my depression experience essay

• Depression: Major Depression & Unipolar Varieties

A Personal Story of Living through Depression

John Folk-Williams has lived with major depressive disorder since boyhood and finally achieved full recovery just a few years ago. As a survivor of ...Read More

A recovery story is a messy thing. It has dozens of beginnings and no final ending. Most of the conflict and drama is internal, and there’s a lot more inaction than action. The lead character hides in the shadows much of the time, so you can’t even see what’s going on.

I joined up with depression around the age of 8. There are snapshots of me in the shabby brown jacket I liked to wear. My mom took beautiful photographs, and there are lots of me in moody shadows, looking as down as could be.

She had her own depression to worry about. My typical memory of her from that time brings back a couch-bound, often napping, mother. She explained her sleep problem as a condition she called knockophasia – a term I’ve never been able to find in any dictionary. A few minutes after lying down, snap! Sound asleep. No one mentioned strange emotional problems or mental illness in those days. My parents occasionally talked about someone having a nervous breakdown as if they had died. There was no hint of a need to get help for my mother, much less for me. No one worried about me since I was a star in school, self-contained and impressive to teachers for being so mature, so adult.

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Migraine headaches started then, and increasingly intense anxiety about school. I missed many days, felt shame as if I were faking, and obsessed over every one of my failings. I spent long hours alone in my room.

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Through my teenage years, depression went underground. Feelings were dangerous. There were too many angry and violent ones shaking the house for me to add to them. So I kept emotion under wraps, even more so than in childhood. Nothing phased me outside the house and even at home I showed almost no sign of reaction to anything, even while churning with fear and anguish.

It was in my 20s that I broke open, and streams of depression, fear, panic, obsessive love and anger flowed out. In response to a panic attack that lasted for a week, I saw a psychiatrist. In one marathon session of 3 hours he helped me put the panic together with frightening episodes from my family life. I was cured on the spot but never went back to him. It was too soon to do any more.

It took another crisis a few years later to get me back to a psychiatrist and my first experience with medication – Elavil. But I had no idea what it was. I took something in the morning to get me going and something at night to help me sleep. I took it short term, got through the crisis but continued in therapy. From there I was steadily seeing psychiatrists in various cities for the next 8 years. But no one mentioned depression.

I first saw the word applied to my condition in a letter one psychiatrist wrote to the draft board during the Vietnam era. But I wasn’t treated for that problem. Therapy in those days was still in the Freudian tradition, and it was all about family life and conflict. Depression was a springboard for going deeper. Digging up the past to understand present problems was a tremendous help, and it changed me in many ways. But depression was still there in various forms, reappearing regularly for the next couple of decades. There were wonderfully happy and successful times as well, but I had these ups and downs through marriage, children and a couple of careers.

Gradually, depression became so disruptive that my wife couldn’t take it anymore and demanded I get help. So I finally did. This was the 1990s. Prozac had arrived, and I started a tour of medication over the next dozen years that didn’t do much at all. Nor did therapy, though two psychiatrists helped me to understand the more destructive patterns in my way of living.

Depression pushed into every corner of my existence, and both work and family life became more and more difficult. The medications only seemed to deaden my feelings and make me feel detached from everyone and immune to every pressure. It was like having pain signals turned off. There was no longer any sign coming from my body or brain that something might be wrong. I felt “fine” but relationships and work still went to hell.

The strange thing was that after all these years of living with it, I didn’t know very much about depression. I thought it was entirely a problem of depressed mood and loss of the energy and motivation. As things got worse, I finally started to read about it in great depth.

I was amazed to learn the full scope of depression and how pervasive it could be throughout the mind and body. I finally had a coherent, comprehensive picture of what depression was.

That was a big step because I could at last imagine the possibility of getting better. I could see that I wasn’t worthless by nature, that there were reasons my mind had trouble focusing and that the frequent slowdown in my speech and thinking was also rooted in this illness. Perhaps the right treatment could bring about fundamental changes after all.

There were still traps ahead, though. I became obsessed with the idea of depression as a brain disease. I studied all the forms of depression, the neurobiology and endless research studies. That was a good thing to do, but after awhile I was looking more at “Depression” than the details of my own version of the illness.

I wondered how many diagnostic categories I fitted into. For sure I had one or more of the anxiety disorders. Perhaps I fit into bipolar II instead of major depressive disorder. What about dissociation? I read the research study findings as if they were announcing my fate.

It was comforting to know I had a “real” disease. Not only could I answer any naysayers about the reality of depression. I also had a weapon to fight my internalized stigma, the lingering doubt that anything was wrong with me. I used to think that maybe I really was using the illness as a way to avoid life and cover up my own weakness. Here was proof that depression wasn’t all in my imagination but in my brain chemistry.

Neurobiology was far beyond my control. I couldn’t recover by myself. Doctors had to cure me through medication or other treatments, like ECT. However, that meant my hopes were pinned on them, not on my own role in getting better.

When the treatments failed to work, I got desperate that there would never be an end to depression. Hope in the future fell apart. My life would continue to run down. Could it even lead to suicide, as it had for friends of mine?

Fortunately, as I learned more, I listened to the experts who had a much broader view of the causes of the illness. Peter Kramer’s overview of research in Against Depression made it clear to me that contributors to the illness could include genetic inheritance, family history, traumatic events and stress as well as the misfiring of multiple body systems. No one could point to a single cause or boil it down to a few neurotransmitters.

So I went back to basics and looked much more closely at the particular symptoms I faced. I tracked the details in everyday living and saw that I needed to take the lead in recovery. Medication – when it had any effect at all – played a modest role in taking the edge off the worst symptoms. That bit of relief gave me the energy and presence of mind to work on the emotional and relationship impacts, to try to straighten out the parts of my life I had some control over.

I was determined to stop the waste of life in depression. I got back into psychotherapy and tried many types of self-help as well. Many didn’t work at all, but something inside pushed me to keep trying, despite setbacks.

One of the most important efforts was writing about my experience with depression. Writing is one way I discover things, but a deep fear had blocked me from doing it for years. I can see now that the real reason I got stuck was that I had been trying to write about everything but depression. When I could finally take that on directly, writing came naturally.

Blogging turned out to be the right medium. It was manageable even when I was down. The online community of people who lived with depression gave me a form of support that I had never had before. Another decisive step was getting out of high-stress work that I had been less and less able to do effectively. Taking that constant burden away restored a deep sense of vitality.

After all this, recovery finally started to happen. It took me by surprise, and for a long time I didn’t trust that it would last. But something had changed deep down. I believed in myself again, and the inner conviction of worthlessness disappeared.

I had found a deeply satisfying purpose in writing, as well as the energy and humor to do what I wanted to do. I regained the awareness and emotional presence to be a part of my family again, instead of the hidden husband and dad.

As anyone dealing with life-long depression will tell you, setbacks happen. There’s no simple happy ending. But if you’re lucky, an inner shift occurs, and the new normal is a decent life rather than depression. Self-awareness is key to good mental health. Take our online depression quiz today.

