The depressing depression thread

[the_lone_bard]

All I have to say, is I'm stealing your description of Anxiety. I only suffer attacks, not in general, and I always struggled to describe it in a relatable way. The best I ever came up with was that it's like when you're a kid, and something absolutely terrified you, to the point you honestly thought you were going to die. Not like "Mum's gonna be pissed!" like "Oh god if I fall off this giant (2inch) ledge I'm going to die." a feeling of complete and utter dread tied to nothing in particular and permeating everything.

Yours is a lot more relatable.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Oh, hey, happy to oblige.

I've had panic attacks, too. Not frequently, thank god, but I have had them. I've found those are worse than a GAD episode. They feel like you're having a heart attack, or are about to pass out. Though you probably know about all that...

Then there are the emotional/cognitive symptoms, too, which I didn't really talk about. I understand there's a difference there between GAD and Panic Disorder. With GAD it's more ruminative - running a worry around in your head for days, over-thinking it, and being convinced of the worst.

Accidentally ran a stop sign on a deserted road in the middle of nowhere? Spend the next week convinced you're going to jail forever. Afraid that every knock at the door and ring of the phone is the police. Quite literally insane.

[2stepz]

Is there a term of the feeling that happens when your thoughts and your feelings are in conflict? I have been fighting this a lot lately... when my brain tells me one thing, but my feelings say something else? I hate it... oh do I hate it.

[Elomin Sha]

Ambivalence.

[the_lone_bard]

I thought ambivalence was just not giving a shit about anything.

[AdmiralMemo]

That's apathy. Ambivalence means "the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone."

Ambivalence has come to be synonymous with apathy in common parlance, though, like literally means figuratively and such.

This is one of the parts I hate about language evolution. If you're going to redefine something like that, at least give the original definition another word to use when you actually mean the other thing.

Language is about communication, and if you can't communicate well, language isn't doing its job.

[AdmiralMemo]

Apparently, research is coming to show that depression is an allergic reaction to inflammation: http://www.feelguide.com/2015/01/06/new-research-discovers-tha-depression-is-an-allergic-reaction-to-inflammation/

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Y'know, when I used to wake up, I got up. I didn't try to get back to sleep. Be it 9 am or 6 am.

But after my first major World of Warcraft guild (of 11 months) disbanded, I developed the habit of staying in bed for as long as I could.

And I still do it. However I force myself out of bed by 11 am because I have anxiety about the passage of time. The last thing I want is to be awake for only 6 hours and it already getting dark.

Is that due to the depression I went through as a teenager, or is it due to just my body changing to require much more sleep. Coincidence?

[MetricFurlong]

Apparently, research is coming to show that depression is an allergic reaction to inflammation: http://www.feelguide.com/2015/01/06/new-research-discovers-tha-depression-is-an-allergic-reaction-to-inflammation/

I would suggest being very sceptical of this, media reporting of science being what it is (i.e. infamously terrible). The link you've provided there doesn't cite scientific sources at all, just links to other media sources.

The Guardian article it links to (and which seems to also be a reference for the Vice article) has a fair few issues. For instance the study it cites for its claim that "both cytokines and inflammation have been shown to rocket during depressive episodes", focussed only on subjects with bipolar disorder and suggested that higher levels of proinflammatory cytokines correlate primarily with manic episodes of bipolar disorder, and only to a lesser extent with depressive episodes.
Note that this is one of few claims said Guardian article makes that it even bothers to source at all.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Memo, with respect, that's almost certainly BS. "Inflammation" is the pseudoscience term-du-jour.

[Elomin Sha]

Apparently, research is coming to show that depression is an allergic reaction to inflammation: http://www.feelguide.com/2015/01/06/new-research-discovers-tha-depression-is-an-allergic-reaction-to-inflammation/

I would suggest being very sceptical of this, media reporting of science being what it is (i.e. infamously terrible).

Examples: Solar 'Freaking' Roadways, getting plastic from the air and the Hendo hoverboard.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

Plus, I dunno, maybe I'm being a bit sensitive here. But I've been down this path before. People are always saying depression and mental illness are "really" caused by something else - eating gluten, taking medications, not being in touch with your inner whatever... all kinds of nonsense.

