Depression Talk

A multi-country study of babies pubished in Psychiatry Research suggests that babies who spent some time in an incubator after popping out of the womb were 2 to 3 times less likely to develop depression when they become adults. The theory is that the incubator acts like a surrogate womb and help eases the newborn’s transition to the real world. Who the heck was funding this study? The makers of baby incubators?

Study Specifics

The study took place from 1986 to 2007 on 1212 kindergarteners in the Quebec area. The study didn’t go into why Quebec kindergarteners were spotlighted. Is Quebec a particularly depressing place to live? Oh, Canada. Anyway, the kindergartener’s birth records were looked at and then they were updated every once in a while until they turned 21 to see if they were depressed or not.

Things factored into the study were “family adversity”, gender, birth weight and maternal depression. I have been trying to discover what they study means by “maternal depression” (does it mean the mother was depressed before she got pregnant or post-partum depression?) Whether or not both parents had depression does not seem to have been a factor and for that reason, I really can’t take this study seriously.

All Teenagers Are Depressed

Ok, I don’t mean that with 100% seriousness, but have you ever met a teenager or college kid who wasn’t depressed? And if they weren’t depressed then narcotics were usually involved somehow. The human race is, what 4 or 5 million years old and the reason most of us get depressed is because we didn’t have an incubator after birth? If that were true, then how did our species survive for so long?

Can’t Ignore Genetics

Studies on identical twins (with identical genetic makeup) raised has shown that both twins wind up with depression a whopping 76% of the time. One starts manifesting symptoms and then the other one does, too. If both parents have bipolar disorder, then all of their children have a 50 - 75% chance of also going through the hell that is bipolar disorder.

And, in a very informal study done on my part, everyone I know who has depression has had at least one parent that’s been diagnosed with depression (if they knew who their parents were, that is).

Although it’s usually the voters who wind up feeling blue, there have been many politicians who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or major depression. Until the 1990’s, no politician who actually wanted to stay in office could admit to being depressed. The stigma of metal illness and insanity would doom that politician to a career change. Depression or melancholia was something kept very private.

It seems we insitictively look to the physcially perfect in order to be our leaders - and depression also falls into the “imperfect” category. In some ancient cultures, if a sitting king or chief was discovered to have a physical flaw — even due to age — he was not only removed from power but often executed.

Abraham Lincoln

He didn’t wear black all the time as a fashion statement. We only have his letters, writings and doctor’s notes to go on, but many experts agree that Abraham Lincoln, generally considered America’s greatest President, had major depression. Going through the Civil War and the death of a beloved son intensified his already strong depression. How he managed to get out of bed every day and eventually run the country is nothing short of a miracle.

Winston Churchill

It is thought that England’s most famous Prime Minister suffered from bipolar disorder (called manic depression in England). Churchill wrote a lot about … well, just about everything, and so scholars got more than just a peek into Churchill’s moods and thoughts. He apparantly called his down states “the Black Dog”.

Senator Thomas Eagleton

I hear you saying “Who?” His biggest claim to fame was, in 1972, being the Vice Presidential Canidate to George McGovern — for a mere 18 days. Then, it was discovered that he had clinical depression so severe that in the past he needed shock therapy. What happened to Eagleton happened to any politician discovered to have depression — he was dropped like a hot potato.

Lawton Chiles

Although admitting he had depression and was on Prozac, he was still elected a two-term govenor of Florida. He died while in office in 1998 and is remembered fondly by many Floridians to this day. In many obituaries about him, there is only a passing reference to his depression, if that. He was known for championing health care reform.

One reason why people with depression do not seek treatment is because they don’t want to be branded as “insane”. Being diagnosed with depression does not automatically mean that you are insane. Although all types of depression are considered mental illnesses, being mentally ill does not mean that you are insane. You’re just mentally ill, which means you are just ill.

I Must Be Crazy

There is a certain underlying fear in many with depression that they are loosing their grip on reality and will eventually loose all control of their personalities, words, thoughts, actions, friends, family and posessions. “If they just knew the REAL me,” the thought is, “then they’d lock me away.”