• Major And Unipolar Depression
• Related Conditions Part I
• Historical Understanding Part I
• Neurotransmitters
• When To Seek Help
• Suicidal Ideation
• Other Articles
• Classic Symptoms
• Neuroplasticity And Endocrinology
• Measuring Depression
• St. John's Wort
• Dual Diagnosis And Symptom Severity
• Understanding Mood Episodes
• Biopsychosocial Model
• Genetics And Imaging
• Questionnaires And Tests
• The Benefit Of Exercise
• How Depression Develops
• Negative Impacts Of Depression
• Diasthesis-Stress Model
• Modes Of Treatment Part I
• Omega-3 Fatty Acids
• DSM Criteria
• Psychodynamic Theories
• Behavioral Theories
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• Cognitive Theory ?EUR" Aaron Beck
• B-Vitamins And Traditional Chinese Medicine
• Symptoms Of Dysthymic Disorder
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• Depression & Cancer
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• Elusiveness Of Pleasure
• Depression In Women
• Symptoms & Causes
• A Treatable Illness
• Path To Healing
• ADHD, Psychotherapy & Medication
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• Setting Limits
• Dysthymic Disorder
• Elliot Smith & Vulnerability Music
• Tom Cruise Vs Brook Shields On Depression
• Symptoms Of Major Depression
• Does Male Post-Partum Depression Exist?
• National Depression Screening Day
• Older Adults
• Organizations
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• Protracted Unemployment
• Sensory Overload
• Students & College
• Free Anti-Depressant!
• Depression, Anxiety & Morality
• The Five Senses
• Long Term Effects Of Bullying
• Physical Symptoms Of Depression
• Psychotherapy, Medication Or Both?
• Unmasking Mental Illness
• Depression & Anxiety Part 2
• Wartime Experience
• The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Angry All The Time
• Eating Disorder Or Overreacting?
• Classify My Mental Disorder
• OCD, Depression
• I'm Going Crazy?
• Trying To Forget
• How To Overcome Depression Caused When Boyfriend Ditched Me?
• New Boyfriend Lying About Belongings That Are His Ex Girlfriend's
• How To Help My Delusional Son?
• Is Any Of This Real?
• I Have Everything I Ever Wanted. Why Am I So Miserable?
• How Can I Convince My Suicidal MD Husband To Be Evaluated?
• Sexual Abuse, What Should I Do Now?
• Bipolar Or Depressed Or Neither?
• Feel Like Something's Wrong
• Too Much Sorrow
• Really Desperate..Please Help
• Bipolar, Depression, Grief & Anxiety
• Is This A Flashback?
• Help Us With Our Son!
• No Clue What To Do. Help?
• Am I Going Crazy?
• Do I Suffer From Depression?
• Am I Commitment-Phobic?
• I Don't Care For Anything, I Feel As Though I'm Wasting My Life.
• Anxiety Has Taken Over My Life...
• How Do I Get My 24 Year Old Son To A Counselor
• Bipolar Teen
• I Have This Issue
• Am I Depressed?
• Fear Of Choking
• In Love With A Man Who Does Not Love Me
• I Think I Have A Mental Disorder?
• Please Help Me
• OCD Or Not OCD, That's The Question
• How Can I Move Past This- A Question For Staff
• Does Romance Lead To Aggression?
• Depressed, Anxious And Dead Inside...Please Help!
• Why Do I Feel Like Everyone Is Trying To Upset Me?
• My Husbands Roller Coaster Of Proper Hygiene: Is It Depression?
• I Feel Like A Complete Waste Of A Human Life
• Am I Always Going To Feel Like This?
• Is He Changed???
• Is There Any Hope For Me, Or Am I Destined To Be Damaged?
• Falling Apart
• Helping And Watching A Friend's Recurrent Depression?
• Insanely Jealous Husband
• Can Prescription Drug Use Lead To Delusional Beharior?
• Social Anxiety, Depression And More...
• Same Views On So Much, But Can't Get Along As A Couple
• Suicidal Thoughts
• Hypothyroid 23 Year Old Girl
• It's Me Or It's My Mother?
• Is He A Narcissist?
• Help For Aging Human Service Professionals?
• If There's Nothing New, There's Nothing Good.
• Please Respond, I Need Help
• Need To Ask Someone
• Is It Okay To Give Up?
• I'm Cheated By My Girlfriend..... I Just Want To Die.....
• How Can It Help?
• Everyone Says He Is Depressed, Is He? Or Does He Really Want A Divorce??
• Help! Please!
• I Think I Need Some Help
• I Feel So Lost.
• Scared And Lonely
• Please Help Me Out
• I Never Experience Happiness
• Mystery Symptoms
• I Think I'm Depressed
• Born To Lose, Or Nurtured To Lose?
• I Am An 18 Year Old Mom Diagnosed With Severe Depression And Anxiety
• Extremely Scared: I Felt Indifferent Toward An Obsession
• Suffering With Treatment-Resistant Depression
• My Fiance May Have A Sexual, Nude Photo Addiction
• Infections And The Brain
• My Girlfriend's Family Is Ruining Our Relationship
• I Need Help And Am At The End Of My Rope
• How Can I Cope With My Husband?s Depression And Its Sexual Consequences?
• What Is The Difference Between Mental Illness And Depression?
• Do I Need Help?
• What Is It?
• Why Am I Thinking Like This?
• Why Does My Mother Hoard Everything, Including Garbage?
• Right In The Middle Of A Nervous Breakdown; What's Wrong With Me?
• Huge Disapointment With My Husband
• I Don't Really Care About Anything. What Should I Do?
• Is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Curable?
• Is It Really A Problem?
• I Am Terrified Of Death.
• Detached: I Feel Guilty, But I Can't Help It.
• My Father, The Sociopath...
• I Feel Like A Question Mark
• Am I Not Normal!?
• Our 23 Year Old Son Refuses To Get Help For His Anxiety Attacks And Depression.
• What Is Wrong?
• Husband Abandoned Me
• D.I.D. Diagnosis, How Do I Accept This?
• I Don't Know Anymore. Please Help.
• Breaking Up With Bipolar
• Depression - Blacking Out
• My Boyfriend Saved Pictures Of His Ex-Girlfriend On His Computer.
• Restroom Phobia
• What Is Wrong With Me?
• Should I Seek Help?
• When To Leave Therapy?
• Help Me Please. What Is Going On With Me?
• I'm Afraid I'm Going Crazy
• I Don't Know What To Do
• Am I Wallowing In Depression?
• What Is Wrong With Me, Doc?
• Am I Suffering A Kind Of Psychological Problem?
• Attention Deficit And Depression
• Do I Have An Eating Disorder?
• Do You Think I Sound Depressed? I Don't Understand What Is Going On
• Is This Bi Polar?
• Depression Helps To Contribute To My Unemployment! - Paula
• Will I Ever Feel Normal?
• Cyclical Depression
• Frightening Thoughts - Fear Losing Control - Please Help!
• Anxious, Depressed, Confused, Angry....the Typical...
• Giving Up - Dad Of Three - Sep 15th 2008
• Dont Understand Me
• Exercising Violence In Dreams
• My Husband Wants To Leave Me
• Is There Help For A Person Who Has Always Been A 'little Depressed'
• Depression Treatment
• Please Help.
• Lovely, However... - Julie C. - Jul 14th 2008
• I Am Really Worried About My Mental Health (19yr Old Female)
• Do I Have Bipolar Dsorder?
• Is There Something Wrong With Me?
• Will I Ever?
• Worried About My Son
• Is There Help Out There? Lonely Mother Of Three
• Major Depressive Disorder Severe With Psychotic Features
• OCD- No Feeling
• Help!!!: Laci
• Is The Memory Of My Father Dooming My Relationship?
• Worried About Thoughts
• How Long Will I Be On Medication For Treatment Of My Depression
• My Mother Won't Go For Depression Treatment!
• Where Do I Start To Get On The Road To Recovery
• How Do I Get My Dr.s To Understand And Help Me?
• What Treatments Are Available After You've Tried The Medicines Of Last Resort?
• No One Will Help!
• A Fighting Couple
• Do I Have A Mental Health Problem?
• Whats Wrong With Me?
• Depression And Employment
• How Do You Treat Depression In Teenager Males?
• Is It Ok To Feel This Way?
• Can We Contact My Mother's Doctor?
• ADD, Tourettes Or Both?
• I Think I'm Lost?
• Don't Want To Take Meds
• Will This Ever End
• Get Supported
• Stages Of Depression
• Is There Any Help?
• Can You Help?
• Dark Fantasies
• Blood Tests
• Is It Illusion Or Truth?
• Should A Depressed Person Marry?
• Dementia And Depression
• What Type Of Exams Can Proven That A Person Has Bipolar Disorder?
• Stuck In A Mental Rut...
• Loss Of Patience
• I Can't Seem To Get Over Any Of This
• Intrusive Humiliating Memories
• Is There Some Way To Deal With Depression Without Meds?
• Losing Personality Wholness
• What Is The Point Of Life?
• No Change Is Normal Mood (e.g., Depression)
• Lack Of Personal Hygiene
• Diagnosing Depression
• Does Untreated Depression Pass On To A Fetus?
• A Request For Help
• Regular Thoughts Of Killing Myself
• How Do I Help My Depressed, Unemployed Mother
• Angry At My Doctor For Prescribing So Carelessly
• I Become Very Hostile Towards Myself
• Coming To Terms With My Own Pathetic Existence
• Do Environmental Factors Hold A Person Back?
• Tired Of This Depression
• Struggling With Feelings And Thoughts
• Greatly Depressed
• Is Depression Getting More Prevalent?
• An Empty Shell
• Helping My Husband
• Inability To Express Myself
• Non-medication Help For Depression
• Untrusting Patient
• Sick Of Feeling This Way
• Depressed And Not Dating
• Congenital Laziness
• Moody Boyfriend
• Electroconvulsive Therapy
• Frustrated And Sucked Dry
• Too Young For Meds
• Paranoid Depression
• Depressed Husband
• Self-Harming Attention Seeker
• Did My Parents Make Me Like This?
• Wild Mood Swings
• A Wonderful Man
• How Can I Become Less Depressed?
• Should I Continue With Therapy?
• Childhood Depression
• Prozac Questions
• Can I Help My Wife With Depression?
• Approaching My Tightly Wound Depressed Attorney Brother
• Brain Injury And Depression
• No Compassion For Depression
• Recurrent Depression
• Meds Don't Seem To Work So Now What?
• Pleasure-blind
• Do People Recover From Depression?
• Crying Is Behavior
• Med Consult
• Shyness And The Post Partum Blues
• The Aftermath Of Abuse
• Medicine Doesn't Work Anymore
• The First Time
• Potentially Suicidal Boyfriend
• Depressed Boyfriend
• How Do I Leave?
• Alternative Treatment
• Bereavement And Grief
• How Can I Stop Depression From Recurring?
• Depression Affects The Entire Family
• Crohn's Disorder Side Effects
• Is Paranoia A Destiny?
• Post-Drinking Depression
• Security Clearance And Depression
• Can I Inherit Depression?
• Two Clinicians
• Depressed Spouse
• Depression 101
• Controlling, Disabled Husband
• Drifting Apart?
• Drinking. . .
• Marijuana And Depression
• A Mother Struggles With Depression
• Trashed House
• Beautiful Dreamer
• Severely Depressed
• Miss Lonely
• Unhappy And In Therapy
• He Won't Tell Me Why...
• Depression Affecting My Relationship
• My Children Aren't Speaking..
• My Wife Is Depressed
• My Boyfriend Is Depressed
• Parlante Writes:
• Trying To Cope With Depression When "I Just Can't."
• Kids Grades Can Suffer When Mom Or Dad Is Depressed
• Even With Treatment, Depression Symptoms Can Linger
• Eight Little-Known Signs Of Post-Partum Depression
• 5 Strategies To Beat Caregiver Depression
• Depression And Short-Term Memory
• How To Beat Caregiver-Related Depression
• New Biochemical Research Points To Five Types Of Depression
• Postpartum Depression, Neurotransmitters, And Nutrition
• A Multidimensional Approach To Depression
• The Psychological Importance Of Gratitude And Gratefulness
• Vitamin D And Depression
• The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy: Making Expectations Come True
• Diets High In Pasta Can Increase Depression In Women
• Shedding Light On Seasonal Affective Disorder
• Psychotherapy Vs. Medication For Depression, Anxiety And Other Mental Illnesses
• Older Adults And Owning A Dog
• Are You Self-Blaming And Self-Critical?
• Is Depression Really More Common In Women?
• When Nostalgia Is A Good Thing
• Of Self-Hatred And Self-Compassion
• Depression Checklist
• The Difference Between Grief And Depression, The DSM V
• The Impact Of Small Stresses In Daily Life
• Overcoming Stress By Volunteering With Your Dog
• Can Cognitive Reserve Combat Depression As Well As Dementia?
• The Optimist Vs. The Pessimist
• Depression And Learned Helplessness
• Habituation: Why Does The Initial Excitement Always Wear Off?
• Depression And Vitamin D
• Friending And Unfriending On Facebook
• Loneliness, A Health Hazard
• The SAD Time Of Year
• The Importance Of Finding Meaning In Life: An Existential Crisis
• Does Anxiety Plus Depression Equal Depression Plus Anxiety? How Clinicians Really Think
• Therapy And Medication May Be More Effective Than Drugs Alone
• Another Reason To Save The Arts In Schools
• The Intricate Ties Between Depression And Insecurity
• Treating Alcohol And Depression
• On Being Selfish: Is It All About Me?
• What Is Boredom?
• A Personal Story Of Living Through Depression
• Be Proactive: National Depression Screening Day Is October 11
• When A Depressed Partner Falls Out Of Love
• Are Self-Hate And Prejudice Against Others Different?
• Feeling Depressed And The Importance Of Voting
• Suicide Prevention Week
• A New Form Of Self-Injury, Self-Embedding?
• Recovery From Depression And The Big Book
• Is My Depression Contagious?
• Summer Heat And Human Behavior
• The Big Picture Of Depression Symptoms
• Making Decisions When Depressed
• Understanding Resentment
• Depressed, Forgetful? Take A Walk In The Park
• Fast Food, Health And Depression
• Parental Depression And Children
• What Has Supported My Recovery From Depression?
• Olfactory Sensations (Smell) And Stress Reduction
• Health And Mental Health, Should We Screen Children?
• Turning Off The Inner Voice Of Depression: Part II
• Personality, Are You A Warm Or Cold Person?
• Turning Off The Inner Voice Of Depression: Part 1
• Of Anxiety And Depression And Play
• A Strange Question About Recovery From Depression: Why Get Well?
• Depression And Positive Vs. Negative Emotional States
• Depression And Stress At Work
• Single And Alone For The Holidays? 6 Strategies For Surviving And Even Thriving The Holidays Alone
• Resentment Vs.Forgiveness
• Beginning To Heal Through Meditation
• It's The SAD Season
• Talking With A Depressed Partner
• Depression And Marriage
• Resentment, Like Holding Onto Hot Coals
• The Strange Comfort Of Depression
• Managing A Work Life With Depression
• What Does A Depression Diagnosis Mean To You?
• Some Further Thoughts On Depression And Suicide
• Depression & Panic Disorders: Jennifer's Story
• A Discussion Of Life, Ageing And The Denial Of Death
• Depression: Justin's Story
• Creativity And Bipolar Disorder, Is There A Relationship?
• Did My Parents Care Too Much?
• Depression And The Pressure To Conform
• I Wish I Had An Illness...Mental Or Physical
• Depression And Recovering From Rape - Nicole's Story
• Video Blog: Coping With Depression
• Non Prescription Pain Medications, SSRI's And Depression
• When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade: Coping With Depression As A Result Of Economic Stress
• Postpartum Depression - Joanna's Story
• A New Cause Of Depression
• Staying Busy And Being Happy
• Treating Depression With Medication: A Philosophical Approach
• The Appearance Of A Depressed Person
• Always Predicting Disaster
• Unmasking The Deceiver...Myself
• The Pain Of Rejection By Social Groups
• Professional Sports, Stress And Depression
• No Slouching Here
• Mindfulness Therapy: Learning To Sit With Depression
• Are We Too Materialistic?
• The Holiday Season: When SAD And Grief Occur
• A Discussion Of Disappointment
• The Benefits Of Yoga
• "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do," Why?
• How To Flood Your Life With Confidence
• Living A POSITIVE LIFE With Bipolar (Manic) Depression
• Self Compassion
• Perceptions Of Life Today
• Score Another One For Cognitive Therapy
• Gauging The Effectiveness Of One Component Of Alcoholics Anonymous
• Walk To Washington: Raising Awareness About Major Depression
• Milder Depressions Don't Appear To Benefit From Antidepressant Treatment
• Staying Sober: Dealing With Temptations
• Feeling Good, It's Not Just In The Brain
• Children, ADHD And Stimulant Medication
• Brain Neuroplasticity And Treatment Resistant Depression
• Post Partum Depression And The Importance Of Sleep
• "The Big Emptiness": Hoarding, OCD, Depression And The Quest For Meaning
• Does Psychotherapy Help Everyone?
• Of Parking Lots, Stress, Life And Psychotherapy
• Teenagers And Depression: Their Families And Psychotherapy
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• Making Friends, A Matter Of Where You Live?
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• Cognitive Distortions, Also Known As
• Young Yet Sad: The Social Phobic
• Alcohol As The Cause Of Depression?
• The Importance Of Recognizing Childhood Successes At School
• Suicide: Does A Person Have The Right To Take His Own Life?
• Suspended From College For Expressing Suicidal Ideation (a Reaction To An NPR Radio Story)
• A Natural Approach To Treating Depression Web Series
• Depression And Spirituality
• National Depression Screening Day Is Just Around The Corner (October 10th!)
• Press "D" For Depression Therapy
• Few People Who Are Depressed Receive Mental Health Services
• "Guns And Suicide" Article And Comments: What About The Anger?
• World Suicide Prevention Day... September 10, 2008
• Mood Changes Linked To Seasonal Fluctuations In Serotonin
• Why Is Happiness So Difficult To Achieve? Part 1
• The Influence Of Culture On The Expression Of Depression
• Low Self Esteem: Eating Or Spending To Escape
• Depression And Diabetes: A Deadly Combination
• Mood Change Doesn't Happen Quickly
• Life: Are We Listening And Living?
• New Hope For People With Major Depression
• Depression: A New Frontier In It's Treatment
• Whisk Those Blues Away
• The Relationship Between Exercise And Mood
• Retail Therapy, Sadness And Spending: The Study Behind The Story
• I'm So Bored!
• Feeling Down During The Winter? You May Have SAD (seasonal Affective Disorder)
• Diabetes, Depression And Life
• Women And Depression
• Problems Connected With Anti Depressant Medications
• Pain And Depression
• Fibromyalgia, It Is Not Just In Your Head
• A Combination Of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy & Antidepressant Medication Works Best For Depressed Adolescents
• Dogs, Depression And Other Health Issues: Is There Something To Be Gained From Illness?
• Anti Depressants And Young People: An Issue Revisited
• Anniversary Reactions
• But, It Still Hurts: Pain-Depression-Pain
• Massive Update For Our Depression Topic Center
• Correlation: Siblings And Depression?
• Interpersonal Therapy May Prevent Future Depressive Episodes
• The Negative Effects Of Pain On Depression
• Depression And Heart Disease
• Our Bipolar Topic Center Has Been Updated
• National Depression Screening Day Is Tomorrow!
• Behavioral Therapy May Be Better Than Cognitive Therapy For Severe Depression
• Perfectionism Probably Creates A Vulnerability For Depression
• Feeling Depressed: Influenced By The Attitudes And Opinions Of Others?
• Botox Fights Depression?
• How Prozac Gets Its Groove On.
• Chronic Cortisol Exposure Causes Mood Disorders
• Heart Attacks And Young Women == Depression
• SSRI Antidepressants Raise Risk Of Premature Birth
• Adult ADHD: Difficult To Diagnose And Often Misunderstood
• NYTimes Has Story On Deep Brain Stim For Depression
• Brain Scan Predicts Who Will Benefit From Cognitive Therapy
• The Midlife Crisis: A Case Of Extreme Stress
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• Maintanence Medications Ward Off Senior Depression Relapse
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• Dad's Depression Affects Toddler's Behavior, Too
• Stress, Depression a 'Perfect Storm' of Trouble for Heart Patients
• Depression May Worsen Problem of Obesity Among the Poor
• Depression During Pregnancy Linked to Child's Asthma Risk
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• Risk of Violent Crime Rises With Depression, Study Finds
• Narcotic Painkiller Use Tied to Higher Risk for Depression
• Depression After Stroke Linked to Troubled Sleep
• Binge-Watching TV May Be Sign of Depression, Loneliness
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• Health Tip: Is It Grief or Depression?
• 'Tis the Season for Seasonal Affective Disorder
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• Dark Days Here for Folks With Seasonal Depression
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• More Evidence That Exercise May Help Fight Depression
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• Teen Girls May Face Greater Risk of Depression
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This is what depression feels like