All that does is reinforce the notion that mental illness isn't real, and that it's some kind of moral failing ("Stop complaining! You could be happy if you just stopped eating wheat! This is your fault!").

Worse are the people who do things like deny that antidepressants work. "They're just placebos! They don't do anything! Big pharma! Big pharma! No, I won't look at your scientific papers!"

Blegh. Just more dismissive, blamey crap. If a placebo makes you think you feel better, it can't really be a problem, right? Harmful, dismissive, blamey crap, I say.

But the worst, the very worst, are the manipulative snake-oil salesmen out to take advantage of desperate, vulnerable people just looking for a way out of their own personal hell. That's where you get people saying things like "Antidepressants are just placebos. But my thing works! Take Dr. Shady's Nighttime BioOil twice a day to neutralize gluten and reduce inflammation. It'll cure your depression!"

Monstrous. People looking for something, anything, that helps are easily taken advantage of.

Hell, go to Google right now and search "Am I a Good Person?" I've done that search, in earnest, when I was at my most depressed. My most vulnerable. My most easily taken advantage of.

If you do that Google search, probably the second or third result will be something called "The Good Person Test." Go take that test (TRIGGER WARNING - do not take it if you are currently depressed).

That's pretty fucked up, right? Intentionally creating a website that only the most emotionally vulnerable will find, then intentionally tweaking their vulnerabilities to break them down to nothing, before jamming a religious message into their faces? I was really angry when I stumbled onto that. I honestly wonder how many people were driven into a deeper depression, maybe even harmed themselves, because of it.

So... yeah. I'm sensitive on this stuff. If there's valid scientific research into mental illness, I'm all for it. But this stuff? It smacks of the very worst kind of pseudoscientific manipulation.

I hope I'm wrong.

[My pseudonym is Ix]

See Arclight, I take a different view. I'm a scientist by inclination (and an engineer by profession), and I would argue that that kind of attitude towards depression is incredibly legitimising towards the concept of depression as a serial illness. The reason we might think otherwise today is because of how 'lifestyle cures' have become treated by popular media- during a non-zero chunk of the late 20th century, as Ben Goldacre describes briefly in Bad Science, it was the thought of many in the pharmacological field that lifestyle would wind up being the problem behind just about every disorder out there. And it still remains a legitimate line of enquiry; the issue is that it's been hijacked by pseudoscience and quack salesmen into seeming entirely not legit.

I also think the idea of depression being the result of one's body reacting poorly to injury in the brain, or otherwise responding incorrectly to neural impulses, sounds fairly legit as a broad theme. Simply because we know so little about neuroscience. 'Inflammation in the brain' don't seem too far off. Now, just saying 'inflammation causes depression' is clearly a gross over-simplification (if only because nothing will ever be that simple), and saying 'eat less gluten' is a simplification even further than that. But I wouldn't knock the science just yet, even if the reporting could, as ever, use some work.

[Avistew]

I'm a bit late, but thanks, Paul. I actually downloaded that song when you put it on your blog a while ago. It does help a lot, it's a really relaxing song.

My health insurance kicks in on the 1st of July, so it's pretty soon now. I'm really looking forward to it, although I know antidepressants take a couple of weeks to be effective (I've been on them before). Still, it's nice to know things are moving along.

I feel really bad about the fact that I haven't worked on my comic for a while. I debated with the idea of removing the link from my signatures on various forums, but in the end I think, knowing myself, that if I did that it would just discourage me from working on it again. It would be like quitting for good.

[Arclight_Dynamo]

I dunno, Ix... I'm all for legit scientific research into mental illness. But the stuff I'm talking about isn't that. It's either snake oil or outright dismissiveness. Or a combination of the two.

I'll direct you to the "Good Person Test" I talked about above, or this io9 article that was published the day I started on an SSRI (and, note that article has been heavily edited, after a huge number of complaints ab out scientific inaccuracy and tone - it originally implied SSRIs were placebos that did not work, and were being pushed by Big Pharma).

