Is depression a disease?

Ronnie Sardi: First of all, the word depression means different things to different people. Some people feel anxious and call it depression. Some feel sad and call it depression. Others confuse worry, stress, and a host of other conditions with depression. so.. it can be both "disease" or "not a disease" maybe its a disease but its an invisible disease but if it goes over the limits it will become so visible that it will even deflect physically and its the hard way to kill ur self slowly....Show more

Demetrius Coaster: To just save you the long story that I wrote before. When I was 13 I went through a phase to where I was cutting myself, drinking, smoking, shoplifting, etc. And on my 14 b-day my uncle died (my mothers brother) he was murdered. And then a month later my grandpa died (moms dad) and I had to be the strong one for my mom, so I didn't get the time to put myself properly through the grieving process. And when I was 15, when I was going to a catholic scho! ol for 8 years. I graduated and left to a public HS and that was hell and stress on my body. I was passing out alot, once I was starting to black put in the shower. I had to climb on the floor and scream for help, then I blacked out. I felt dizziness, nausea, hard to breathe. And fast forwarding, I now am having horrible nightmares and it's always about me getting hurt, or killed. And when I wake up Im gasping for air and start choking a little. But I am usually a sarcastic, humerous, and laid back. But lately I've been in a "shut down" mood. Usually when I'm sad, or mad I listen to my iPad blaring loud! And lately that's wit I've been doing, and last night I took a pain pill and ur not supposed to drink alcohol with it in ur system. But I forgot, so after I got in an argument with my mom I drank a 16oz. Glass of wine. I remember feeling nausea severe!, and then a headache. But then when I laid down on my bed, i passed out. I'm ok now, but I've just been feeling like when I! went through my phase I felt confused, lost, tired, sad, mad.! And now every morning when I wake up I get flashbacks of what I did in the past, very freaking day! And I feel the sme feelings I felt back then, I just don't feel myself. And every now and then I've been cutting myself. And I'm so scared because I promised I wldnt go back to that past but I'm feeling that I'm slowly going back. And right now I've got nobody. My dad and I aren't even on a talking basis, that's another damn stress. And my mom is to in denial, she acts like I can never be sad. And my friends from the catholic skool, dnt even act like I exist. And my bf, well ex-bf now, I can talk to him but all he ever says is it's gonna be ok. And weve been struggling with final needs, weve never been able to afford pretty much to none, and ive been trying deperately to help with money but i cnt do too much im only 17. (and if your wondering the ipad my ex-bf bought it for me on my 16 bday) its always about money, arguing, and more yelling and screaming and im sick of it! P! lease help with any advice, and I dnt want any damn ****** smartass answers, just only complete advice. Help!...Show more

Forest Duttinger: Life seems hard. There are definitely rough patches we have to go through. But once you go through them, everything gets better. I know. It sounds like a load of crap now, but you'll see. What goes up-eth must come down-eth. Life is the same vice versa. You will find peace with yours;ef because there are so many helpful people to get you through it. And you know you care about yourself because you checked yourself into that hospital. You're already improving, even if you don't see it yet!...Show more

Cordia Fivecoat: Everything triggers it because: 1. It has become a habit in the past. 2. You must have got some relief by doing it, and therefore you know it works.It sounds like perhaps a more cognitive behaviour therapy approach might be beneficial, as well as medications?On a side note, I'm sure most people would feel how yo! u do after experiencing what you've been through. Hope this helps!...Sh! ow more

Verdie Wollen: Almost all the other answers are great, ignore the 2 that say it isn't a disease, as pointed out by other responders. Its a real disease that can take you out. 79,000 returning vets have some mental disorders or psychosomatic illness. Psychosomatics have disorders not classified as diseases, but they suffer terribly.Maybe you could expand your project to investigate the horrible results of war cause?

Queenie Ruthers: I even have been stricken by positioned up partum melancholy for the previous 365 days as quickly as I gave start to a baby boy. i could no longer provide up questioning approximately how my husband loves him better than me and how issues could be greater advantageous if he wasn't born in any respect. hence, I stayed faraway from him via fact I knew that i might do something i visit experience sorry approximately for something of my existence. very almost without delay I went to a therapist and convince them that i want help. ! between different issues, i've got tried organic supplements and different e book to handle melancholy yet no longer something works like the melancholy loose technique. So now i'm proud to assert i'm between the happiest mom in the international. My husband loves us the two very lots and that i thank the Lord for the blessing he gave us. melancholy loose technique?...Show more

Sharron Salin: [Pre-chorus 2:]But if you want to learnThen everything will be alrightTake on what's in the wordDon't let it feed you[Chorus:]Mind your headGet out of bedDon't realize your own demiseYou gotta redefineYour state of mindSo take as readThe word has saidYou gotta mind you headGet out of bedDon't realize your own demiseYou gotta re-defineYour state of mindSo take as readThe word has saidYou gotta mind your headYou gotta mind your head...Show more