• Courtenay Harris Bond

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A Journey Through Darkness

By Daphne Merkin

• May 6, 2009

IT IS A SPARKLING DAY IN MID-JUNE, the sun out in full force, the sky a limpid blue. I am lying on my back on the grass, listening to the intermittent chirping of nearby birds; my eyes are closed, the better to savor the warmth on my face. As I soak up the rays I think about summers past, the squawking of seagulls on the beach and walking along the water with my daughter, picking out enticing seashells, arguing over their various merits. My mind floats away into a space where chronology doesn’t count: I am back on the beach of my adolescence, lost in a book, or talking to my old college chum Bethanie as we brave the bay water in front of her parents’ house in Connecticut, where she comes to visit every summer.

In the 20 or so minutes of “fresh air” allotted after lunch (one of four such breaks on the daily schedule), I try to forget where I am, imaging myself elsewhere than in this fenced-off concrete garden bordered by the West Side Highway on one side and Riverside Drive on the other, planted with patches of green and a few lonely flowers, my movements watched over by a more or less friendly psychiatric aide. Soggy as my brain is from being wrenched off a slew of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications in the last 10 days, I reach for a Coleridgian suspension of disbelief, ignoring the roar of traffic and summoning up the sound of breaking waves.

I have only to open my eyes for the surreal scene to come back into my immediate line of vision, like a picnic area without picnickers: two barbecue grills, bags of mulch that seem never to be opened, empty planters, clusters of tables and chairs, the entire area cordoned off behind a high mesh fence. Looking out onto the highway overpass there is a green-and-white sign indicating “Exit — West 178th Street”; nearer to the entrance another sign explains: “The Patients’ Park & Garden is for the use of patients and their families only, and for staff escorting patients. It is NOT for staff use.”

I can see R., the most recent addition to our dysfunctional gang of 12 on 4 Center, sitting on a bench in his unseasonal cashmere polo, smoking a cigarette and tapping his foot with equal intensity. On either side of him are ragtag groups of people culled from several units of the hospital, including the one I am on, which is devoted primarily to the treatment of patients with depression or eating disorders. (The anorexic girls, whom R. refers to as “the storks,” are in various phases of imperceptible recovery and tend to stick together.) The garden is also home to patients from 4 South, which caters to patients from within the surrounding Washington Heights community, and 5 South, which treats patients with psychotic and substance-abuse disorders.

The people on 4 Center, hidden away as it is in a small building, have next to no contact with the other units; we might as well be on different planets. Then again, as those who suffer from it know, intractable depression creates a planet all its own, largely impermeable to influence from others except as shadow presences, urging you to come out and rejoin the world, take in a movie, go out for a bite, cheer up. By the time I admitted myself to the hospital last June after a downhill period of six months, I felt isolated in my own pitch-darkness, even when I was in a room full of conversation and light.

DEPRESSION — THE THICK BLACK paste of it, the muck of bleakness — was nothing new to me. I had done battle with it in some way or other since childhood. It is an affliction that often starts young and goes unheeded — younger than would seem possible, as if in exiting the womb I was enveloped in a gray and itchy wool blanket instead of a soft, pastel-colored bunting. Perhaps I am overstating the case; I don’t think I actually began as a melancholy baby, if I am to go by photos of me, in which I seem impish, with sparkly eyes and a full smile. All the same, who knows but that I was already adopting the mask of all-rightness that every depressed person learns to wear in order to navigate the world?

I do know that by the age of 5 or 6, in my corduroy overalls, racing around in Keds, I had begun to be apprehensive about what lay in wait for me. I felt that events had not conspired in my favor, for many reasons, including the fact that in my family there were too many children and too little attention to go around. What attention there was came mostly from an abusive nanny who scared me into total compliance and a mercurial mother whose interest was often unkindly. By age 8 I was wholly unwilling to attend school, out of some combination of fear and separation anxiety. (It seems to me now, many years later, that I was expressing early on a chronic depressive’s wish to stay home, on the inside, instead of taking on the outside, loomingly hostile world in the form of classmates and teachers.) By 10 I had been hospitalized because I cried all the time, although I don’t know if the word “depression” was ever actually used.

As an adult, I wondered incessantly: What would it be like to be someone with a brighter take on things? Someone possessed of the necessary illusions without which life is unbearable? Someone who could get up in the morning without being held captive by morose thoughts doing their wild and wily gymnastics of despair as she measures out tablespoons of coffee from their snappy little aluminum bag: You shouldn’t. You should have. Why are you? Why aren’t you? There’s no hope, it’s too late, it has always been too late. Give up, go back to bed, there’s no hope. There’s so much to do. There’s not enough to do. There is no hope.

Surely this is the worst part of being at the mercy of your own mind, especially when that mind lists toward the despondent at the first sign of gray: the fact that there is no way out of the reality of being you, a person who is forever noticing the grime on the bricks, the flaws in the friends — the sadness that runs under the skin of things, like blood, beginning as a trickle and ending up as a hemorrhage, staining everything. It is a sadness that no one seems to want to talk about in public, at cocktail-party sorts of places, not even in this Age of Indiscretion. Nor is the private realm particularly conducive to airing this kind of implacably despondent feeling, no matter how willing your friends are to listen. Depression, truth be told, is both boring and threatening as a subject of conversation. In the end there is no one to intervene on your behalf when you disappear again into what feels like a psychological dungeon — a place that has a familiar musky smell, a familiar lack of light and excess of enclosure — except the people you’ve paid large sums of money to talk to over the years. I have sat in shrinks’ offices going on four decades now and talked about my wish to die the way other people might talk about their wish to find a lover.

Then there is this: In some way, the quiet terror of severe depression never entirely passes once you’ve experienced it. It hovers behind the scenes, placated temporarily by medication and renewed energy, waiting to slither back in, unnoticed by others. It sits in the space behind your eyes, making its presence felt even in those moments when other, lighter matters are at the forefront of your mind. It tugs at you, keeping you from ever being fully at ease. Worst of all, it honors no season and respects no calendar; it arrives precisely when it feels like it.

MY MOST RECENT BOUT, the one that landed me on 4 Center, an under-the-radar research unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, asserted itself on New Year’s Eve, the last day of 2007. The precipitating factors included everything and nothing, as is just about always the case — some combination of vulnerable genetics and several less-than-optimal pieces of fate.

Despite my grim mood, I had somehow or other managed to put on makeup, pull on clothes, affix pearl earrings and go to a civilized old-New York type of dinner, where we talked of ongoing things — children, schools, plays to see, reasons to live as opposed to reasons to die. But even as I talked and laughed with the other guests, my thoughts were dark, scrambling ones, ruthless in their sniping insistence. You’re a failure. A burden. Useless. Worse than useless: worthless. Shortly past midnight, I watched the fireworks over Central Park and stared into the exploding bursts of color — red, white and blue, squiggles of green, streaks of purple, balls of silver, sparks of champagne. My 17-year-old daughter, Zoë, was standing nearby, and as I looked into the fireworks I sent entreaties into the sky. Make me better. Make me remember this moment of absorption in fireworks, the energy of the thing. Make me go forward. Stop listening for drum rolls. Pay attention to the ordinary calls to engage, messages on your answering machine telling you to buck up, it’s not so bad, from the ex, siblings, people who care.

For the next six months I countered the depression with everything I had, escaping into the narcotic of reading, taking on a few writing assignments (all of which I delivered weeks, if not months, late), meeting friends for dinner, teaching a writing class and even taking a trip to St. Tropez with a close friend. I gobbled down my usual medley of pills — Lamictal, Risperdal, Wellbutrin and Lexapro — and wore an Emsam patch. (I have not been free of psychotropic medication for any substantial period since my early 20s.) But this was not a passing episode that a schedule full of distractions and medication could assuage. Although many depressions resolve themselves within a year, with or without treatment, sometimes they take hold and won’t let go, becoming incrementally worse with each passing day, until suicide seems like the only exit. This was one of those depressions.

In the weeks leading up to my checking into 4 Center, I had gone from being able to put on a faltering imitation of mental health to giving up all pretense of a manageable disguise. Since I found it painful to be conscious, I had stopped doing much of anything except sleeping. Mornings were the worst: I got up later and later, first 11, then noon, and now it was more like 2 in the afternoon, the day three-quarters gone. “I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day,” observed the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, a depressive 19th-century Jesuit priest. I don’t think I’ve ever met a depressed person who wanted to get out of bed in the morning — who didn’t experience the appearance of day as a call to burrow further under the covers, the better to embrace the vanished night.

When I was awake (the few hours that I was), I felt a kind of lethal fatigue, as if I were swimming through tar. Phone messages went unanswered, e-mail unread. In my inert but agitated state I could no longer concentrate long enough to read — not so much as a newspaper headline — and the idea of writing was as foreign to me as downhill racing. (James Baldwin: “No one works better out of anguish at all; that’s an incredible literary conceit.”) I barely ate — there is no more effective diet than clinical depression — and had dropped 30 pounds. I had essentially withdrawn from communication. When I did speak, it was mostly about my wish to commit suicide, a wish that was never all that far from my mind but at times like these became insistent.

Although some tiny part of me retained a dim sense of the more functioning person I once was — like a room with a closed door that was never entered anymore — it became increasingly difficult to envision myself ever inhabiting that version of myself again. There had been too many recurrent episodes, too many years of trying to fight off this debilitating demon of a thing. It has been called by different names at different times in history — melancholia, malaise, cafard , brown study, the blues, the black dog, acedia — and has been treated as a spiritual malady, a failure of will, a biochemical malfunctioning, a psychic conundrum, sometimes all at once. Whatever it was, it had come to define me, filling out all the available space, leaving no possibility of a “before” or an “after.” Instead I harbored the hallucinatory conviction that I had stayed around the scene of my own life too long — that I was, in some unyielding sense, ex post facto.

I had also quite literally ground to a halt, like a machine that had hit a glitch and frozen on the spot. I moved at a glacial pace and talked haltingly, in a voice that was lower and flatter than my usual one. As I discovered from my therapist and psychopharmacologist — both of whom argued that I belonged in a hospital now that my depression had taken on “a life of its own,” beyond the exertions of my will — there was a clinical name for my state: “psychomotor retardation.” My biology, that is, had caught up and joined hands with the immediate psychodynamic stressors that precipitated my nosedive — the lingering aftermath of the death two years earlier of my mother, with whom I had a complicated relationship; the imminent separation from my college-age daughter, who was my boon companion; therapy that took a wrong turn; a romance that went awry. (Much as we would like to explain clinical depression by making it either genetics or environment, bad wiring or bad nurturing, it is usually a combination of the two that sets the illness off.)

And yet I resisted my doctors’ suggestion that I check myself into a hospital. It seemed safer to stay where I was, no matter how out on a ledge I felt, than to lock myself away with other desperadoes in the hope that it would prove effective. Whatever fantasies I once harbored about the haven-like possibilities of a psychiatric facility or the promise of a definitive, once-and-for-all cure were shattered by my last stay 15 years earlier. I had written about the experience, musing on the gap between the alternately idealized and diabolical image of mental hospitals versus the more banal bureaucratic reality. I discussed the continued stigma attached to going public with the experience of depression, but all this had been expressed by the writer in me rather than the patient, and it seemed to me that part of the appeal of the article was the impression it gave that my hospital days were behind me. It would be a betrayal of my literary persona, if nothing else, to go back into a psychiatric unit.