This certainty that you might be crazy is exactly why you are not crazy. Often with depression, you are miserable for no reason at all. Nothing can cheer you up. You may not be able to taste food or get any pleasure from even sleep. Now, if you’ve lost everything in a tornado and feel depressed, you never doubt that you are sane. You just lost everything in a tornado. Anyone would be depressed after gong through that. If you were happy as a lark, then you’d be locked away.

Why? Because being increedibly happy after a disaster is not normal and not healthy.

Yet, neither is feeling miserable when nothing bad seems to have happened. And yet, you feel miserable and out of control anyway. This feeling as if you are going crazy is your body’s way of saying, “Go to the doctor, already!”

The Regular Irregular

People with depression, even bipolar disorder, can often hold down jobs, pay bills and appear to live normal lives. They can do this for years until there is an inevitable breakdown. But even after a breakdown, they can very often go back to appearing to live a normal life.

But are depressives abnormal? Not really. Of course, I can’t peek into the thoughts of every single person on the planet, but many people (no matter what their mental health) will often feel bad in some way. They will often feel as if people knew who they really are, then no one would like them. The only difference in depressives is that this thought can become so obsessive, it takes away all of the joys of life.

Just in case you were wondering, there isn’t really an official Catholic patron saint of depression — but there is one for mental ilness. Since depression is considered a mental illness, this is about as close to we’re going to get. Although I’m not Catholic, I love to learn about mythology. It’s also good to know how other cultures perceive your depression.

And despite St. John’s Wort being touted as a nautral antidepressant, the herb was not given its name because St. John had anythign to do with depression. The herb got the name because it bloomed around St. John’s Feast Day (also known as Midsummer).

Say Hello to Saint Dympna

St. Dympna had the twisted and tragic life that typifies the more interesting of the Catholic Saints. Since she is supposed to have lived in the 600s in Ireland, it can’t be proven whether she really lived or not. However, most myths are based in reality, so it’s highly possible that Dympna was either based on an old long-lost Celtic myth or from a real person. She’s also known as Dymphna and Davnet.

Dympna was not the one who had the mental illness. It was her father Damon, a Pagan leader of some sort. (As a Pagan myself, I won’t take offence). After her mother (a Christian) died, Dympna’s father ordered her to wed him. Well, like the good Catholic Saint she’d be, she refused the admittedly creepy thought of having her marry her Dad, so she took off for parts unknown with the help of her Christian priest.

She and the male priest ran off to Antwerp and did tons of miracles to help the sick and the poor. There’s appraently nothing in the story about anyone raising their eyebrows at the sight of a lone, nubile young female travelling with a male in a priest’s uniform. Sure he was her priest. Right.

Anyway, Dad Damon catches up with the pair and beheads them. End of story.

Death Becomes Her

Dympna apprently has had a busy time of it after her head and her body parted ways. She’s not only the patron siant of mental illnesses, but also of epilepsy, sleepwalking and posessed people. Oddly enough, serotonin is thought to play a part not only in depression and epilespsy, but also migraines (which definitely make you feel possessd).

Either that or bitchy Dympna causes all of the problems because she had a bad childhood.

When Mary Jo Codey, the former First Lady of New Jersey, admitted she had postpartum depression, money was allocated to make educational videos about this powerful disorder. This YouTube clip is one of the results. In my humble opinion, it’s one of the best educational videos on the subject ever made, as it’s not fear-mongering and rather hopeful. It also has a very nice soundtrack.

One of the nice things is that they showed testimonies of women with postpartum depression from a few races. Generally, when I see a video or news story on post partum depression, it’s only white women who talk. Unfortunately, post partum depression is not a white woman’s burden. No matter what your ethnic background or genetic makeup, if you’ve got ovaries, you’ve got a chance of getting post partum depression.

Yet another reason not to have kids, folks.

My only quibble is that the video never explains what a “partum” is. What is a “partum”, anyway? Let’s look it up. The Free Dictionary says it means post partum“>”after parturition”. Great. What’s “parituition” mean? It’s a fancy word for “childbirth”.

