, medication+therapy has a synergistic effect. (like peanut butter & chocolate!) But if you're not ready to see a clinician or a therapist, reading that book is a starting point.@Asha - your experience with Paxil is the same as mine, and I was on a low dose. The withdrawl symptoms were simply too horrible for me to continue taking it, knowing that I was a three-day weekend of forgotten pills from being in that kind of misery.
@kisekileia - I don't think I'm bipolar, but I won't rule it out. I describe the antidepressant adjustment period as euphoria in part because before my diagnosis, I had experimented with Ecstacy, which functions in a similar manner to SSRI antidepressants. My "baseline experience" for the increased level of seratonin in the brain was the ludicriously-over-the-top, "ours goes to 11" experience of X; Prozac was similar in many ways but tremendously toned down.
Somewhere (my Google-fu fails me) was a study of suicide notes, examining them to identify common mental elements. One aspect was a distorted percpetion of time. (the "horizon" effect, or feeling trapped in the moment, focused only on the very short-term) I took issue with some of the article for it's one-size-fits-all, but other elements felt very spot on.
Posted by: Rodeobob | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:33 PM
@Dragoness and Lyssiechan
I hear you. If you'd have asked me ten, fifteen years ago if I was depressed or suffered from depression, I'd have said, No way! It's just that I knew that my "neutral set-point", if I were to draw a graph of my mood from -10 to +10, wasn't at 0, but was somewhere around -2. But that's not the same as being Depressed, I thought. That's just ... normal.
I read Prozac Nation when I was in my early 20s and was like, Oh. Holy Crap. Aside from the drug binges and the Bruce Springsteen, I could identify with a lot of it. Did that mean - I was depressed?
It felt like a cop-out. No, not a cop-out; it felt like claiming something that was more interesting and serious that what was actually "wrong" with me. Like faking. I mean, because there was nothing "really wrong" with me! Certainly not *that*! I'm fine! I'm just ... a negative two. But there's nothing, like, so interestingly wrong with me as depression, I thought.
Well, there wasthe fact that I considered that I had about two good months a year (September and October) and the rest were not okay for various reasons.
And there was the cutting the bottom of my feet thing, but that wasn't like real self-injury. And the body/eating/food thing, but clearly I wasn't anorectic because I was much too fat.
But there was this huge conflict about admitting the possibility that what was "wrong" with me might be something real; as opposed to the twin feelings that "I am just tainted" and "There's nothing wrong with me". This was only seven or eight years ago, but I guess there was still much less social awareness about depression even then. At least for me.
And now it's like, Oh, right! I have spent my entire life struggling with depression, partly for reasons of brain chemistry and compounded by pretty serious emotional abuse growing up. And, no, I did not call that spade a spade until my early twenties either.
It's like, giving those things their proper names robbed them of the power they had over me, which was the power to make me feel like feeling shitty was my fault, that I was just tainted and defective for no apparent reason. Like I was just pretending to be depressed out of some deeper level sickness, or wanting to deny that I was just a huge loser.
Wow. Writing that was ... really tough.
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:36 PM
Mazel tov, Julezyme.
When it comes to depression, I stand by the saying 'You're only as sick as your secrets.'
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:49 PM
I've struggled with depression since I was in elementary school. Most of the time I have adequate coping mechanisms and the depressive episodes are brief and not too severe, but after witnessing the murder of 3 friends a couple of years ago, I became both severely depressed and severely anxious. Antidepressants, oddly enough, helped the anxiety but made the depression worse. Eventually I was able to get off the meds as the depression eased off, but it was an unpleasant year.
Posted by: Lila | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:53 PM
@Jason - good news, and bad news. Bad first: you cannot help someone that does not want to be helped. Your friend has to be the one to initiate treatment, has to be the one to explore the possibility. You can bring it up, but then you have to let it go.
He has bounced from temp job to temp job in the last few years...very, very sensitive to any type of criticism ...usually responds to criticism by making passive-aggressive status updates... Also he has a rather creepy and annoying tendency to be a "Nice Guy."
I'm not sure how much good news I can give with that opening, but here it is: your friend may or may not be depressed, but at a guess, one underlying element that might be driving his depression (along with bouncing from job to job, being sensitive to criticism, and "Nice Guy"-ism) is a disproportionate sense of entitlement and a lack of self-awareness*.