What’s more, after a lifetime of talk therapy and medication that never seemed to do more than patch over the holes in my self, I wasn’t sure that I still believed in the concept of professional intervention. Indeed, I probably knew more about antidepressants than most analysts, having tried all three categories of psychotropics separately or in combination as they became available — the classic tricyclics, the now-unfashionable MAO inhibitors (which come with a major drawback in the form of dietary restrictions) as well as the newer S.S.R.I.’s. and S.N.R.I.’s. I was originally reluctant to try pills for something that seemed so intrinsic to who I was — the state of mind in which I lived, so to speak — until one of my first psychiatrists compared my emotional state to an ulcer. “You can’t speak to an ulcer,” he said. “You can’t reason with it. First you cure the ulcer, then you go on to talk about the way you feel.” My current regime of pills incorporated the latest approach, which called for the augmentation of a classic antidepressant (Effexor) with a small dose of a second-generation antipsychotic (Risperdal). From the time I was prescribed Prozac in my early 20s before it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, you could say that the history of depression medication and my personal history came of age together, with me in the starring role of a lab rat.

Of course, none of the drugs work conclusively, and for now we are stuck with what comes down to a refined form of guesswork — 30-odd pills that operate in not completely understood ways on neural pathways, on serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine and what have you. No one, not even the psychopharmacologists who dispense them after considering the odds, totally comprehends why they work when they work or why they don’t when they don’t. All the while the repercussions and the possible side effects (which include mild trembling on the one end to tardive dyskinesia, a rare condition that causes uncontrollable grimacing, on the other end) are shunted to the side until such time as they can no longer be ignored.

THE ONE THING PSYCHIATRIC hospitals are supposed to be good for is to keep you safe. But I was conflicted even about so primary an issue as survival. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ambush my own downward spiral, where the light at the end of the tunnel, as the mood-disordered Robert Lowell once said, was just the light of the oncoming train. I saw myself go splat on the pavement with a kind of equanimity, with a sense of a foretold conclusion. Self-inflicted death had always held out a stark allure for me: I was fascinated by people who had the temerity to bring down the curtain on their own suffering — who didn’t hang around, moping, in hopes of a brighter day. I knew all the arguments about the cowardice and selfishness (not to mention anger) involved in committing suicide, but nothing could persuade me that the act didn’t require a perverse sort of courage, some steely embrace of self-extinction. At one and the same time, I have also always believed that suicide victims don’t realize they won’t be coming this way again. If you are depressed enough, it seems to me, you begin to conceive of death as a cradle, rocking you gently back to a fresh life, glistening with newness, unsullied by you.

Still, one flesh-and-blood reality stood in my way: I had a daughter I loved deeply, and I understood the irreparable harm it would cause her if I took my own life, despite feeling that if I truly cared about her I would free her from the presence of a mother who was more shade than sun. (What had Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton done with their guilt feelings? I wondered. Were they more narcissistic than I or just more strong-willed?) It was because of my daughter, after all, that I had given voice to my “suicidal ideation,” as it’s called, in the first place, worrying how she would get along without me. At the same time, I recognized that, for a person who was really set on ending it all, speaking your intention aloud was an act of self-betrayal. After all, in the process of articulating your death wish you were alerting other people, ensuring that they would try to stop you.

The real question was why no one ever seemed to figure this grim scenario out on her own, just by looking at you. This was enraging in and of itself — the fact that severe depression, much as it might be treated as an illness, didn’t send out clear signals for others to pick up on; it did its deadly dismantling work under cover of normalcy. The psychological pain was agonizing, but there was no way of proving it, no bleeding wounds to point to. How much simpler it would be all around if you could put your mind in a cast, like a broken ankle, and elicit murmurings of sympathy from other people instead of skepticism (“You can’t really be feeling as bad as all that”) and in some cases outright hostility (“Maybe if you stopped thinking about yourself so much . . . ”).

One more factor worked to keep me where I was, exiled in my own apartment, a prisoner of my affliction: the specter of ECT (electro-convulsive therapy). My therapist, a modern Freudian analyst whom I had been seeing for years and who had always struck me as only vaguely persuaded of the efficacy of medication for what ailed me — when I once experienced some bad side effects, he proposed that I consider going off all my pills just to see how I would fare, and after doing so I plummeted — had suddenly, in the last 10 days before I went into the hospital, become a cheerleader for undergoing ECT. I don’t know why he grabbed on to this idea, why the sudden flip from chatting to zapping, other than for the fact that I had once wildly thrown it out — for the drowning, any life raft will do. Then, too, ECT, which causes the brain to go into seizure, was back in fashion for treatment-resistant depression after going off the radar in the ’60s and ’70s in the wake of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Perhaps I had frightened him with my insistent talk of wanting to cut out for good; perhaps he didn’t want to be held responsible for the death of a patient who compulsively wrote about herself and would undoubtedly leave evidence that would tie him to her. But his shift from a psychoanalytic stance that focused on the subjective mind to a neurobiological stance that focused on the hypothesized workings of the physical brain left me scared and distrustful.

What if ECT would just leave me a stranger to myself, with chopped-up memories of my life before and immediately after? I may have hated my life, but I valued my memories — even the unhappy ones, paradoxical as that may seem. I lived for the details, and the writer I once was made vivid use of them. The cartoonish image of my head being fried, tiny shocks and whiffs of smoke coming off it as the electric current went through, haunted me even though I knew that ECT no longer was administered with convulsive force, jolting patients in their straps.

But in the end, no matter how much I wanted to stay put, I ran out of resistance. I spent the weekend before going into the hospital in my oldest sister’s apartment, lost in the Gothic kingdom of depression: I was unable to move from the bed, trapped in interior debates about jumping off a roof versus throwing myself in front of a car. Yet somewhere in the background were other voices — my sister’s, my doctors’ — arguing on behalf of my sticking around; I could half-hear them. I wanted to die, but at the same time I didn’t want to, not completely. Suicide could wait, my sister said. Why didn’t I give the hospital a chance? She relayed messages from each of my doctors that they would look out for me on the unit. No one would force me to do anything, including ECT. I felt too tired to argue.

THAT MONDAY MORNING, I returned home and packed up two small bags. I threw in a disproportionate number of books (especially given the fact that I couldn’t read), a couple of pairs of linen pants and cotton T-shirts, my favorite night cream (although I hadn’t touched it in weeks) and a photo of my daughter, the last with the thought of anchoring myself. In return for agreeing to undergo one of several available protocols — either switching my medication or availing myself of ECT — I would get to stay at 4 Center as long as I needed at no cost. My sister picked me up in a cab, and as I recall, I cried the whole ride up there, watching the passing view with an elegaic sense of leave-taking.

As soon as my sister gave my name to the nurse whose head appeared in the window of the locked door to the unit and we were both let in, I knew immediately that this wasn’t where I wanted to be. Everything seemed empty and silent under the fluorescent lighting except for one 40-ish man pacing up and down the hallway in a T-shirt and sweat pants, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him. Underneath the kind of baldfaced clock you see in train stations were two run-down pay phones; there was something sad about the glaring outdatedness of them, especially since I associated them almost exclusively with hospitals and certain barren corners of Third Avenue. And then, in what seemed like an instant, my sister was saying goodbye, promising that all would turn out for the better, and I was left to fend for myself.

My bags were taken behind the glassed-in nurse’s station and checked for potential weapons of self-destruction referred to as “sharps” — razors, scissors, mirrors — which were taken away until your departure. Cellphones were also forbidden for reasons that seemed unclear even to the staff but had something to do with their photo-taking ability. In my intake interview, I alternated between breaking down in tears and repeating that I wanted to go home, like a woeful 7-year-old left behind at sleep-away camp. The admitting nurse, who was pleasant enough in a down-to-earth way, was hardly swept away by gusts of empathy with my bereft state. And yet I wanted to stay in the room and keep talking to her forever, if only to avoid going back out on to the unit, with its pathetically slim collection of out-of-date magazines, ugly groupings of wooden furniture cushioned with teal and plum vinyl and airless TV rooms — one overrun, the other desolate. Anything to avoid being me, feeling numb and desperate, thrust into a place that felt like the worst combination of exposure and anonymity.

I emerged in time for dinner, which was served at the premature hour of 5:30, as if the night ahead were so chockablock with activities that we had to get this necessary ritual out of the way. Since in reality dinner led to nothing more strenuous than another bout of “fresh air” and lots of free time until the lights went out at 11, I would have thought that it would be a good occasion to dally. But as it turned out, the other patients were finished eating within 10 or 15 minutes, and I found myself alone at the table, not yet having realized that the point was to get in and out as quickly as possible.

It didn’t help that the room we ate in was beyond dismal, featuring an out-of-tune piano and a Ping-Pong table that was never used. Or that, despite its being summer, there was barely any fresh fruit in sight except for autumnal apples and the occasional banana. There would be culinary bright moments — cream puffs were served on Father’s Day, and one Tuesday the staff set up a barbecue lunch in the patients’ park, where I munched on hot dogs and joined in a charadeslike game called Guesstures — but the general standard was determinedly low. After a while, I began requesting bottles of Ensure Plus, the liquid nutrition supplement that came in chocolate and vanilla and was a staple of the anorexics’ meal plans; if you closed your eyes it could pass for a milkshake.

It wasn’t only the anorexics’ Ensure that I coveted. From the very first night, when sounds of conversation and laughter floated over from their group to the gloomy, near-silent table of depressives I had joined, I yearned to be one of them. Unlike our group, they were required to remain at lunch and dinner for a full half-hour, which of necessity created a more congenial atmosphere. No matter that one or two had been brought on to the floor on stretchers, as I was later informed, or that they were victims of a cruel, hard-to-treat disease with sometimes fatal implications; they still struck me as enviable. However heartbreakingly scrawny, they were all young (in their mid-20s or early 30s) and expectant; they talked about boyfriends and concerned parents, worked tirelessly on their “journaling” or on art projects when they weren’t participating in activities designed exclusively for them, including “self-esteem” and “body image.” They were clearly and poignantly victims of a culture that said you were too fat if you weren’t too thin and had taken this message to heart. No one could blame them for their condition or view it as a moral failure, which was what I suspected even the nurses of doing about us depressed patients. In the eyes of the world, they were suffering from a disease, and we were suffering from being intractably and disconsolately — and some might say self-indulgently — ourselves.

I SHARED A SMALL ROOM right across from the nurse’s station with a pretty, middle-aged woman who introduced herself before dinner — the only one to do so — with a remarkable amount of good cheer, as if we were meeting at a cocktail party. For a minute I felt that things couldn’t be so terrible, that the unit couldn’t be as abject a destination as I conceived it to be if this woman had deigned to throw her lot in with the rest of us. She wore “Frownies” — little patented patches that were supposed to minimize wrinkles — to bed, which only furthered the impression she conveyed of an ordinary adjustment to what I saw as extraordinary circumstances. Clearly, she had a future in mind, even if I didn’t — one that required her to retain a fetching youthfulness. I hadn’t so much as washed my face for the past few months, but here was someone who understood the importance of keeping up appearances, even on a psychiatric unit.

The room itself, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less welcoming. Like the rest of the unit, it was lighted by overhead fluorescent bulbs that didn’t so much illuminate as bring things glaringly into view. There were two beds, two night tables and two chests of drawers. In keeping with the Noah’s-ark design ethos, the room was also furnished with a pair of enormous plastic trash cans; one stood near the door, casting a bleak plastic pall over things, and the other took up too much space in the tiny shared bathroom. The shower water came out of a flat fixture on the wall — the presence of a conventional shower head, I soon learned, was seen as a potential inducement to hanging yourself — and the weak flow was tepid at best.

I got into bed that first night, under the ratty white blanket, and tried to calm myself. The lack of a reading lamp added to my panic; even if my depression prevented me from losing myself in a book, the absence of a light source by which to read after dark represented the end of civilization as I had known it. (It turned out that you could bring in a battery-powered reading lamp of your own, albeit with the Kafkaesque restriction that it didn’t make use of glass light bulbs.) My mind went round and round the same barrage of questions, like a persistent police inspector. How did I get here? How did I allow myself to get here? Why didn’t I have the resolve to stay out? Why hadn’t anything changed with the passage of years? It was one thing to be depressed in your 20s or 30s, when the aspect of youth gave it an undeniable poignancy, a certain tattered charm; it was another thing entirely to be depressed in middle age, when you were supposed to have come to terms with life’s failings, as well as your own. Now that my mother was gone — I always thought she’d outlive me, but her lung cancer took precedence over my suicidal impulses — there was no one to blame for my depressions, no one to whom I could turn for some magical, longed-for compensation. But the truly intolerable part was that I had acquiesced in this godforsaken plan; there was ultimately no one to blame for my banishment to this remote-seeming outpost but myself.

