Depression Support Group

It only feels better for a short while. After people accept it, the depression is still there to contend with.

Sometimes, depression is a catch all phrase that is used to describe people contending with a variety of issues. For example, depression due to grief is a very specific experience as it trauma.

i am going through a major depression right now, and i am down at my parents for the weekend as its my dads 60th birthday. both my parents keep on telling me how rude i am for not acting happy on my dads bday, i am selfish and ungrateful

there's no such thing as depression. Everyone is perfect (just choked on my coffee).

the acceptance of mental illness as a "real" illness is long overdue...while the situation is better now than it was 30 or 40 or 100 years ago, it still isn't good. and of course there is the stigma associated with being diagnosed with a mental illness. people are, and always have been, afraid of what they don't understand. there has been some progress in that area in recent years with major celebrities coming 'out of the closet' about their depressions, but it will take much more than that to make people understand and accept mental illness. until people can understand that we do not choose to be ill, and yes, that we need care just like anyone else with a chronic disease, we will have to fight the fight...my speech for the day is done, and now i'm getting down off the soapbox and crawling into my doghouse....

I feel the same way! I'm lucky that my family accepts it. Granted, madness runs in the family, so depression is an easy one for us. :P But my jobs are not so compassionate. You can't call your boss and say "I feel so bad I don't have the willpower to even brush my teeth, so I'm not coming in". That'll get you fired real quick. Although I really do have migraines, I use them as my excuses simply because they are taken more seriously. I hate lying and I hate it more that I have to.

It annoys me when people say,
"yeah i had that once, you'll be right"

well, as i've written i have been depressed all my life-straight from the shoot, im afraid.you are right in that depression is not recognized as it should be- in fact i lost my daughter to my mother as a by product of depression. i had been a self- medicater but cleaned up my act. however, the judge said my daughter deserved to be with a "happy" mother . not to flippant but so did i and i sure didn't get one. love.devonh

I think things have progressed as time goes by. when I was little you never talked about it.now I have friends who understand it but there are still people who are still ignorant of it. but I think word is slowly getting out about it.

i concur! it does seem like, while there may be a lot of awareness of depression, there isn't a lot of understanding.

one of my brother's roommates was asking me questions about depression the other day. what is it? what's it like? does it affect me with friends? how do i work with it? a lot of questions that were asked with a sort of innocence... he really has no idea what depression is like, almost like a kid asking a question about something foreign and new.

what struck me about his questions on depression... is that i could do the same thing in asking him about happiness. he has no idea what being depressed is like... and, for me, yes i'll have happy moments, but deep down, i don't know what it's like to be happy, truly happy. i only know what it's like to be distracted for a while from the underlying depression.

I totally agree. But I must confess too that I had no clue what depression actually was until the past year. I so wish I still didn't have a clue!