I guess when you’re born, you’re parted from your mother. So, birth “parts ‘em”. Oh, never mind. Just watch the video and see you next week.

Although clinical depression is often seen in illnesses like migraine disease and epilepsy, it’s now thought that it’s common in patients with heart problems, too. This is the finding of the American Psychiatric Association, anyway. It is unknown why heart disease and clinical depression seem to pop up together, just like it’s unknown why migraines and depression often pop up together.

The Findings

The APA claims that about 20% of all people with heart disease also have all of the signs of clinical depression and yet are not diagnosed with clinical depression. So far, they are not sure if the clinical depression sets in before or after the heart problems manifest. But the APA strongly recommends that anyone that has been diagnosed with cardiovascular problems should also seriously consider that they have clinical depression, too and get treatment. This is especially important in men, who are reluctant to admit that they might have clinical depression. African-American men seem to be the most reluctant to get help for depression.

Diagnosis Problems

That people with clinical depression haven’t been diagnosed shouldn’t be a surprise. Although there is still a stigma attatched to having a mental illness, it’s the thought of having to pay for treatment which puts many people off. “I already have an expensive condition with cardiovascular disease — I can’t afford to treat anything else.”

If you really can’t afford therapy or metal health help, you can ask your social worker or your local Respresntative if there are any state-run programs that could help you get access to low cost or free mental health services. That’s what I did. Big thanks to the kind staff at Representative Nick Micozzi’s office in Clifton Heights. (Micozzi — the only Republican I’ve ever voted for).

When you have clinical depression, you just assume that you can’t afford to get help. You also might think that you CAN’T be helped. I had both of those assumptions, but have been helped. Of course, I could have been helped sooner if I had just went to get help sooner than I did. But, well — you live, you learn.

And I don’t have heart disease (knock on wood).

When you have depression, it can be very hard to explain how you feel to someone who does not have depression. It’s like trying to talk to an alien from another planet. Depression affects all areas of your life, including the way you think, feel, make decisions and just about anything else. These feelings can be seemingly incomprehensible to someone who has no clue as to what depression feeels like. Even with all of those funky “Depression Hurts” advertisements from Cymbalta, many of the non-depressed still haven’t a clue.

So, if you’re dealing with someone who doesn’t know what you are going through (the non-depressed), you can print this post out and shove it under his or her nose.

Picture If you Will…

Imagine you are lockined in a pitch black closet and can’t find the door. Then, imagine that this house gets caught up in a F-5 tornado. So, depression feels like you are in a locked, pitch-dark closet caught inside of a tornado.

And you feel this way all of the time.

Get It Now?

When I was homeless in England, I had a lot of time to come up with metaphors to describe what deprssion feels like. Not all of the other homeless I met had depression. Many were addicts, which is not the same thing as depression. I remember one white-haired fellow pulling on his can of Special Brew who asked me skeptically, “So, wuzzit feel like to ‘ave depression, then?”

I told him the above description.

He nodded, blinked for a while and then said, “Wow. I had to go through twenty years and thousands of pounds worth of chemicals to get to feel like that. And you were born with it!”

Varying Degress

The tornado you’re in slows down every now and then when you have depression. Sometimes, it even stops and you finally get to see that there is a way out of the closet. But, eventually, you somehow seem to get back in that closet in the middle of Tornado Alley. It ’s the feeling of not being able to find a way out is what it’s like living with depression day in, day out.

Well, it’s not a perfect metaphor, but hopefully this will help those without depression understand what depression feels like.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is often mistaken for a type of depression. Granted, when I do research on OCD and how it differs from depression, my eyes tend to glaze over. People who have OCD often have depression, too. Depression never likes to be alone and often brings a few other diseases and illnesses, too. But depression and OCD are two different mental illnesses, although they are often treated with the same medications.

That Hand-Washing Thing

People with OCD often can hold down a job, but only after going through certain rituals. (Just ask Howie Mandel). The most famous (or infamous) of these rituals is washing your hands more time than you breathe. Rituals can be anything from handwashing to repeating a certain word a certain number of times to making sure that all of the fringes on rugs lay in acertain way.