I plumped the barracks-thin pillow, pulled up the sheet and blanket around me — the entire hospital was air-conditioned to a fine chill — and curled up, inviting sleep. There was nothing to feel so desperate about , I tried soothing myself. You’re not a prisoner. You can ask to leave tomorrow. I listened to my roommate’s calm, even breathing and wished I were her, wished I were anyone but myself. Mostly, I wished I were a person who wasn’t consumingly depressed. All over the city, less depressed or entirely undepressed people were leading their ordinary lives, watching TV or blogging or having a late dinner. Why wasn’t I among them? After staring into the darkness for what seemed like hours, I finally got up and put on my robe, having decided that I’d overcome my sense of being a specimen on display — here comes Mental Patient No. 12 — and approach the nurses’ station about getting more sleeping meds.

Outside the room the light was blinding. Two of the aides were at the desk, playing some sort of word game on the computer screen. They looked up at me impassively and waited for me to state my case. I explained that I couldn’t sleep, my voice sounding furry with anxiety. My hands were clammy and my mouth was dry. One of them got up and went into the back to check whether the resident in psychiatry who was assigned to me had approved the request. She handed me a pill in a little cup, and I mumbled something about how nervous I was feeling. “You’ll feel better after you get some sleep,” she said. I nodded and said, “Good night,” feeling dismissed. “Night,” she said, casual as could be. I was no one to her, no one to myself.

I SUPPOSE IT WOULD MAKE for some kind of symmetry — a glimpse of an upward trajectory, at least — if I said that the first night was the hardest, but the truth is that it never got any easier. My frantic sense of dislocation and abandonment persisted for the entire three weeks I spent on 4 Center, yielding only at rare moments to a slightly less anxious state of hibernation. I would eventually discover several friendlier nurses or nurses’ aides with whom it was possible to talk about the bizarre reality of being on a psychiatric unit with a locked door and fiercely regulated visiting hours (5:30 to 8 on weekday evenings and 2 to 8 on weekends) without feeling like an official mental patient. By the end of the second week, when I was no longer chained to the unit, one of the male nurses would invite me for coffee breaks to the little eatery on the sixth floor where the hospital staff repaired for their meals.

These outings were always kept short — we never lingered for more than 15 minutes — and they always brought home to me how artificial the dividing line between 4 Center and the outside world really was. It could cause vertigo if you weren’t careful. One minute you were in the shuttered-down universe of the verifiably unwell, of people who talked about their precarious inner states as if that were all that mattered, and the next you were admitted back into ordinary reality, where people were free to roam as they pleased and seemed filled with a sense of larger purpose. As I cradled my coffee, I looked on at the medical students who flitted in and out, holding their clipboards and notebooks, with a feeling verging on awe. How had they figured out a way to live without getting bogged down in the shadows? From what source did they draw all their energy? I couldn’t imagine ever joining this world again, given how my time had become so aimlessly filled, waiting for calls to come in on the pay phone or sitting in “community meetings,” in which people made forlorn and implausible requests for light-dimmers and hole-punchers and exiting patients tearfully thanked everyone on the unit for their help.

It wasn’t as if there weren’t attempts made to organize the days as they went sluggishly by. A weekly schedule was posted that gave the impression that we patients were quite the busy bees, what with therapy sessions, yoga, walks and creative-writing groups. Friday mornings featured my favorite group, “Coffee Klatch.” This was run by the same amiable gym-coach-like woman who oversaw exercise, and it was devoted to board games of the Trivial Pursuit variety. The real draw was the promise of baked goods and freshly brewed coffee.

But in truth there was more uncharted time than not, especially for the depressives — great swaths of white space that wrapped themselves around the day, creating an undertow of lassitude. Forging friendships on the unit, which would have passed the time, was touch-and-go because patients came and went and the only real link was one of duress. The other restriction came with the territory: people were either comfortably settled into being on the unit, which was off-putting in one kind of way, or raring to get out, which was off-putting in another. I had become attached to my roommate, who was funny and somehow seemed above the fray, and I felt inordinately sad when she left, in possession of a new diagnosis and new medication, halfway into my stay.

Still, the consuming issue as far as I was concerned — the question that colored my entire stay — was whether I would undergo ECT. It was on my mind from the very beginning, if only because the first patient I encountered when I entered the unit, pacing up and down the halls, was in the midst of getting a series of ECT treatments and insisted loudly to anyone who would listen that they were destroying his brain. And indeed, the patients I saw returning from ECT acted dazed, as if an essential piece of themselves had been misplaced.

During the first week or so the subject lay mostly in abeyance as I was weaned off the medications I came in on and tried to acclimatize to life on 4 Center. I met daily with Dr. R., the young resident I saw the first evening, mostly to discuss why I shouldn’t leave right away and what other avenues might be explored medicationwise. She sported a diamond engagement ring and a diamond wedding band that my eye always went to first thing; I took them as painful reminders that not everyone was as full of holes as I was, that she had made sparkling choices and might indeed turn out to be one of those put-together young women who had it all — the career, the husband, the children. During our half-hour sessions I tried to borrow from Dr. R.’s outlook, to see myself through her charitable eyes. I reminded myself that people found me interesting even if I had ceased to interest myself, and that the way I felt wasn’t all my fault. But the reprieve was always short-lived, and within an hour of her departure I was back to staving off despair, doing battle with the usual furies.

One day early into my second week, I was called out of a therapy session to meet with a psychiatrist from the ECT unit. I still wonder whether this brief encounter was the defining one, scaring me off forever. She might as well have been a prison warden for all her interpersonal skills; we had barely said two words before she announced I was showing clear signs of being in a “neurovegetative” condition. She pointed out that I spoke slurringly and that my mind seemed to be crawling along as well, adding grimly that I would never be able to write again if I remained in this state. Her scrutiny seemed merciless: I felt attacked, as if there were nothing left of me but my illness. Obviously ECT was in order, she briskly concluded. I nodded, afraid to say much lest I sound imbecilic, but in my head the alarms were going off. No, it wasn’t, I thought. Not yet. I’m not quite the pushover you take me to be. It was the first stirring of positive will on my own behalf, a delicate green bud that could easily be crushed, but I felt its force.

The strongest and most benign advocate for ECT was a psychiatrist at the institute who saw me three decades earlier and was instrumental in convincing me to come into 4 Center. In his formal but well-meaning way he pointed out that I lived with a level of depression that was unnecessary to live with and that my best shot for real relief was ECT. He came in to make his case once again as I was sitting at dinner on a Friday evening, pretending to nibble at a rubbery piece of chicken. The other patients had gone and my sister was visiting. I turned to her as he waxed almost passionate on my account, going on about the horror of my kind of treatment-resistant depression and the glorious benefits of ECT that would surely outweigh any downside. I didn’t trust him, much as I wished to. Help me, I implored my sister without saying a word. I don’t want this. Tears trickled down my cheeks as if I were a mute, wordless but still able to feel anguish. My sister spoke for me as if she were an interpreter of silence. It looked like I didn’t want it, she said to the doctor, and my wishes had to be respected.

I COULD SEE MYSELF LINGERING on in the hospital, not because I had grown any more fond of the atmosphere but because after a certain amount of time it became easier to stay than to leave. The picayune details of my life — bills, appointments, deadlines — had been suspended during my last few months at home, then left outside the hospital confines altogether, and it began to seem inconceivable that I’d ever have the wherewithal to take them on again. Instead of growing stronger on the unit, I felt a kind of further weakening of my psychological muscle. The new medication I was on left me exhausted, and I took to going back to sleep after breakfast. I was tired even of being visited, of sitting in the hideous little lounge and making conversation, of expressing gratitude for the chocolates, smoked salmon and change for the pay phones that people brought. I felt as if I were being wished bon voyage over and over again, perennially about to leave on a trip that never happened.

I went out on several day passes in the week leading to my departure, as a kind of preparation for re-entry, but none of them were particularly successful. On one, I went out on a broiling Saturday afternoon with my daughter for a walk to the nearby Starbucks on 168th and Broadway. I felt thick-headed with the new sedating medication I was on and far away from her. When she left me for a minute to make a phone call on her cell, I started crying, as if something tragic had happened. I wondered uneasily what effect seeing me in this state was having on my daughter, what she made of my being in the hospital — did she view me as a burden that she would need to shoulder for the rest of her life? Would my depression rub off on her? — but in between we laughed at small, odd things as we always did, and it occurred to me that I wasn’t as much a stranger to her as I was to myself.

With the staff’s tentative agreement — they didn’t think I was ready to go home but had no real reason to prevent me from doing so — I left 4 Center three weeks to the day I arrived, my belongings piled up on a trolley for greater mobility through the annex to the exit. It was a hot June day similar to the one I checked in on, the heat pouring off the windows of parked cars. Everything felt noisy and magnified. It felt shocking to be outside, knowing I was on a permanent pass this time, that I wouldn’t be returning to the unit.

I was sent home on Klonopin, an anti-anxiety drug I’d been on forever, as well as a duet of pills — Remeron and Effexor — that were referred to as California rocket fuel for its presumed igniting effect. As it turned out, the combo wasn’t destined to work on me. At home, I was gripped again by thoughts of suicide and clung to my bed, afraid to go out even on a walk around the block with my daughter. When I wasn’t asleep, I stared into space, lost in the terrors of the far-off past, which had become the terrors of the present. It was decided that I shouldn’t be left alone, so my sister and my good friend took turns staying with me. But it was clear this arrangement was short term, and by the end of the weekend, after phone calls to various doctors, it was agreed that I would go back into the hospital to try ECT.

And then, the Sunday afternoon before I planned to return to 4 Center, something shifted ever so slightly in my mind. I had gone off the Remeron and started a new drug, Abilify. I was feeling a bit calmer, and my bedroom didn’t seem like such an alien place anymore. Maybe it was the fear of ECT, or perhaps the tweaked medication had kicked in, or maybe the depression had finally taken its course and was beginning to lift. I had — and still have — no real idea what did it. For a brief interval, no one was home, and I decided to get up and go outside. I stopped at Food Emporium and studied the cereal section, as amazed at the array as if I had just emerged from the gulag. I bought some paper towels and strawberries, and then I walked home and got back into bed. It wasn’t a trip to the Yucatan, but it was a start. I didn’t check into the hospital the next day and instead passed the rest of the summer slowly reinhabiting my life, coaxing myself along. I spent time with people I trusted, with whom I didn’t have to pretend.

Toward the end of August I went out for a few days to the rented Southampton house of my friend Elizabeth. It was just her, me and her three annoying dogs. I had brought a novel along, “The Gathering,” by Anne Enright, the sort of book about incomplete people and unhappy families that has always spoken to me. It was the first book to absorb me — the first I could read at all — since before I went into the hospital. I came to the last page on the third afternoon of my visit. It was about 4:30, the time of day that, by mid-August, brings with it a whiff of summer’s end. I looked up into the startlingly blue sky; one of the dogs was sitting at my side, her warm body against my leg, drying me off after the swim I had recently taken. I could begin to see the curve of fall up ahead. There would be new books to read, new films to see and new restaurants to try. I envisioned myself writing again, and it didn’t seem like a totally preposterous idea. I had things I wanted to say.

Everything felt fragile and freshly come upon, but for now, at least, my depression had stepped back, giving me room to move forward. I had forgotten what it was like to be without it, and for a moment I floundered, wondering how I would recognize myself. I knew for certain it would return, sneaking up on me when I wasn’t looking, but meanwhile there were bound to be glimpses of light if only I stayed around and held fast to the long perspective. It was a chance that seemed worth taking.

Daphne Merkin is a contributing writer for the magazine. Her last article was about the Kabbalah Center.

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Header menu - drawer | united kingdom, gabi's story: my struggle with speaking up about my depression and loneliness.

This content mentions loneliness and depression, which some people may find triggering.

In this story, Gabi tells us how turning 30 was a bit of a milestone for her. But alongside the celebration and her happy feelings of being loved by so many, her life wasn't matching up to her expectations.

While she had a great job, other things like not having a relationship or children started to make her feel lonely and this was affecting her mental health.

My name’s Gabi and I’m in my early thirties. A milestone birthday made me feel lonely even though I was surrounded by loved ones. My experience of loneliness spiralled into depression but looking back on this period, I can see how talking to people helped my recovery.

In 2019, I turned 30. I had the most amazing celebrations - I celebrated with lots of family and friends over about five days and at the end of it I remember crying because I felt so loved.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but there was something about reaching that milestone and reflecting on what I perhaps imagined my life would have looked like that contributed to me becoming very unwell.

I had a good job and a career, but lots of the other things I’d expected just hadn’t materialised. I didn’t own my own home, I wasn’t married or in a relationship and I didn’t have children.

It was the tip of the iceberg. I started to become unwell and things began to spiral. Loneliness was an experience where I could be surrounded by all the people that I love, or be in a really exciting meeting at work, but still feel completely disconnected. Things had built up over the years, but by the end of that year, I was extremely unwell and had been referred to the mental health service.