I say all of this from my own, uncomfortably similar past. I was always better than the jobs I held; all my previous employers were dicks and jerks! I wasn't the problem, I knew better, and people who didn't know as much as I did had no business criticising me! And women? I did everything right, said the right things, paid for stuff, up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-b-a-start, and they still didn't do what I wanted!
(as you might guess, the conflict between what I believed about myself, and the feedback I got from the world around me just might have contributed to my depression. It wasn't that I couldn't hold a job, it was that I thought I was awesome and I couldn't hold a job, and reconciling those two caused problems)
I'm not sure how you can help your friend with this (assuming that's even what's going on) but if I've guessed right, at least now you have a lens to view his behavior through. Therapy can help him, but he has to want to change, want help not with his job or his women problems, but wanting to be better himself. And it doesn't sound like he's there yet.
*Not all depression has an underlying cause, but for some people depression is a symptom of unresolved issues and conflicts. Treating the depression is still absolutely necessary in the short term, but addressing those issues can help prevent future episodes.
Posted by: Rodeobob | Jul 14, 2011 at 12:55 PM
a disproportionate sense of entitlement and a lack of self-awareness
Ah yes, that one. The psychology books I've read refer to it as grandiosity. It's usually associated with bipolar upswings, narcissism and the like, but it's just as likely to come with depression. It creates an endless set of problems, because it leads to sufferers discarding practical plans, refusing to accept normal satisfactions, and alternately insisting that nothing is good enough for you and feeling terrible because you know you don't measure up to your exaggerated self-image.
With depression, I think it's related to what Adler called a secondary inferiority complex: you feel bad, so you bolster yourself by creating a fantasy image of yourself, and then you feel bad again when you compare who you are to who you imagine you should be.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:01 PM
{{lila}}
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:02 PM
Putting all that together, I'd say I was fairly resistant to depression. I'm inclined to suspect that creative people are likely to be more self-expressive or self-revelatory, and so just hide depression less than some others.
Well, it's based on anecdata, and one does tend to generalize from one's own experience. Certainly there are a vast number of factors that go hand-in-hand with creativity, as you demonstrate, and not all of them fall into the "melancholic" category!
But, I have noticed that a not insignificant fraction of my actor-type and academic-type friends - though not the majority - share a similar phenotype, part of which is a propensity towards depression that is usually fairly well masked. It often seems like these people are very self-expressive, since they are good at expressing things, but what strikes me is how much of that expression turns out to be a performance. These people all tend to keep their inner-inner lives extremely private (with the exception of quasi-anonymous blog communities), under a cloak of candor, which is not false exactly, but is a sort of mask or misdirection that they use to hides their real depressive tendencies.
The Big Secret (depression) must be kept!
Of course, I probably notice this more because it is similar to me. (Depressdar?)
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:12 PM
TW: suicide
Kit, I'm glad you mentioned things on the first page about suicide, and myths surrounding it. When I was living in OKC in 1985, there was this one really bad day, where I reached my limit with my cousin. I actually cried in front of him
(which I tried never to do, because that was showing my vulnerabilities), and I asked him why he treated me so terribly. He said he was bored, and he thought it might be fun to see if he could push me into a nervous breakdown. I stood up, left the room, walked over to my uncle's medicine cabinet, and took an overdose of everything I could find. And then I laid down to die, looking forward to the pain coming to an end.
I woke up 12 hours later. And felt utter despair. I had the worst stomachache and headache of my life, both of which lasted for three days. I was terrified I'd caused brain damage. No one noticed anything was wrong.
And yes, I felt like a terminal screwup because I couldn't even kill myself properly.
I'm so used to feeling bad fairly regularly that it's only when I start thinking about death, and/or my funeral, that I usually realize, "hey I think I'm having a depressive episode! that's why I feel so extra-shitty!"
Posted by: Laiima | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:20 PM
mmy, I've thought of another myth! "If you can get out of bed, you aren't depressed!" That one tripped me up for years, but really, how many people have a life where you can just stay in bed? because I didn't.
The past two years have been really dreadful. And some days, getting out of bed was *all* I could manage. I would stay in my pajamas all day until right before Spouse came home from work. I would have to think of some lie(s) to tell him what I did all day, because I couldn't tell him what I really did: sit on the sofa, with or without watching TV, and cry all day.