We all do rituals. Many people say a blessing of some sort over dinner. Others make a wish berfore blowing out birthday candles. These are rituals. But most people tend to not feel as if the sky will fall if they don’t perform these rituals. People with OCD take well over an hour a day just to perform these rituals.

With depression (or at least clinical depression) you don’t want to do much of anything, let alone rituals. There isn’t much of a point doing rituals to stop the sky from falling because it’s already crashed and burned long ago.

Treatments

Treatments for OCD and depression tend to merge. Both can be put on tricyclic or SSRI antidepressants and then urged to seek cognitive-behavior therapy in order to help adjust their thoughts and habits. It’s still controversial as to whether shock therapy gives any long term help for either the worst types of depression or OCD. It is used only if drugs and talk therapy are completely useless.

Another similarity is that people with depression and/or OCD can eventually mange it.

When I lived in England, one of my favorite actors that I’d hear on the radio or watch on TV was Stephen Fry, known best in America as the quinessential butler Jeeves to Hugh Laurie’s bumbling Wooster. I thought him one of the most elegant of actors with classic English self-control, never at a loss for razor sharp sarcasm. Little did I and just about everyone else knew that he had manic depression (bipolar disorder). He even tried to commit suicide when he starred in a successful play in London’s West End.

He and the BBC made a documentary about manic depression in 2006 which everyone else in the world seems to have heard of but me. Keep in mind that “bipolar disorder” is not a common term in England. They prefer to use the older name, “manic depression.” Some people in America find that name derrogatory, but there is nothing mean implied in the use.

Even if you don’t know who Stephen Fry is, you can still trust him as a host into what it’s like to be a manic depressive. He turns a lot of complicated concepts into basic English (British English, as oppossed to American English, but you’ll soon get the drift, Yanks.)

Joining Stephen Fry in this clip is British pop star Robbie Williams, who is one of the most recognized celebrities in the UK. He has major depression and makes a vivid contrast to Fry’s manic depression. Kudos to whoever nabbed this documentary and put it up on YouTube.

There’s no shame in taking medication. However, many people suffering from any type of depression feel resentful at having to take medication in order to feel better. Part of this reason is the cost of the antidepressants. Another is fear of becoming addicted to a certain prescription drug. So, when you are diagnosed as having a type of depression, how long can you expect to be taking antidepressants?

Different For Everyone

Unfortunately, because everyone’s depression effects them in a unique way, the antidepressants also hit in a unique way. Some people may only need them for six months. Some people may need them for the rest of their lives. I happen to fall into the latter category. I have been able to reduce the amount of Prozac I need in a day, but I will most likely need at least 10 milligraims of it every day until I croak. I might even need it in the afterlife.

Medication Is Medication

Would you deny yourself taking an over the counter painkiller for a headache? Or taking antibiotics for an infection? Probably not. Major depression and othe types of depression do have physical causes, such as getting an infection is a physical cause. You’re not going to win any points anywhere by denying yourself the medication.

Of course, you shouldn’t pop pills when you don’t need to take them. That can not only lead to drug addiction, but also to a lot more physical problems that you really don’t need. Also, more isn’t better in the case of any medication.

What About Natural Remedies?

Treat any herbal remedy or any alternative remedy with the same respect and caution that you would with a man-made medicine. Herbs, foods and nutritional supplements are powerful things. Just ask anyone who’s eaten too much bran. Be sure you let your doctor know about all of the natural remedies you are taking or would like to take. Sometimes herbs and antidepressants can clash.

Do we need any more proof that we are in a recession?  After 15 years, the teen sucide rate has risen in America instead of dropped, according to a new study published in the September 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.  It took a while to crunch the numbers, so the study cuts off in 2005, meaning that the teen suicide rate rose during 2004 and 2005. It is still unknown how high the rate is for 2006 and 2007.

Study Specifics

The study was performed by Jeff Bridge of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital of Columbus, Ohio. He looked at teen suicide rates from 1996 - 2003, which were steradily dropping. He found a sudden 18% increase for 2004 - 5. Bridge has a more liberal definition of “teen”, meaning kids from the ages of 10 - 19.