Loneliness isn’t just sitting in an empty room

For me, loneliness isn’t just sitting in an empty room or house with no one to talk to, it was about what was going on inside and how I was feeling and that I didn’t understand what was going on.

I had lots of the physical symptoms of depression , I just didn’t recognise them. My skin was dry, my hair was falling out and I lost a significant amount of weight. I didn’t understand the constant noise in my head, and just getting up in the morning and functioning took every ounce of my energy.

I didn’t understand what was happening and I didn’t tell anyone except my best friend. It felt more lonely because I couldn’t speak about it because things didn’t make sense.

It’s ok not to be ok

Building up the courage to tell people how I was feeling was hard. It’s that feeling of not wanting to admit that you’re not ok, in a world where we’re told to ‘suck it up, everything will be ok.’ The reality for me was that it wasn’t.

Once I’d started my therapy and could feel I was making progress, one of the first things I wanted to do was to tell my colleagues at work. I needed to tell them what had happened. I kept things very top-line, but explaining out loud really helped and immediately made me feel less lonely because people knew.

And from that moment I began to feel better about myself and found I told another person every week or so. Everyone has been very supportive and no one has treated me any differently.

Work it out

Feeling heard makes things so much better. Of course, it’s much easier to talk once you’re getting better and getting the support you need, but I wish I could have spoken to people earlier when I really needed people the most.

I’m not ashamed of what happened and I live with it now. On days when it feels like loneliness is creeping in and I realise I haven’t spoken to people for a while or it feels like things have caught up with me, I can recognise I need help.

We spend so much time at work and with our colleagues and I think there’s a huge amount we can do to create workplaces and relationships where conversations can happen.

I’m the chair of a mental well-being group at work and want to equip people to be able to have those conversations. In the same way, my peers and colleagues looked out for me, I want to look out for my team in return.

I feel so much more in control of my well-being as a result of my therapy and want to share what I’ve learned. If I wake up and feel like it’s going to be a difficult day, then I rewrite my to-do list and set new targets that are realistic. I know what I’ll be able to achieve and what I won’t, and I know that the next day will be better. I want my team to know they can do that too.

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What my parents did that made the biggest difference in my struggle with depression

At just 13 years old, I had been in and out of the hospital for major depressive disorder and entered treatment. I was consumed by hopelessness in every aspect of my life. I remember being most overwhelmed when I fought against the emotions I was feeling. The longer I avoided addressing the negative emotions that plagued me, the more intense they became.

It was difficult to connect with my parents. My dad couldn’t understand the emptiness, loneliness and hopelessness I felt. Though he could see that I was in pain and suffering — and he acknowledged that. After recognizing the degree to which I was struggling, my parents worked tirelessly to get me help. We participated in inpatient, outpatient, individual and family therapies to try and shift my depressive moods, but nothing seemed to work.

Health & Wellness How to find mental health support when you need it

With few options left, I began what would become a year and a half of intensive treatment. The first four months of this journey took place at a residential program just outside of Boston. The clinicians here recognized that depression and anxiety don’t occur in a vacuum and it’s important for the entire family to be involved in the healing process. During those six weeks, my parents learned the same skills alongside other parents and visited me every week to practice these new relationship dynamics.

The biggest shift came after we learned the skill validation. My parents were able to create space for what I was feeling, allowing me to feel accepted and safe in our relationship. From there, we had enough of a foundation to work through conflicts, miscommunications and other things that had pushed us apart.

Validation can be a complex concept, but boiled down, it’s the practice of creating space and appreciating someone else's thoughts, feelings, beliefs and experiences. Simply put, acknowledging that someone's (or your own) feelings are valid.

I experienced an equal shift in my relationship with myself when I began to practice self-validation. Each time I thought to myself: " You shouldn’t be feeling depressed. Why aren’t you getting better by now? You don’t deserve this support," I rewired these beliefs. Instead, telling myself, “ It's OK that I’m feeling this way. Healing takes time and I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be in my journey. I am deserving of love and support in life. ” Slowly but surely, I taught myself that emotions were OK and safe to experience. I was able to recover from that depression because I was no longer fighting two battles — one debating the validity of my emotions and one to break free from my suffering.

All in all, validation is all around a game-changer for everyone involved.

How to support a teen who is struggling

For anyone supporting a teen navigating a mental health challenge and looking for advice — I direct you to validation. This will improve your relationship making it more likely your teen will go to you for support. It will allow your teen to feel seen, heard and loved, making them feel less isolated and helpless. And lastly, it creates a foundation to navigate further challenges together.

My parents and I followed the guidelines of dialectical behavioral therapy, as outlined in a DBT skills workbook by Marsha M. Linehan :

• Pay attention: Look interested in the other person (don't look at your phone while listening). Be alert to facial expressions, body language and more.
• Reflect back: Say back what you have heard the other person say or do, to be sure you understand exactly what the person is saying. No judgmental language or tone of voice!
• Understand: Look for how what the other person is feeling, thinking or doing makes sense based on the person’s past experiences, present situation and/or current state of mind of physical condition.
• Acknowledge and validate: Note that the person’s feelings, thinking or actions are valid and understandable responses because they fit current facts.
• Show equality: Don’t "one-up" or "one-down" the other person. Treat them as an equal, not as fragile or incompetent.

Like I mentioned, I tried multiple treatment options for my depression and anxiety before I reached recovery. The reason nothing stuck was that I was going through the motions to appease others — my parents, therapists, community members and more. I didn’t believe it was possible for me to get better so I wasn’t invested in my growth.

I believe this is true for any goal an individual is pursuing. The results will be much more long-lasting if it’s intrinsically driven. This is why validation is such a great resource. You can create the space for a teenager to feel safe enough to ask for help, voice their struggle and begin their journey of growth without forcing them into this process. So if you’re looking to start this conversation with a teen, start by describing and expressing the situation: “I’ve noticed you acting differently recently and I’m worried. I love you so much and want the best for you. If you need support or want to talk, I’m here for you.” Even if they don’t initially open up, you’re laying a foundation for this later conversation. Once they come to you, then you’ll insert validation: "I see you’re really struggling, that must be so overwhelming to navigate," and offer to help find further resources.

Advice for teens on how to support their mental health

A common feeling among teens is anxiety surrounding posting on social media. If you were to practice self-validation on this, it would sound a bit like: “I’m feeling anxiety right now. It makes sense because I care about being accepted and supported by my friends and community. It’s OK that I’m feeling anxious,” and so on and so forth. While this seems like a small skill, we can’t expect to change anything in life without first accepting our reality, and validation allows us to do this through a compassionate, non-judgmental lens.

From here you can implement a whole host of other skills. Through the social media lens, you can:

• Be mindful of your thoughts and emotions as you scroll — without judgment, paying attention to them.
• Be a critical consumer and unfollow or block accounts that are harming your mental health.
• Practice self-care (examples: read a book, go on a walk, bake cookies or listen to music) and unplug from social media to decrease feelings of anxiety.
• Ask for help from a trusted adult if you’re feeling that the intensity or duration of your emotions aren’t serving you.

In addition to these tips, I manage my relationship with social media by cultivating an awareness of my consumption: How much am I scrolling? Why am I scrolling (boredom, avoiding)? What emotions come up? This awareness helps me decide if it’s an experience I want to shift to be more positive. If so, I’ll take a day off, unfollow individuals that aren’t making me feel good on social media, and follow creators that make me feel happy and inspired. We have so much power to be a critical consumer on social media and cultivate our feeds so they're more uplifting.

Although we all experience very similar emotions, we’ll never understand exactly what others are feeling. However, we can bridge this gap in understanding through validation and use this as a foundation to improve our own mental health or support someone else.

Sadie Sutton is a college student from the Bay Area. After receiving a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, she was inspired to share her story with fellow teens going through their own personal growth. She started the podcast "She Persisted" in 2019 and has accumulated over 70 episodes reaching over 50,000 listeners. Sutton is a psych major at the University of Pennsylvania and hopes to pursue a career in clinical psychology to further her impact in the mental health field.

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I Have Depression, and I'm Proof That You Never Know the Battle Someone Is Waging Inside

I never thought I'd live to be 26 years old. You may be wondering why someone who seems perfectly healthy would have such a dark thought , and you would not be alone. But I'm proud to say that turning 26 has been one of the greatest accomplishments of my life.

If you checked my Instagram over the last few years, you would have seen me as the happiest girl in the world , traveling the globe teaching yoga and weightlifting. But keeping up that image grew exhausting, so I decided to be brave and tell my story. My story is not unique, but it's one that is rarely spoken about due to fear. Fear can be a crippling emotion, but it can also be a powerful tool.

Depression and anxiety are just like any other illness. They're nothing to hide away.

So I'm going to ask something scary: do the words "mental health" make you uncomfortable? They used to make me feel that way, too. But depression and anxiety are just like any other illness. They're nothing to hide away. In fact, these journeys should be shared and celebrated.

I have had anxiety for as long as I can remember. Growing up, it impacted every part of life. I would have panic attacks before going to school, sleepless nights before games or tests, endless thoughts of everyone being against me, and days where I felt completely alone in the world. In college, things got worse. I became extremely depressed. I partied every chance I got. I hung out with people who fed the worst parts of me. I protected myself by flashing a big smile and playing the part of the bubbly sorority girl. I told myself that depression is scary and no one wants to hear about that .

Keep it hidden and keep smiling.

A few years later, at the age of 20, my smile had fallen and I had given up. The thought of waking up the next morning was too much for me to handle. I was no longer anxious or sad; instead I felt numb, and that's when things took a turn for the worse. I called my dad, who lived across the country, and for the first time in my life, I told him everything. It was too late, though. I was not calling for help. I was calling to say goodbye.

Miraculously, he convinced me to hang on for a few more hours. Had he not boarded the very next flight to me, I would not be here right now.

That is when I started my long and continuous journey to get healthy. I worked with doctors and therapists , but I still struggled. Until one day my dad took me to a CrossFit gym by my school and for the first time I picked up a barbell. It instantly became my place to escape, my outlet, my medicine . I did not go more than a day without having a bar in my hand, but weightlifting and fitness were not enough alone.

After a year or so, the depression crept back in. I channeled the inner strength I had built in the gym and asked for help. This is when I began working with a new therapist, one who believed that depression decreased by age 26. I have no idea if this is true, but in yoga, you're taught not to ask if the thought is true, but rather if the thought serves you. So I hung onto this. When I fell into a really bad spell, I reminded myself, "Just a few more years. Hang on until you are 26. It will get better."

I kept lifting. I kept working. I kept growing.

As an Olympic weightlifting coach and yoga teacher, people tell me all the time how strong I am, which used to make me feel like a total fraud. But today, I am 26 years old. Today, I'm proudly sharing something I felt so ashamed of for so many years , and that's because I'm strong. I have a strength that this illness will never be able to match, not at 26 or any age after that.

The charity Project Semicolon is close to my heart. The idea behind it : "a semicolon represents a sentence an author could have ended, but chose not to." My story isn't over, and each chapter is a lot brighter, a lot bolder, and filled with a lot of fun new characters. There's always more to come. We just need to continue writing.

If you or a loved one are in need of any help, the National Suicide Prevention organization has several resources and a 24/7 lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

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Essays About Depression: Top 8 Examples Plus Prompts

Many people deal with mental health issues throughout their lives; if you are writing essays about depression, you can read essay examples to get started.

An occasional feeling of sadness is something that everyone experiences from time to time. Still, a persistent loss of interest, depressed mood, changes in energy levels, and sleeping problems can indicate mental illness. Thankfully, antidepressant medications, therapy, and other types of treatment can be largely helpful for people living with depression.

People suffering from depression or other mood disorders must work closely with a mental health professional to get the support they need to recover. While family members and other loved ones can help move forward after a depressive episode, it’s also important that people who have suffered from major depressive disorder work with a medical professional to get treatment for both the mental and physical problems that can accompany depression.

If you are writing an essay about depression, here are 8 essay examples to help you write an insightful essay. For help with your essays, check out our round-up of the best essay checkers .

• 1. My Best Friend Saved Me When I Attempted Suicide, But I Didn’t Save Her by Drusilla Moorhouse
• 2. How can I complain? by James Blake
• 3. What it’s like living with depression: A personal essay by Nadine Dirks
• 4. I Have Depression, and I’m Proof that You Never Know the Battle Someone is Waging Inside by Jac Gochoco
• 5. Essay: How I Survived Depression by Cameron Stout
• 6. I Can’t Get Out of My Sweat Pants: An Essay on Depression by Marisa McPeck-Stringham
• 7. This is what depression feels like by Courtenay Harris Bond

8. Opening Up About My Struggle with Recurring Depression by Nora Super

1. what is depression, 2. how is depression diagnosed, 3. causes of depression, 4. different types of depression, 5. who is at risk of depression, 6. can social media cause depression, 7. can anyone experience depression, the final word on essays about depression, is depression common, what are the most effective treatments for depression, top 8 examples, 1.  my best friend saved me when i attempted suicide, but i didn’t save her  by drusilla moorhouse.