I took him with me to one of my appointments with my doctor. He mentioned to her something about how my eyes were always red, and maybe that was a sign that I had asthma or allergies. When my doctor left the room, I told him my eyes were always red because I was crying all the time.
Posted by: Laiima | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:26 PM
{{{{lila}}}}
... hell, {{{{everyone}}}}
@Julezyme: Ugh, I had a similar experience of denial for a while. It took me years of feeling bad and more than one incident of actually researching depression as a possible explanation, before I could really bring myself to actually do something about it. Intellectually, I knew that I was presenting all the symptoms and my lows were uncontrollable and that I had to at least consider the possibility that this persistent quacking might perhaps be indicative of the presence of a duck. Emotionally, it felt like failure, and not just that - it felt like, if I went to the doctor, I would have to admit that there was something wrong with me instead of just curling up in my bed and hoping the misery would go away if I managed not to look directly at it. I had been softening to the idea and recognizing its necessity and appropriateness for some time before I finally went, but even so the final push came when I started an alarmingly, unignorably steep descent into Not-Safe Brain Territory.
Even then, I still hesitated to take my first pill. Even knowing it would very possibly save my life. Even knowing I wanted to get better, needed to get better, and had in fact asked for the medication so I would get better. Because I was scared of it messing with my brain.
It wasn't much hesitation, and it ultimately worked out quite nicely for me, but I did hesitate.
Posted by: Lyssiechan | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:31 PM
I would have to think of some lie(s) to tell him what I did all day, because I couldn't tell him what I really did: sit on the sofa, with or without watching TV, and cry all day.
I think my partner and I have both had days where we did this, minus the TV on my part and the crying on his.
PS I really enjoy reading your blog. {{{}}}
Actually, here is a whole big bundle of hugs for everyone on here, while I get all teary-eyed. :}
{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:32 PM
Lyssiechan: I'm really curious as to whether anyone else has experienced something similar.
Yeah, though I have no diagnosis, no formal looking into this. But I do know the feeling of one tenacious part holding on when the rest has let go.
For me, it was personified as a roleplaying character, who I would 'hear' talking me through it, one hour, one minute, one breath at a time. I know that inertia too well, and that tether, that one part, was the little whisper of "come on, let's take the next step. One more and then we rest." He was good as his word, too, and would let me rest when I needed it, and knew how far he could push me.
And I'm sorry, but I should step out of this thread for now, because I won't be able to meet my deadline if I keep thinking about this, but I'll come back and read it later.
Posted by: Sixwing | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:32 PM
it felt like, if I went to the doctor, I would have to admit that there was something wrong with me instead of just curling up in my bed and hoping the misery would go away if I managed not to look directly at it.
oh yeah.
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:39 PM
Excellent post. As a long-time person with depression, the worst thing before being diagnosed was the sense that it's your fault that everything sucks because you just don't want to enjoy life. My first step to coping with depression was to say fuck you to that attitude and anyone who expressed it.
One thing that I was able to really grasp much later is how lots of mental and emotional diseases really mess with your understanding of cause and effect in a way that "healthy" people rarely grasp. The standard way emotions work is that we have a stimulus followed by an emotional response. But when I'm in a depressed spell (which I still get even with meds), the first reaction is to look for what might have caused it. It's not that I think that depression has a specific cause, but sadness and anxiety that are caused have the same emotional feel as depression. So I seek out some cause, which has the "bonus" of causing me to emphasize anything going wrong in my life, and that's a viscous cycle if ever there was one.
Lastly creativity and depression. Really creativity is more hampered by depression than helped I've found. Concentration goes down, the ability to complete projects, and worst the internal doubts saying that you suck and your work sucks.
Van Gough is the poster boy for the romantic view of the tortured, mentally-ill artist, but he clearly was frustrated by his painful life and erratic behavior. True his manic phase might have helped him to paint quickly but it also was responsible for him cutting off his ear and being unable to concentrate in many cases.
Posted by: histrogeek | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:40 PM
@Laiima: mmy, I've thought of another myth! "If you can get out of bed, you aren't depressed!" That one tripped me up for years, but really, how many people have a life where you can just stay in bed? because I didn't.
Oh, good one.
It will take a while (I am still working on making the site web accessible and building an archive) but I am going to add ALL the great suggestions to the fact sheet.