Why the Increase?

In October of 2003, there was alot of quibbling in Congress over black box warning labels to be put on antidepressants. This happened as a result of many teens with clinical depression being put on Paxil and then, instead of getting better, they offed themselves. Please note that any antidepressant can make you feel suddenly suicidal, no matter what your age. If you are taking a new antidepressant and feel worse than ever before, please call your doctor or therapist.

There is a theory that pressure on doctors as a result of Paxil suicides are making doctors too leery about perscribing them to teenagers. Should all of the warnings be taken off antidepressants?

No

The president of the National Research Center for Women & Families, Diana Zuckerman, claims that there are many reasons why teens commit suicide. I think we all can see that the economy sucks. There’s injustice everywhere, catastrophic climate change and many news sources saying that the next generation will be worse off than previous American generations. Add to that the hormonal tidal wave teens go through, schools, peer pressure and no wonder they think of committing suicide.

Teens are more likely to think of suicide because they haven’t learned the coping skills that adults have, even adults with clinical depression. There usually isn’t just one cause that sets a teen planning to commit suicide — it’s usually a cyclone of factors.

One of the annoying things about having depression is that the word “depression” is used fopr many different things. If you say you have depression, the person listening might think you mean one thing when you mean something else. Until we can shake up the language of depression a bit, we’re going to have to cross our fingers that people know about the types of depression.

Momentary Sadness

This is the least severe type of depression and does not need any medical treatment. It’s a very strong emotion that happens due to grief, shock, bad news or change in medication. There is a direct cause and when that cause changes, the depression goes away. This can last anywhere from an hour to a couple of months.

Clinical Depression

Now we get into nastier territory that does require medical treatment. Clinical depression has undergone some name changes over the years. Many doctors now refer to it as “major depression”. This is when feeling sad, hopeless and tired just does not go away. There are days that are worse than others, but for the most part you are on a perpetual downer. There does not have to be a direct cause to set the symptoms off.

Manic Depression (Bipolar Disorder)

Made famous by the Jimi Hendrix song and what people with clinical depression are often accussed of having. This is a very severe mental disorder that can be crippling to the sufferer. You go through two cycles — being manic and being depressed. The manic cycles are where you are so bursting with energy that the planet can’t hold you. You do very harmful things to yourself, your financies and your future. And then, you crash.

Seaonal Depressive Disorder

Known as SAD, appropritately enough, this is where you have the symptoms of clinical depression — but only during winter. You do need to see the doctor about this type of depression, too.

Post Partum Depression

What Tom Cruise claims doesn’t exist, but most certainly does. This happens to women after they’ve given birth. The good news is that we know more about post-partum depression than ever before and it does usually go away. You do still need to see a doctor about it, because it can be incredibly intense, even with thoughts of murdeing the baby.

There are many shades in between of these broad types of depression. For example, the clinical depression that I have is endogenous recurring depression. It means I’ve got the blues all of the time for no known reason.

Spike Milligan was arguably the largest influence on comedy in Western civilization. The main writer of the wildly popular BBC radio show The Goon Show, his brand of surreal humor would go on to teach a whole generation how to be funny in the midst of calamity through his bastard step-children, Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The actual epitaph on his gravestone reads, “I told you I was ill.” He was considered a genius as well as being extrememly funny.

And he was also bipolar.

If anyone would know how to survive through depression — including manic depression, which is just about the worst type of depression to mankind — it would be Spike Milligan. Depression and How to Survive It (1994) is mostly written by his doctor, Anthony W. Clare, but also contains large patches authored by Milligan or transcribed from interview tapes.

Not Funny

Even though Milligan was the comdeic genius of the millenium, don’t expect any laughs with this book. It is a grim but very through account of what it’s like to suffer from manic depression. Even if you don’t have manic depression and “merely” have clincial depression, you can still learn a lot, including tidbids about Milligan’s dealings with the late great Peter Sellers.

This is a serious look at depression as it was in 1994 — which isn’t all that much different than how it is today. Particularly enlightening is how depression is described by peple who live in Asian cultures, who refer to it in terms of physical and mot emotional symtpoms. There is a lot of small print, endnotes and references, but you don’t have to read every dingle itty-bitty word inorder to get the gist.

