Part 11 - My First Attempt

"Basket Case" - Green Day

I came home, after a final blow-out with my boyfriend and best friend, calmly told my Mother I just wanted to be left alone (both of my parents had gotten used to my black moods by this time), went upstairs, locked the bathroom doors, and cut my wrist.

My Mother came to check on me, and finding me nowhere but in a locked bathroom, she practically battered the door down. I laugh now, as we all do, now that I’m out of the woods depression wise, because my Mom was so shocked when she found me, she wrapped the nearest towel she could find around my wrist, to stem the bleeding, sat me on the side of the bath tub, and proceeded to clean up my blood, which was all over the tiled floor! But in all seriousness, the humour is a way for both me, and my parents, to cope with one of the darkest moments of my life.

She collected my Dad from work, on the way to the hospital. By this time, all my anger and pain had literally bled out of me, and I fell into an extremely unresponsive temper. I don’t remember a lot about being at the hospital, except a Doctor trying to get me to talk, and then telling my Mother that the solution was Prozac. A few pills and I’d be fine, but "better make sure she attends counselling so we can nip this in the bud".
I was stitched up, and sent home, with a brand new repeat prescription, and the telephone number for the crisis counselling service.

My Mom kept me off school for a fortnight, whilst I adjusted to my medication, and in that time, I was not alone for five minutes. She was terrified there would be a re-occurrence, but strangely enough, I think the time went someway towards healing me. She took astonishingly good care of me, considering she had absolutely no clue how to handle the situation. I’m not sure any parents would know the appropriate way to act at times such as this, and I’m not really sure there even is an "appropriate" way to act.

I went back to school, minus one boyfriend, on strained terms with my best friend, but with a brand new sweat band to hide the scar that’s still on my wrist to this day. It even goes slightly purple when the weather is really cold. I felt like an empty shell with no where to run, but carried on going through the motions of every day life, if nothing else, but to keep my parents happy.

Eventually, my best friend dropped out of sixth form schooling (A-Level studies), and my ex-boyfriend signed up to the Army. Over the months, we had become friends again, and grew used to being only that. Whereas my five year strong friendship with my "bessie" was officially dead. But deep down inside, that’s exactly what I wanted to be, and it took along time for that feeling to go away.

Part 4 - The Medical View

"Missing" - Flyleaf

The following definition is taken from http://www.enotes.com/gale-psychology-encyclopedia/ ; an on-line encyclopaedia of psychological terms and illnesses:

Depression - An emotional state or mood characterised by one or more of these symptoms: sad mood, low energy, poor concentration, sleep or appetite changes, feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness, and thoughts of suicide.

Although a very basic definition, it is concise in it’s accuracy. The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), the most used diagnostic tool in psychiatry, delves further into this condition, and breaks it down into a much more detailed synopsis. I wouldn’t like to recite them all, so I’m just going to focus on the specific type of depression that I suffer with.

I would like to stress at this point that there is, and always will be milestones of difference between stress, anxiety, mood disorders, and depression; although one of them may lead to further symptoms of one, or more of a variety of conditions relating to the others.

I do suffer severe anxiety, and stress, but this is largely a direct result of my illness: Clinical Depression.
I believe clinical depression to be different from other similar disorders, as clinical depression can be viewed as a medical illness.

The brain produces chemicals to influence your emotions, one of which is called serotonin. Serotonin is the chemical your brain releases when you are "happy". For example, most people enjoy chocolate. Chocolate has been scientifically proven to increase the production and release of serotonin in the brain, so therefore you feel really happy when you eat it. Simple biology really. The vast majority of the world’s human population have slightly fluctuating levels of serotonin production, so may feel a varying degree of happiness throughout their lives.

Clinical Depression is caused when the brain does not produce or release anywhere near a "normal" amount of this chemical, leading to the symptoms briefly described in the above definition. This is a medical disorder, and not just a "made-up" illness for those deemed less able than others in society‘s eyes, as some people would see it. I find this misconception irritatingly ignorant, and one I try to dissuade people from, whenever possible.

I believe this attitude towards the "none existent" condition of depression can be cured with awareness, knowledge, and education, about the illness. It can be hereditary, either through the passing down of this chemical deficiency (which cannot be proven), or the environment of your up-bringing being altered by a parents/guardians experiences with the illness. This is something that I will have to live with, to a varying degree, for the rest of my life, and the constant up-hill struggle to validate this disorder to uneducated people, is never going to help sufferers of the illness. And there are millions.