Posted by: Mmy | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:50 PM
@Sixwing: For me, it was personified as a roleplaying character, who I would 'hear' talking me through it
Oh, man! That brings back memories. I didn't usually experience my tether as something conscious or animate, but there was a period when I was working at Disney World where when I got too overwhelmed, the only thing that ultimately helped was imagining what Miles Edgeworth would say to me if he saw me in that state. (Which was usually along the lines of "yes, it hurts, but you have a job to do right now, so pull yourself together and you can cry later". Not unsympathetic, but a marked refusal to coddle which, somehow, helped.) It didn't last long, I only "talked" to him twice on the job (and once when I was anxious about flying to Florida for the job), but it was a real relief both times.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who's had that "tether" experience, and that yours manifested in such a friendly way. :)
Also, {{{{{{{{{{{{Laiima}}}}}}}}}}}}}.
Posted by: Lyssiechan | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:50 PM
"It's like, giving those things their proper names robbed them of the power they had over me, which was the power to make me feel like feeling shitty was my fault, that I was just tainted and defective for no apparent reason."
Julenzyme, thank you for posting this. It perfectly summarizes why I think diagnosis is so important for so many mental health and developmental issues.
Posted by: kisekileia | Jul 14, 2011 at 01:55 PM
it felt like, if I went to the doctor, I would have to admit that there was something wrong with me instead of just curling up in my bed and hoping the misery would go away if I managed not to look directly at it
I tried that. The end result was that I pretty much lost the ability to think and feel at all.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 02:09 PM
Hi there, long time reader, first time poster- mainly because I've been playing catch-up with the LB/TF posts and all the comment pages there for several years. (I recently caught up and was very disappointed about the changes. Also, it feels very very weird that I "know" some of you from your writings here and for you I am at this point a raw new commenter.)
Anyhow, about depression I have been on all sides of this issue: my mother has been suffering from depression (and some other disorders, most visibly a tendency to histrionics) most of her life. I inherited the depression- whether straight through genetics or the instable environment I grew up in, is open to debate. And lastly, I have become a GP (though still a rather junior one) and I've seen a lot of depression in my patients. Now, these are a sort of special selection, mostly men, and I've seen several of them using alcohol to "deal" with their problem.
In one of the hospitals I worked at there was a sign that said "I tried to drown my sorrows in alcohol, but the beasts can swim!" I always liked that one, because it's something I can relate to. Also, I have been using the broken leg metaphor in my daily practice. Not everybody picks it up immediately, but then I know it is rather overwhelming when the doc you talk to about your sleep problems asks you whether you have ever considered depression as a possible cause (after some more talking, of course! Not everyone who can't sleep is depressed).
But often sleep disturbances are the first thing that make people come in and talk. Others have a variety of bodily symptoms that somehow don't seem to mesh no matter how I turn them until I ask a few of the depression questions.
I can't talk about the medication very well, because the names don't quite match across the language barrier (Germany). The substance names should be the same or very similar, so if you've got any questions that the very well informed people here can't answer, I'll give it a shot. With the general caution that this is the internet and neither do I know your detailed circumstances nor do you know whether I'm just pulling this out of empty air (or any orifice of your choice).
Posted by: Stella parva | Jul 14, 2011 at 02:11 PM
Thanks, Julezyme.
I haven't just been hesitating; I've been scared green, utterly terrified, of the idea of going on meds again, because while my injuries from them weren't as severe or as lasting as Pthalo's, they were sure as shit bad enough to leave a mark. (Especially since the prescription ended abruptly at the same time I was thrown out of the house. 'Taper'? Isn't that a kind of candle?)
On the other hand, when I said earlier that I expected to lose my job? What I meant by that was that I figured I'd have a termination notice in my hand by noon. Instead I've got a month to get myself sorted out, and if I fail then the consequence is not getting fired but rather getting cut to part-time at 20 hours a week -- which, honestly, the way I've been going for the past few months, is only about a four-hour-a-week cut.
Considering that I've cost this company, which has four full-time employees counting me, something between ten and twenty grand since the first of the year, I'm pretty damn astonished that my boss is willing to stand by me like this, or at least not to cut my ass loose so I'll quit costing him money. (Hell, he made the next thing to an apology for not being able to offer more support, which kinda made me want to shoot myself in the face for a minute, you know?)