Overall

I read this book when I lived in England — and Spike Milligan was still alive and giving out pithy quotes. I could only borrow it a week — and that wasn’t long enough to get through it throughly. Parts of the book are so grim that you might feel even more depressed than before you read them.

You don’t need to read the book in order. You can skip around and read bits of it here and there and still not loose the plot.

What struck me the most was that this genius, honored in his lifetime, thought of himself as a total failure. I think a lot of people can relate to that.

I’ll freely admit it — I tried to commit suicide when attending Millersville University. Obviously, I screwed it up. That was way back in 1990, long before I would ever become the Prozac Poster Child that I am today. The pressure I was under was amazing — but it wasn’t from my courses. They were the easy part. The pressure was from my clinical depression.

It fueled a constant fear that I was screwing my life up being an English major. What if being an English major turned out to have been a dumb choice? I was so scared of picking a major, that I let my Mom pick my major.

If you remember nothing else from this post, remember this — choose ANY other major but English.

The Study

Seems that not much has changed for the average college student since 1990. A study done by the University of Texas in Austin reports that about half of all of the college and university students they talked to had suicidal thoughts. And they didn’t just survey a handful — they talked to about 26,000 students in over 70 institutions of higher learning.

Among the findings:

• In a college of 18,000 students, about 1080 will “seriously” think about killing themselves suring the course of one year.
• About two-thirds will think about killing themselves more than once in that year.
• Five percent were brave enough to admit that they had tried to kill themselves at some point in their lives.

Other findings, straight from the source. The emphasis is mine:

Why College?

You’re under a complex series of hammer-blows while in college. First off, you’re not eating and sleeping regularly, so that’s going to accentuate any depression you may have. Also, you’re under a massive finacial burden that will be with you for the next fifteen years or so. For example, I was told point-blank by my parents that I had to get a degree in four years, because our family couldn’t afford for me to go another semester. (Somehow, I received an Associate’s and a Bachelor’s in four years. Yes, I was scared.)

Another pressure is that you are mourning the last remains of your childhood. That’s hard to give up, even if you had a bad childhood. You are expected to be the dull, boring grown-up you swore you’d never be.

This and many more pressures can cause suicidal thoughts in college students, even the night before graduation.

This is the usual reaction people get when they reveal that they are clinically depressed. Personally, I think it should be a law that if anyone asks you that and you have diagnosed by a doctor with depression, then you should be allowed to punch any idiot who says this right in the mouth. (Opinions like these are probably why I never got into law). They might as well ask a cancer patient, “What have you got to be sick about?” Same question — different illness.

It’s Not Your Fault That You Have Depression

Clincial depression or bipolar disorder (another kind of depression) are still often thought to be character flaws or punishment from God about some misdemeanor you did in your past. I used to go to a strict Christian school where you were screamed at for being a sinner and not trusting in God enough should you happen to slip up and admidt you were feeling depressed. I graduated from that school in 1987 and I hope they still don’t take that appraoch with their students, but you never know. People hate to change cherished beliefs. For example, I came across this debate on Helium, “Bipolar Disorder: Illness or Excuse?”

We do not know why some people get clincially depressed or get anixety disorder or get bipolar disorder. We do know that it seems to run in families, but how did those families get in the first place? One thing for sure is that depression doesn’t come about because you are somehow “bad”.

It Is A Mental Illness

Clinical depression and it’s bretheren are illnesses of the brain function, thought to be problems in the brain’s chemistry. But, due to the stigma associated with mental illnesses, many people who don’t have clinical depression asssume that all people with mental illnesses need to be locked up and are incurably dangerous.

Clinical depression is a mental illness, but many people with it can still function in society, holding down a job, paying the bills, whatever. It is not because we woke up one day and thought, “I know what. I’ll be miserable for the rest of my life!”

Depression isn’t a choice. It’s an illness. And, oftentimes, a manageable one. So, you do have something to be depressed about, even when others can’t see it.