-Feelings of sadness or irritability, anxiousness
-Loss of interest in activities you used to enjoy (including sex)
-Change in weight or appetite
-Changes in sleeping patterns (insomnia or oversleeping)
-Feelings of guilt, hopelessness, worthlessness
-Inability to concentrate, remember things, or make decisions
-Fatigue or loss of energy, feeling "slowed down"
-Restlessness or decreased activity noticed by others
-Thoughts of death or suicide

A second form of depression is known as "dysthymia." This is a condition which can last for years at a time, and generally involves lower energy levels and emotional "deadness," although to the same degree as in severe clinical depression. A dysthymic person feels like they are constantly slogging through mud, that life is constantly dragging them down. They are unable to muster as much energy as other people, and their senses and emotions become "muffled." The world becomes dull and boring. Dysthymic people generally do not contemplate suicide, and can usually function normally if they make an effort, but the condition is a constant drain on their energy, and often they just feel that they are "going through the motions."

A third form of depression is bipolar disorder, or manic depression. Manic-depressives will switch between episodes of depression and of frenzied, manic behavior characterized by the following:
-Increased energy and decreased need for sleep
-Inappropriate excitement or irritability
-Increased talking or moving
-Promiscuous sexual behavior
-Disconnected and racing thoughts
-Impulsive behavior and poor judgement

Severe clinical depression and manic-depression are conditions which are very hard to recover from on your own. Medical help, through psychotherapy and antidepressants, is usually necessary. In cases of less severe depression, you may be able to combat the depression yourself through a combination of the following activities:
-Eat more fruit and protein and less carbohydrates / junk food
-Get some exercise every day
-learn some sort of relaxation techniques, such as Yoga or meditation
-Do something fun, something you normally enjoy. Watch or read your favorite movie or book.
-Try to improve your social skills, take more chances in trying to start friendships.
-Watch your thoughts, and try not to spend too much time catastrophizing events, worrying about the past, or being too perfectionist

Finally, don't be afraid to go for help. Depression is an illness, not a weakness.

Dysthymia is the bane of my existence. "Slogging through mud" is an apt description of it, so is "feeling grey" and "directionless."

Since most of us here are male, it should be mentioned that depression in men often manifests itself as anger, anxiety, and apathy (boredom). Boys don't cry as much as get pissed off.

Anyway, if you recognize yourself in Michael's list, drag yourself in and get help. It's really not weakness to do so, and the experience makes you stronger. Confucious say : Weakness isn't admitting fear, it's giving in to it.

Anyway, there a lot of options; the two most common (and effective) ones are therapy and medication.

Therapy isn't much like it's portrayed in movies and on TV. Mostly it's a chance to talk about all the shit that really bugs you, without getting in trouble or being judged for it. A lot of us on detnet are geeks mostly because we think a lot of the things average human beings do are completely retarded. It's really good to walk in and say "damn, my friends piss me off, society pisses me off, my parents piss me off, I don't really want to blame all my problems on someone else but it really fucking sucks that they blah blah blah..." and have someone say "yes, that is really frustrating."

Ah! Someone UNDERSTANDS!!!

I can't really speak for group therapy, since I havenn't done that. But it could be cool if you found the right group. If nothing else it's a place to make friends who are as strange and fucked up as you are

As for medication, well, regardless of the ideological stance you take on it, it DOES work. It's weird that a pink tablet (or yellow and green capsule, if you get Prozac) makes me CARE about things, but it does.

Just don't let the doctors go crazy with the dosage; they like to do that. My psychiatrist upped my Paxil dose from 20mg a day to 30mg, even though I told him I felt fine when I was taking 10mg. He said "yes, but studies have shown blah blah blah" and gave me 30mg anyway. On 30mg I was drowsy all day, I couldn't sleep at night, I couldn't be in a bad mood even if I wanted to, I had insane nightmares and- horror of horrors - I couldn't have an orgasm. So I started taking just half a pill, 15mg, and within a couple days I felt normal.

Finally, therapy AND medication helps a lot more than either one alone.

Anyway, if you feel like shit all the time, keep in mind that you don't HAVE to feel that way. It is weird, but when depression lifts you still think a lot of the same things, but they don't bother you as much, and because they bother you as much you can actually get up and DO something about them.