Considering how much of my flagging self-worth I've got bound up in this job and the way it demonstrates I am in fact the capable and competent adult I grew up hearing I'd never learn how to be -- well, I'd rather deal with the fucking meds than let everybody, myself included, down even further, you know? Even leaving aside the harm to others, I can't think of a better way to lose my remaining self-respect.
Posted by: Aaron | Jul 14, 2011 at 02:12 PM
As someone who's still working out the extent of depression in his life, I think I've had rather a lot of this. Having a really intensely depressed episode this year (after breaking my foot and thus spending several weeks with mobility problems, minimal [and painful] socialisation, low work productivity, etc) led to me identifying feelings/ideas that I hadn't really considered to be related to 'depression' before - it only happened because they were blown up to such a magnitude that their irrationality was obvious even to me. Now I'm trying to work out how far back some of those things reach in a milder way.
One thing I can say for certain is that while I may have been slightly depressed during my most artistically productive period (late teens/early 20s), that imploded completely after my 'tether' was cut. ('Tether' referring to a person [more accurately, an idea of a person] that helped hold me up when I was feeling worst, as others have described.) If I were to use my life experience as the only data*, I could draw a correlation between creative work and mild depression tempered with positive influences, but straight-out depression locks my creativity away in a vault and makes my writing hands go numb.
For that matter, if we go back to my earlier teen years, I had far, far greater capacity to stick with a single creative project (even if I was comparatively rubbish at it - notably, I wasn't hung up on whether it was 'good enough'). Over the same time experience has helped build my creative skills, I can practically chart the descent of my willingness to apply those skills. I hadn't noticed those trends until I wrote this.
*Note from professional quantitative analyst: single data points do not make for useful conclusions. We need 30. *sage nod*
Posted by: Will Wildman | Jul 14, 2011 at 02:15 PM
I didn't even know that he could get more awesome, but this seems curiously right. Oh, but how I do love Edgeworth.
Posted by: Will Wildman | Jul 14, 2011 at 02:22 PM
Aaron, I hope you can allow yourself to believe that you *deserve* the support your boss is giving you! I have been there; someone in authority being nice to me, offering support and kindness, when I was flailing and failing (advisor) actually seemed to make me feel more flayed emotionally than if they'd been harsh and chastised me (like I was doing to myself).
My partner has been through similar rough patches (oh, grad school) too. Recently a freelancer who was doing a piece of work for his company, but had kind of gone off the radar about it, "came out" about struggling with a depressive episode. He was really scared and reluctant to talk about it for all the same reasons we had been - looking crazy, weak, unprofessional, etc. But my partner had the opportunity to do him a mitzvah by being supportive, and it came out that his boss had been through similar phased as well.
I don't know you or the circumstances, but I am very happy for you. You are worth supporting!
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 02:48 PM
Edit: emotionally flayed but ultimately in a good way.
Posted by: Julezyme | Jul 14, 2011 at 02:52 PM
@Aaron
One of the most useful things I've learned about my condition to date is that when I'm in a depressive episode, I am not necessarily percieving the world around me accurately. My thoughts and reactions and anticipated outcomes may be heavily distorted, and it's important to compensate for those distortions one way or another. (medication is one way; getting an external opinion on matters is another, and I'm sure there are more approaches)
Your subjective perceptions have you being fired and cast out and blamed and shamed, seen as a liability to the company and a failure overall. The objective reality is that you're not getting fired today, you're not getting fired in a month, and your boss likes you as an employee, believes in your ability, and wants to help and support you however he can.
That's some pretty heavy distortion you're experiencing. I hope you can recognize that what you are feeling, and the scenarios you are creating may not be entirely accurate to reality. (they likey are emotionally satisfying in relieving your cognative dissonance, which is why they happen at all)
Included in the category of "things that may be distorted" may be your feelings about medication. You thought you were going to be fired, right? And instead, your boss said "I want to help, and I'm sorry I can't do more". You're worried about how you'll react to meds, right? I'm not discounting your past experiences here, I'm just suggesting that the magnitude of your reaction might be a result of a distorted perception. Yes, there will be side-effects and an adjustment period, but could it be possible that the degree of those things might be distorted in the present mindset?
Posted by: Rodeobob | Jul 14, 2011 at 03:00 PM
Hello and welcome, Stella parva!
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Jul 14, 2011 at 03:02 PM