What is Depression?

So, what is depression anyway?  I mean, we all get the blues sometimes, like when something important goes wrong.  Isn't depression just like that, a case of the blues?

My non-professional answer to that question is both yes and no.  Yes, being depressed is a form of being "down."  When you're depressed, you don't feel like doing anything, and nothing you do seems to matter enough to lift your spirits.  But there's a huge difference in degrees between having the blues and being depressed in a psychologically meaningful way.  I won't go into the psychological definitions of depression right now.  Instead, I'll tell you what I know about it, and what depression was like for me in its early days.

First off, there are varying kinds of depression that arise from different causes and affect people in different ways.  Some types of depression occur in rhythmic patterns, that is, the depression comes and goes with effects that are usually less severe.  Another kind of depression, also cyclical, alternates with periods of high and unwarranted excitement and grandiosity (mania) and is characteristic of what's called bipolar depression.  Then there are differences in the severity of the effect the depression has on the affected person and also in the length of time it persists.  The most severe and long-lasting kind is known as major depression.

When I checked myself into a mental hospital--itself a minor miracle considering the severity of my problems--my diagnosis was at once given as "major depression-suicidal."  I'd had the blues, somewhat cyclically, for quite a while, long enough that I'd had the foresight to check out a few books on depression and try to figure out if the symptoms applied to me.  But as a non-professional, I concluded that they did not and I let the issue slide.  Then one day something happened and I began a rapid slide from seeming normality to serious risk of self-harm in a matter of three or four days.

At that very early stage in my depression, I was mainly bewildered.  I was having unnatural thoughts, but they seemed perfectly reasonable to me.  And although I readily agreed to month-long participation in a day treatment program that sent me home at night, at first I wasn't entirely convinced that I belonged in there with all those "crazy" people, even though I knew my mind was not behaving correctly.  Fortunately, during my month in that program I learned a lot about how like them I was.  That was an important month in my recovery process.

I'll have much more to say in future posts about my state of mind while in the deepest depths of my depression.  I'll go into the treatment programs in which I participated.  And perhaps most importantly, I'll talk about things I did for myself that helped me get the most from my recovery.