It's simple : they lived with out it! Sure, people lived shorter, and some wack stuff happened, but if you read a lot of books, poems, and other stuff from people back then, a lot of people were happy! Sure, it might have been George Washington's mary jane hidden in his hollowed out heal, but so what? There were some fucked up people, but we got fucked up people now. And mostly, no drug helps them. That's life... Deal with it...

And before I start getting flamed, I should say i don't disaprove of the use of drugs, or support them, but I think people should just sit down, look around them, and not go flying off to the doctor when their girlfriend dumps them or they get an F in english for some drug to "help them through it". Society's fucked up. The best way I've found to deal with it is face my problems head on, and only deal with people when I "have to". Keep a tightly nit group of friends that can understand what you're talking about, keep hobbies I can make into a career, and live how I want. The best anti-depressent there is.

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Spydir Web - spydirweb@techie.com
Core Arctic - http://welcome.to/CoreArctic/

quote:

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Originally posted by Spydir Web:
If people rely on these things so much, how the hell did the human race survive for how ever many hundreds of thousands of years?...

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It all comes down to one thing: stress. When out ancient caveman ancestors got stressed, it was because they were about to be torn apart by a pack of wolves, a bear, another cave man, or some similar attacker, and their "fight or flight" reaction to that stress put their body into the right condition (increased circulation, adrenaline, higher energy, etc.) to deal with that stress effectively by either fighting or running away.

In modern days, when you go to take an exam or get an F on a paper or get stuck in traffic, your body, acting on evolutionary instinct, reacts to stress by getting you ready to fight the wolves, the bear, the neanderthal waving a pointy stick in your face, or whatever. But in this case, there's nothing to fight, and it's impossible to flee, so unless you go out and get some exercise to work off that stress, it just continues to build up.

The reason that we have so many more problems in present day life than our distant ancestors is that genetically, we're still cavemen, with caveman instincts. Our culture and technology have evolved, but at a pace that genetic evolution couldn't possibly keep up with. And as our culture continues to evolve, day-to-day life gets harder and harder as the same human beings suddenly have to do more and more work and deal with more and more stress.

Yes.

With this board.

quote:

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-Feelings of sadness or irritability, anxiousness
-Loss of interest in activities you used to enjoy (including sex)
-Change in weight or appetite
-Changes in sleeping patterns (insomnia or oversleeping)
-Feelings of guilt, hopelessness, worthlessness
-Inability to concentrate, remember things, or make decisions
-Fatigue or loss of energy, feeling "slowed down"
-Restlessness or decreased activity noticed by others
-Thoughts of death or suicide

---

To be honest, this kind of sums up my life for the past few years. Thing is, I've always been a bit like that so I wouldn't really notice. I have sort of declined in the last few years - I really used to kick ass at my work in high school, persistently getting the highest marks at physics, chemistry and computing though doing no revision at all. I did less well at A-levels, although I didn't really think they were significantly harder than GCSEs, started only actually completing a fraction of the set work, and not doing very well at some of the exams. I was depressed a lot then, though I attributed this to having decided that because there was no solid philisophical basis for the universe that life, including mine, is worthless.
Now I persistantly leave work till the day before it's due in (no matter how large an assignment it is (to be fair, i've been doing this for quite a while)) miss a great deal of lectures due to oversleeping, have literally no friends and generally don't do as well as I know I can.

Yeah, after all this posting on the subject I'm thinking I might also be suffering from depression.. don't want to seem like i'm jumping on the bandwagon here though...

Depression is a lot more common than you may think; at any given time at least 15\% of the US population is dealing with clinical depression, and one in five people will have major depression at some point in their lives.

I truely think the numbers are greater then that, Michael. Unless you mean "true" clinical depression. The number of people that go their doctor for some form of antidepressent and get it is basicly 95\% (of the people that go to the doctor for it). I'd bet large sums of money that another 3\% get something much stronger, 1.5\% go under government expriments that lead to the ability to turn invisible while you work with a guy named "Hobbs" and have a doctor named "The Keeper", and the last .5\% get rejected...

Anyways... I agree, if you are facing some problems and can't come up with a damned good answer, talk to someone about it. See a doctor if you'd like. Just make sure you take the red pill, cuz you don't want those pin things in you, and damn was that a hell of a headache I had...

/me wipes some sweat off the metal hole in the back of his head...

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Spydir Web - spydirweb@techie.com
Core Arctic - http://welcome.to/CoreArctic/