“Just three months earlier, I had been a patient in another medical facility: a mental hospital. My best friend, Denise, had killed herself on Christmas, and days after the funeral, I told my mom that I wanted to die. I couldn’t forgive myself for the role I’d played in Denise’s death: Not only did I fail to save her, but I’m fairly certain I gave her the idea.”

Moorhouse makes painstaking personal confessions throughout this essay on depression, taking the reader along on the roller coaster of ups and downs that come with suicide attempts, dealing with the death of a loved one, and the difficulty of making it through major depressive disorder.

2.  How can I complain?  by James Blake

“I wanted people to know how I felt, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to tell them. I have gone into a bit of detail here not to make anyone feel sorry for me but to show how a privileged, relatively rich-and-famous-enough-for-zero-pity white man could become depressed against all societal expectations and allowances. If I can be writing this, clearly it isn’t only oppression that causes depression; for me it was largely repression.”

Musician James Blake shares his experience with depression and talks about his struggles with trying to grow up while dealing with existential crises just as he began to hit the peak of his fame. Blake talks about how he experienced guilt and shame around the idea that he had it all on the outside—and so many people deal with issues that he felt were larger than his.

3.  What it’s like living with depression: A personal essay   by Nadine Dirks

“In my early adulthood, I started to feel withdrawn, down, unmotivated, and constantly sad. What initially seemed like an off-day turned into weeks of painful feelings that seemed they would never let up. It was difficult to enjoy life with other people my age. Depression made typical, everyday tasks—like brushing my teeth—seem monumental. It felt like an invisible chain, keeping me in bed.”

Dirks shares her experience with depression and the struggle she faced to find treatment for mental health issues as a Black woman. Dirks discusses how even though she knew something about her mental health wasn’t quite right, she still struggled to get the diagnosis she needed to move forward and receive proper medical and psychological care.

4.  I Have Depression, and I’m Proof that You Never Know the Battle Someone is Waging Inside  by Jac Gochoco

“A few years later, at the age of 20, my smile had fallen, and I had given up. The thought of waking up the next morning was too much for me to handle. I was no longer anxious or sad; instead, I felt numb, and that’s when things took a turn for the worse. I called my dad, who lived across the country, and for the first time in my life, I told him everything. It was too late, though. I was not calling for help. I was calling to say goodbye.”

Gochoco describes the war that so many people with depression go through—trying to put on a brave face and a positive public persona while battling demons on the inside. The Olympic weightlifting coach and yoga instructor now work to share the importance of mental health with others.

5.  Essay: How I Survived Depression   by Cameron Stout

“In 1993, I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed an antidepressant. Within two months, the medication slowly gained traction. As the gray sludge of sadness and apathy washed away, I emerged from a spiral of impending tragedy. I helped raise two wonderful children, built a successful securities-litigation practice, and became an accomplished cyclist. I began to take my mental wellness for granted. “

Princeton alum Cameron Stout shared his experience with depression with his fellow Tigers in Princeton’s alumni magazine, proving that even the most brilliant and successful among us can be rendered powerless by a chemical imbalance. Stout shares his experience with treatment and how working with mental health professionals helped him to come out on the other side of depression.

6.  I Can’t Get Out of My Sweat Pants: An Essay on Depression  by Marisa McPeck-Stringham

“Sometimes, when the depression got really bad in junior high, I would come straight home from school and change into my pajamas. My dad caught on, and he said something to me at dinner time about being in my pajamas several days in a row way before bedtime. I learned it was better not to change into my pajamas until bedtime. People who are depressed like to hide their problematic behaviors because they are so ashamed of the way they feel. I was very ashamed and yet I didn’t have the words or life experience to voice what I was going through.”

McPeck-Stringham discusses her experience with depression and an eating disorder at a young age; both brought on by struggles to adjust to major life changes. The author experienced depression again in her adult life, and thankfully, she was able to fight through the illness using tried-and-true methods until she regained her mental health.

7.  This is what depression feels like  by Courtenay Harris Bond

“The smallest tasks seem insurmountable: paying a cell phone bill, lining up a household repair. Sometimes just taking a shower or arranging a play date feels like more than I can manage. My children’s squabbles make me want to scratch the walls. I want to claw out of my own skin. I feel like the light at the end of the tunnel is a solitary candle about to blow out at any moment. At the same time, I feel like the pain will never end.”

Bond does an excellent job of helping readers understand just how difficult depression can be, even for people who have never been through the difficulty of mental illness. Bond states that no matter what people believe the cause to be—chemical imbalance, childhood issues, a combination of the two—depression can make it nearly impossible to function.

“Once again, I spiraled downward. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t work. I had thoughts of harming myself. This time, my husband urged me to start ECT much sooner in the cycle, and once again, it worked. Within a matter of weeks I was back at work, pretending nothing had happened. I kept pushing myself harder to show everyone that I was “normal.” I thought I had a pattern: I would function at a high level for many years, and then my depression would be triggered by a significant event. I thought I’d be healthy for another ten years.”

Super shares her experience with electroconvulsive therapy and how her depression recurred with a major life event despite several years of solid mental health. Thankfully, Super was able to recognize her symptoms and get help sooner rather than later.

7 Writing Prompts on Essays About Depression

When writing essays on depression, it can be challenging to think of essay ideas and questions. Here are six essay topics about depression that you can use in your essay.

Depression can be difficult to define and understand. Discuss the definition of depression, and delve into the signs, symptoms, and possible causes of this mental illness. Depression can result from trauma or personal circumstances, but it can also be a health condition due to genetics. In your essay, look at how depression can be spotted and how it can affect your day-to-day life. 

Depression diagnosis can be complicated; this essay topic will be interesting as you can look at the different aspects considered in a diagnosis. While a certain lab test can be conducted, depression can also be diagnosed by a psychiatrist. Research the different ways depression can be diagnosed and discuss the benefits of receiving a diagnosis in this essay.

There are many possible causes of depression; this essay discusses how depression can occur. Possible causes of depression can include trauma, grief, anxiety disorders, and some physical health conditions. Look at each cause and discuss how they can manifest as depression.

There are many different types of depression. This essay topic will investigate each type of depression and its symptoms and causes. Depression symptoms can vary in severity, depending on what is causing it. For example, depression can be linked to medical conditions such as bipolar disorder. This is a different type of depression than depression caused by grief. Discuss the details of the different types of depression and draw comparisons and similarities between them.

Certain genetic traits, socio-economic circumstances, or age can make people more prone to experiencing symptoms of depression. Depression is becoming more and more common amongst young adults and teenagers. Discuss the different groups at risk of experiencing depression and how their circumstances contribute to this risk.

Social media poses many challenges to today’s youth, such as unrealistic beauty standards, cyber-bullying, and only seeing the “highlights” of someone’s life. Can social media cause depression in teens? Delve into the negative impacts of social media when writing this essay. You could compare the positive and negative sides of social media and discuss whether social media causes mental health issues amongst young adults and teenagers.

This essay question poses the question, “can anyone experience depression?” Although those in lower-income households may be prone to experiencing depression, can the rich and famous also experience depression? This essay discusses whether the privileged and wealthy can experience their possible causes. This is a great argumentative essay topic, discuss both sides of this question and draw a conclusion with your final thoughts.

When writing about depression, it is important to study examples of essays to make a compelling essay. You can also use your own research by conducting interviews or pulling information from other sources. As this is a sensitive topic, it is important to approach it with care; you can also write about your own experiences with mental health issues.

Tip: If writing an essay sounds like a lot of work, simplify it. Write a simple 5 paragraph essay instead.

FAQs On Essays About Depression

According to the World Health Organization, about 5% of people under 60 live with depression. The rate is slightly higher—around 6%—for people over 60. Depression can strike at any age, and it’s important that people who are experiencing symptoms of depression receive treatment, no matter their age. 

Suppose you’re living with depression or are experiencing some of the symptoms of depression. In that case, it’s important to work closely with your doctor or another healthcare professional to develop a treatment plan that works for you. A combination of antidepressant medication and cognitive behavioral therapy is a good fit for many people, but this isn’t necessarily the case for everyone who suffers from depression. Be sure to check in with your doctor regularly to ensure that you’re making progress toward improving your mental health.

If you’re still stuck, check out our general resource of essay writing topics .

Amanda has an M.S.Ed degree from the University of Pennsylvania in School and Mental Health Counseling and is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer. She has experience writing magazine articles, newspaper articles, SEO-friendly web copy, and blog posts.

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Personal Stories

Stigma and living with depression.

By Thomas Vreeland

Looking back on my life, I consider myself very fortunate. I married an amazing woman; and we have been married 25 years. We have raised two sons of whom we are very proud. I was raised in a loving, supportive home. Both of my parents were active in my childhood. I served honorably as Marine. Work in a job I enjoy and will be able to work the same job in to retirement. Have a nice home in a safe neighborhood. Have lots of friends and many of my family live nearby.

You hear this and may be thinking “What does he have to complain about?” And you may be right. But I also have a dark side that I don’t let many people see. A side I spent my life ignoring and many times waking hoping it doesn’t surface. It’s a side me I spent a lot of time embarrassed by it. That side of me has a name. Depression.

Those who know me usually never know I suffer depression. I have two sides. The outer self. That is the one most people see. Most of the time, I am able to show that I’m content, joyful, and entertaining; but it takes a lot of energy to maintain it.

The other is my inner self. It is stealthy and lurks in the shadows of my mind as an undercurrent that I seldom talked about, rarely show, or can really even explain.

Before I got a proper diagnosis, and really learned about depression, I misunderstood really what it was – and why I fought so hard to deny it. I misunderstood and thought depression meant being sad, mopey, withdrawn, and moody. Of course, I’ve been all of those things at various times, but I didn’t live like that so I can’t be depressed. However, I was completely off course. It is nothing like I thought it was.

Instead, I refused to face, and wouldn’t share the feelings and thoughts with anyone. I feared that no one would understand and would think I was attention seeking—or worse—lying. I felt I was the only one who was like this. That there was something wrong with me. I had no idea what it was, how to combat it, or what to do about it. So I ignored it.

I’ve had mental illness my whole life. There isn’t a time I can remember where it wasn’t present. It sits there like a fog. Sometimes it is merely a mist, tingling my thoughts. Other times it’s a pervasive thick, dark shroud. It’s the times when the thoughts are darkest that are most debilitating. These are the times that scare me.

It is my hope that my story will help others. Before I started writing this, I asked friends to help me on an experiment. I asked: 1) when they first met me, what was their impression; 2) And over time what do they think of me now.

The responses were overwhelming and positive:

“A stand-up gentleman who was true to his word. Enjoys being with people.” “Resilient and sarcastic.” “A man of integrity, a loyal friend to many, very thoughtful.” “Great guy with a super sense of humor.” “A great friend and excellent teacher.” “Kind, honest, and considerate.” “Principled yet funny.” “Caring and loyal friend.” “I learn and enjoy seeing the world through your eyes.”

Hearing these wonderful words, while cathartic and moving, only frustrates Depression and stokes the fires of self-doubt. The inner self is always chittering away at me. It wants to be surreptitious. It tells me everyone will see me as I really am: an emotional wreck; a procrastinator; a fraud who has managed to fool everyone.

So, instead I “tough it out” and “put on the brave face.” If I pretend it isn’t there, hopefully no one will notice. However, putting on this public persona is emotionally taxing and draining. Eventually it takes its toll. I progressively become numb; and eventually have to completely withdrawal. I stay in that state until it passes – whether a day, several days or sometimes a week.

Although, sometimes it won’t pass. It’s a feeling as though I can’t recharge my drained mental energy. It’s those times when that inner self takes completely over; and I’m filled with unceasing anxiety and utter despair. All I want to do is sleep or cry or hide. I try to fight the feelings, but I sink into depths where I can’t manage them any longer. They become relentless wave that batters me until I have nothing more to fight against it. A fear that I can never get back to being “normal” again.

Sadly, that has happened a few times, and twice with terrible consequences. Those two times I attempted suicide. Looking back, I can remember those nights vividly, and even remember what dark thoughts I had. That utterly scares me.

Yet, through all of this, a life changing event occurred that forced me to face this inner self. I started going to therapy and finally admitted I needed medical help. I explained to my doctor about my depression and anxiety and was referred to a psychiatrist. It took different medicines and adjustments until the right ones worked. When it did, it was life altering. I could finally see through the fog.

Today, that inner self pushes his way in less and less. I don’t think he’ll ever really go away. But when he does come back, I feel empowered to keep him weak with less influence. The journey has been long. But I remain hopeful and look forward to each day.

No matter the great things and accomplishments we have in life, none of those diminish the depression. It’s a pervasive illness that can strike anyone. Just remember we’re never alone. It’s not a weakness to ask for help. There are many out there who love you.

Know the warning signs of mental illness

Learn more about common mental health conditions

NAMI HelpLine is available M-F, 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. ET. Call 800-950-6264 , text “helpline” to 62640 , or chat online. In a crisis, call or text 988 (24/7).

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, college essay on depression.

I've been dealing with depression for a while and I feel like it's played a big part in shaping who I am today. Is it a good idea to write my college essay about it? Will admissions officers view it negatively? Any insights would be appreciated.