I mean... I get what you're saying. But the crap I'm talking about isn't the same stuff. And it's relentless.

[Danielle Pepin]

I hate articles like on io9....I also hate that the nature of mental health is harder to measure with visible means at least for most people without a brain scanner...nobody going to say food is a placebo cause you will die of starvation...and yet somehow the difference between being suicidal and nearly paralyzed from depression is somehow only a short brain impulse away from being able to get out of bed and actually feel like you want to live and do things...like a fake food pill would make you live for a year without any real substance there.

[BlueChloroplast]

I heard an interview on CBC radio with someone from CAMAH about the brain inflammation part. But that was only in a small percentage of cases, and the big thing was that for those people it meant they could give them an effective treatment without the usual try treatments until they find the one that works on you. I can't remember all the specifics.
Reading the article you linked they said many cases which I likely only caught because I was looking for what they said on the percentage of people. So it was written misleadingly.
I think this is what I listened to before (too tired to check)http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/charlie-hebdo-and-muslim-safe-space-the-age-of-knock-offs-and-depression-as-an-allergic-reaction-1.2906917/depression-might-be-an-allergic-reaction-to-stress-1.2906918
and this looks related: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/episode-21 ... -1.2920748

[LokiTheLiar]

Tomorrow I will leave my house for the first time in almost a year to have some social interaction other than playing MTG. I'm really nervous and scared, but also a bit excited.

[Jamfalcon]

Good job!

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

The weather right now reflects my mood.
Thunderstorm.

[Avistew]

Good luck, Loki!

My coverage has started although I'm finding it frustrated to pick my doctor and make an appointment. Now I have to wait until after the holiday (I'm in the US, so it's shut down for the long weekend now).

Tomorrow I'm going to a big party with some people I know but probably a bunch of people I don't. I'm nervous but I also think it would be good for me. I had been going to a bi-monthly board game day but couldn't for the past month so I'm lacking social interactions, and if I didn't have a commitment like this, I know myself, I could stay indoors for months or years (outside of walking the dogs, which means I do get out a bit I guess).

My husband has also started giving me driving lessons more actively, meaning I've actually driven a little bit. It's helpful, although it's very stressful, because by going slowly it's allowing me to have little victories. At first I was worried he would try to rush me, I would fail or have an accident, and feel much worse, but he's been good about letting me end it on a positive note and not driving for too long at a time.

In a bit I'll apply for a license, it will be good to have one, and for road trips he won't have to be the only one driving anymore.

[Lord Hosk]

I really wish I had a normal person I could talk to about stuff.

I have been talking to chaplains and pastors, psychologists and therapists...

but I dont have a real person to talk to which sucks. I dont know how to describe it other than that. I dont mean to diminish what the professionals I deal with say but there is something just lacking from being able to bounce something off someone who isnt trained in how to properly pivot things into a healing discussion.

I have never had a lot of friends but right now I just have none and that is really getting me down

[the_lone_bard]

Examine myself, pretty sure Scabies is almost completely gone, still got plenty of bites/bumps but they're all old. Decide it's safe to treat myself for my birthday, since it's not like anyone else is going to. Go for a draft, but drop after 2 rounds of losses with an insanely powerful deck cause my head's just not there, at the point I'm trying to figure out math and just can't. So dropped at the same time as a kid who had to leave to prevent a bye. Treated myself to McDonalds. Today, treated myself to KFC. Order gets completely fucked, but eh. Get home, look at hand, new bite/bump on the inside of a finger... Right after I've spent a bunch of money. Looks like I'm gonna be broke for another fortnight buying a bunch of stuff to try getting rid of this properly. Walk home cause I missed the bus, walk int he door, oh good, dad's visiting, and first thing that happens as I walk in the door is look at them in the lounge, he looks at me and calls me scum. Another 6.5 hours till I turn 23.

And a one, and a two... Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me...

[Danielle Pepin]

Your dad sounds like a real jerk. My birthdays usually suck too for some reason, at least lately...maybe one day we can all have a happy un-birthday. Unbirthdays being better in a way cause no expectations.

[Kapol]

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