Writing about depression in your college essay can be a powerful and meaningful way to share your personal experiences and reflect on your growth. However, it's essential to approach the topic thoughtfully and carefully, as mental health is a sensitive subject.

1. Focus on growth and resilience: Instead of primarily describing your struggles with depression, emphasize how you've navigated those challenges and grown as a result. Discuss coping strategies, support systems, and other positive changes you've made that have helped you move forward.

2. Show self-awareness: Demonstrate an understanding of your situation and acknowledge your progress, while still recognizing that recovering from depression is an ongoing journey. This can give college admissions officers a sense of maturity and emotional intelligence on your part.

3. Keep it relevant to your college goals: Connect your experiences with depression to your educational and career aspirations. Perhaps overcoming depression has influenced your choice of major, or it has motivated you to engage in volunteer work or other extracurricular activities.

4. Seek feedback from trusted individuals: Ask someone you trust, like a teacher or counselor, to review your essay and provide input. Their perspectives can ensure that you're discussing depression sensitively and that your essay is appropriate for college admissions officers.

5. Be cautious of oversharing: While it's important to be genuine and authentic, avoid revealing deeply personal or disturbing details about your mental health struggles. Some admissions officers may not be comfortable with this level of disclosure, and it could overshadow your accomplishments and other positive aspects of your application.

In summary, writing about depression in your college essay is a personal choice. If you can present your experiences in a thoughtful, growth-focused manner, and connect your journey to your future goals, then it may be a powerful and effective essay topic. However, always consider seeking feedback from trusted individuals to ensure you are addressing the topic appropriately.

About CollegeVine’s Expert FAQ

CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

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What Does Depression Feel Like?

• Identify Your Emotions
• Cope With Your Emotions
• When You Feel Lonely
• When You Feel Emotional
• When You Feel Unappreciated
• When You Feel a Loss of Interest
• When You Feel Irritable
• When You Feel Tired
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• When You Feel Unhappy
• When You Feel Helpless
• When You Feel Hopeless

Sara Lindberg, M.Ed., is a freelance writer focusing on mental health, fitness, nutrition, and parenting. 

Carly Snyder, MD is a reproductive and perinatal psychiatrist who combines traditional psychiatry with integrative medicine-based treatments.

Verywell / Laura Porter

What Depression May Feel Like

• According to People With Depression
• Types of Depression
• Common Signs and Symptoms
• Tips for Friends and Family
• Next in Small Ways to Feel Better When You're Depressed Guide How to Identify Your Emotions When You’re Depressed

Sadness is something we all experience from time to time. For some, this feeling is temporary and goes away on its own. But for others, this persistent feeling of emptiness, unhappiness, and hopelessness becomes a regular part of their day.

If your mood has changed over the last few weeks and engaging in routine daily tasks is getting more difficult, you may have depression , and you're not alone.

Depression is one of the most common mental health disorders in the United States. According to data from 2017, it is estimated that 17.3 million adults aged 18 or older in the United States had a least one major depressive episode in the past year.

Depression, a mood disorder that can cause mild to severe symptoms , can affect how you feel, think, and manage daily activities.

Many people believe that depression needs to be debilitating and cause significant problems in their life in order to seek help. What they don’t realize is that some of the more subtle signs of this disorder are often the first indication that something is going on. Here are some examples of how depression may feel to you.

• Depression feels like there is no pleasure or joy in life. According to Anjani Amladi , MD, a board-certified psychiatrist, it’s so much more than being sad. According to Amladi, “depression robs people of things they once loved, and for many people, they feel like nothing will bring them joy again.” 
• Concentration and focus become much more difficult, which makes any kind of decision-making challenging. Amladi says that sometimes people describe this as being in a fog as they are unable to think clearly or follow what is happening around them.
• For many with depression, it feels like there is no way out. Everything feels hopeless like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Amladi says this can lead to a feeling of failure and worthlessness. In more serious cases, it can lead to suicidal thoughts or actions.
• Depression also has a significant impact on sleep. This often manifests as trouble falling asleep, staying asleep, frequent nighttime awakening, or feeling tired upon waking despite getting an adequate number of hours of sleep. “This can lead to a feeling of exhaustion and low energy which can prevent people from even being able to get out of bed, or perform daily activities like showering, eating and brushing their teeth,” Amladi says. 
• Sometimes depression can be physically painful. Amladi says it is not unusual for people with depression to feel body aches, headaches, muscle tension, and even nausea.

Information presented in this article may be triggering to some people. If you are having suicidal thoughts, contact the  National Suicide Prevention Lifeline  at  988  for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911. 

For more mental health resources, see our  National Helpline Database .

How It Feels According to People With Depression

Leela R. Magavi , MD, psychiatrist, and regional medical director for Community Psychiatry , says the most common question asked in her practice is: "How does depression feel?"

“Some people ask me this question for comfort and to ensure that they are not alone with their experience, while others feel so confused by their tumultuous feelings that they struggle to clearly identify their inner experience,” she says. 

With that in mind, here are some of the responses Magavi hears in her sessions:

• "Depression feels like a weight on my chest, which brings me down everywhere I go."
• "Depression is receiving praise at work but still feeling worthless."
• "Depression is the loneliness I feel when I see other couples and families laughing and enjoying their lives."
• "Depression is feeling like I am a failure as a person, family member, and friend."
• "Depression is when I cannot take care of my children because I cannot take care of myself."
• "Depression is not brushing my hair and teeth because I simply cannot move."
• "Depression is smiling when others laugh, hiding behind the fabricated mask, and wishing I could just disappear."
• "Depression is my life and shadow, which haunts me every day."

Christian Sismone, someone who has dealt with depression and anxiety her entire life, says it’s important to provide a non-clinical perspective. She shares these examples:

• “Depression makes my mind feel like a turtle running in chunky peanut butter.” Sismone says this is most evident when she is not able to have clear thoughts. 
• “Depression feels like I'm suffocating in my emotions, and at times I feel as though I can breathe, but only through a straw.” Being someone who attempted to end their life 10 years ago, Sismone says the complicated emotion of depression can feel too great.
• “Depression can feel like an old friend that doesn't quite fit, but you know the ins and outs.” For Sismone, learning how to work with depression instead of running away from it, helped her move forward.

What Are the Different Types of Depression?

Since depression is such a complex disorder, it can be difficult to define and diagnose with just one set of generalized criteria. Because of this, other categories define different types of depression. 

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, the two most common forms of depression are major or clinical depression and persistent depressive disorder.

Major depression is the most commonly diagnosed form of depression characterized as having symptoms of depression most of the day, nearly every day for at least two weeks that interferes with your ability to work, sleep, study, eat, and enjoy life.

Persistent depressive disorder dysthymia is diagnosed after a person has symptoms of depression that last for at least two years. 

Other forms of depression include: 

• Perinatal or prepartum depression , which occurs during pregnancy.
• Postpartum depression , which after pregnancy and childbirth. 
• Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) , which features depressive episodes that come and go with the seasons.
• Psychotic depression , which co-occurs with one other form of psychosis.
• Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PDD) , which is a severe extension of premenstrual syndrome.

Common Signs and Symptoms of Depression

Depressive symptoms can range from mild to severe and include:

• Loss of interest or pleasure in actives you used to enjoy
• Feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, and pessimism (expecting only bad things to occur)
• Irritability
• Difficulty sleeping 
• Changes in appetite 
• Lack of energy
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
• Increase in aches and pains, headaches, digestive problems
• Lack of self-care (not bathing, grooming, etc)
• Withdraw from social activities
• Thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts

Tips for Friends and Family 

If you have a friend or loved one dealing with depression, you might be wondering if there are things you should look or listen for. The good news, according to Kevin Gilliland, PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist and executive director of Innovation360, is you don’t need to have a great understanding of what depression feels like to you, just try to be curious about what depression feels like for them.

His advice? Try to understand it enough so that you stay aware of the symptoms and look for the little things that indicate your loved one is doing well or that they are struggling.

“What’s most important is that we are trying to care for them and when we are aware of their struggle, we can check on them and ask what we can do to help, ” Gilliland says. 

A Word From Verywell

Depression is a serious mental health issue. Although symptoms can look different depending on the severity, it’s not uncommon to experience many of the feelings described above.

That said, if you’re experiencing more than a few symptoms of depression or are worried that your symptoms are worsening, it may be time to schedule an appointment with your doctor or mental health expert. 

National Institute of Mental Health. Depression Basics.

National Institute of Mental Health. Major Depression .

By Sara Lindberg, M.Ed Sara Lindberg, M.Ed., is a freelance writer focusing on mental health, fitness, nutrition, and parenting.

Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Mental Health — My Struggle with Anxiety and Depression

My Struggle with Anxiety and Depression

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Published: Mar 16, 2024

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Personal experience, impact on college students, factors contributing to anxiety and depression in college students, seeking support and treatment.

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“Eat your vegetables! Exercise! Get a good night's sleep!” We’ve all known to take care of our bodies since grade school P. E. class. But what about our mental health, isn’t mental health just as important as physical health? [...]

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Depression affects 1 in 5 people. Here's what it feels like.

Few mental health conditions are as misunderstood or as mischaracterized as depression . Among mental health professionals, it's known to be a debilitating disorder that can rob people of motivation, happiness and even hope. But among others, the word "depressed" is often tossed about casually or is used synonymously with having a bad day, feeling bummed out or experiencing temporary moments of sadness or melancholy. 

Such feelings can, of course, be symptoms of depression ; but occasionally experiencing such feelings when connected to a disappointing turn of events and being diagnosed with clinical depression are two very different things. "The impact of depression on a person's emotional and physical well-being is enormous," says Norman Rosenthal, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School. 

What does depression feel like? 

Indeed, clinical depression is often described as constant or frequent feelings of apathy, hopelessness, helplessness, or of feeling so overwhelmed or disconnected from other persons or events that it becomes difficult to even carry out day-to-day tasks or responsibilities. Some people with depression experience reduced feelings of pleasure or a loss of interest in hobbies or activities they used to be passionate about. "The patients I work with sometimes describe feeling empty, numb, or hollow," says Natalie Christine Dattilo, PhD, a clinical & health psychologist and founder of Priority Wellness based in Boston, Massachusetts. "Feelings of deep sadness or despair can come in waves - sometimes unexpectedly - and envelope them," she adds. 

What is languishing? Alonely? A mental health glossary to explain what you're feeling

Other signs of depression that Rosenthal looks out for include no longer enjoying one's life, a loss of meaning or purpose, feelings of pessimism about the future, persistent trouble eating or sleeping , trouble at work or within one's personal relationships, or, at worst, feeling like life is no longer worth living. "Depression is a leading cause of suicide ," he says. 

"Many of my therapy clients describe depression as a 'fog' or 'heaviness' that lingers over them and makes it difficult for them to experience happiness or contentment," echoes Jameca Woody Cooper, PhD, a psychologist and adjunct professor at Webster University in Missouri.

How common is depression?

Such symptoms are even more worrisome when you consider how common they are. "Almost 30% of people are estimated to have been diagnosed with depression at some time in their lifetime," says Rosenthal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  estimates the current number of U.S. adults suffering from depression to be at being nearly 1 in 5 - with women being more impacted than men by a difference of 24% to 13.3%.

And depression rates don't seem to be slowing. Already, the  World Health Organization  recognizes anxiety and depressive disorders as the two most common mental health challenges, and the organization has "projected that depression will rank first by 2030," says John Krystal, MD, a professor of psychiatry, neuroscience and psychology at Yale Department of Psychiatry.

How to treat depression

Despite its debilitating nature and prevalence, there is hope for people suffering from depression. "There are many effective treatments for depression, and they often work best in combination with one another," says Rosenthal. Some natural remedies include adjusting one's diet , spending more time outside, journaling, socializing and exercise . Each of these and several other practices have been shown to alleviate at least some symptoms of depression. 

Professional help is another place to turn. "Many people seek help initially from therapists, counselors or religious leaders," says Krystal. "For more severe and persistent symptoms, it is common for people to be treated with psychotherapy ." 

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is one such form of psychotherapy that's effective at challenging and correcting one's reasoning behind negative thoughts, behaviors, or patterns. "CBT is an evidence-based therapy widely considered to be one of the most effective non-medication-based treatments for depression," Dattilo explains. "For more severe cases of depression, medication therapy may be recommended." There are several types or classes of antidepressants available that are proven to be effective against depression and have been approved by the  U.S. Food and Drug Administration . Such drugs come with side effects and risks of their own, however, which should be weighed and considered with the help of a mental health professional. 

"Talk to your doctor if you think you might be experiencing symptoms of depression ," advises Datillo. "They can evaluate you further and make a recommendation for care."

If you or someone you know needs support for mental health, suicidal thoughts or substance abuse call, text or chat:

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: 988 and  988lifeline.org

BlackLine: 800-604-5841 and  callblackline.com

Trans Lifeline: 877-565-8860 and  translifeline.org

Veterans Crisis Line: Dial 988 and press 1 to talk to someone; send a text message to 988 ;  or chat  988lifeline.org