Craig Virani: I'm really glad you are doing better than you were. I came from an abusive home, but never self harmed. I'm sure I had ! PTSD and still do to a small degree but not as badly. However I did de! velop coping mechanisms. At a certain age, I started cursing my father out and leaving the house to be with friends. I was always artistic so I put my thoughts on paper whether in picture or poetic writing. I starting going to the gym because I found that doing things to myself that I hated (like lifting weights) helped make me feel better. I don't know if you are a reader, but the book Zhuan Falun helped me a lot. You can find it for free in PDF format online. This book does wonders. I don't know your lifestyle, but for a depressed and sad state, physical activity is a key mood enhancer (releasing all kinds of great stuff in your brain ). If you're around any nature at all, try hiking, taking some pictures of the views, maybe drawing/painting in nature (and it doesn't have to be a Pucasso, just do it for your soul!) being next to or in water (lakes rivers etc.) and just zone out....Show more

Marion Wieboldt: lol that's funny. if you're serious, get your head checked.! a shotgun isn't effective against a bee. everyone knows that! also bees fly they don't scurryi suggest a detox off whatever recreational drug you're on because apparently you're not taking this hallucination very well. ps, when it comes back i suggest a flamethrower. fire kills all!...Show more

Robt Heemstra: I have self harmed on and off since I was 9 years of age due to feelings of worthlessness. It got very serious when I was 16 after my mother's suicide. After her suicide I was diagnosed with PTSD and I ended up cutting up to 6 times a day. I ended up checking myself into a mental hospital a little over a year after my mother's death due to suicidal thoughts and was there for a week. I was later diagnosed with Cyclothymia, a form of bipolar disorder, and have been on Zyprexa which has really helped improve my mood and stop the continuous mood swings but whenever something stressful happens I have the urge to cut again. It can even be small things like failing a t! est at school, having a large amount of homework, or a fight with my da! d. I stopped self harming after my hospitalization with a few relapses but nothing major like before.Does this happen to anyone else who self harmed in the past?...Show more

Madlyn Fallis: When Prozac came onto the market almost 20 years ago, it helped raise the question "Is depression a disease?" Since then, Prozac has been followed by a series of antidepressants that target the brain's "feel-good" neurotransmitters. Some 20 million people are now taking the meds, and a whole new genre of literature, the depression memoir, has sprouted up alongside the analytical books examining the condition and its cure. We've come a long way, and the conversation now centers on a much more refined question: "But is depression really a disease?" Psychiatrist Peter Kramer, author of 1997's "Listening to Prozac," answers with an emphatic "yes" in his new book, Against Depression (Viking; 353 pages; $25.95). Drawing on evidence from science, statistics, his private practice and even l! iterature, Kramer makes an eloquent case for considering depression a disease. As with any other disease, he posits, we should employ every available resource, including genetic engineering, to eradicate it. Kramer's arguments are captivating, convincing and very, very thorough. Perhaps most persuasive is his recap of recent brain tissue research that may finally provide the biological evidence for the disease. Just as we were all beginning to accept that it was a drought of neurotransmitters in the brain, rather than laziness or immorality, causing mood disorders, it appears that the serotonin story is more of a subplot. The new findings, explains Kramer, suggest that depression may be a disease of "impaired resilience," which causes structural damage to the brain, leading to more depression as well as stroke, heart disease and other problems. Kramer then turns to public health statistics to show that not only is depression a disease but also that it "is the most devastati! ng disease known to humankind" in terms of people affected, workdays lo! st and costs incurred. Against depression? One has to ask, who would be for it? Though you couldn't call Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and "Prozac Backlash" author Joseph Glenmullen "pro-depression," he writes in his new follow-up book The Antidepressant Solution: A Step-by-Step Guide to Safely Overcoming Antidepressant Withdrawal, Dependence, and "Addiction" (Free Press; 257 pages; $24) about the tics, muscle spasms, violent and suicidal behavior and other side effects of the drugs used to medicate it. Glenmullen points out that 70 percent of antidepressant prescriptions are written by family doctors who may have little understanding of the drug beyond what they read in the same ads the rest of us see in Good Housekeeping. He also discusses the role of profit in the popularity of the medication: Part of the reason why general practitioners write so many prescriptions for antidepressants is that HMOs prefer medications to costly specialists. And then there is the mone! y that Big Pharma -- the pharmaceutical companies -- makes off the drugs, and the alarming ethical breaches these companies commit in the research phase. Like Kramer, Glenmullen treats his depressed patients with a combination of medication and psychotherapy. His concerns about the drugs are both legitimate and disturbing. To read Glenmullen's book alongside Kramer's is to wonder which affable, renowned clinician to believe. The Brown-educated Harvard professor who points out that depression is listed as a disorder in the psychiatric manual because it does not satisfy the medical requirements for a disease; that the medication can be dangerous and often mis-prescribed to people with trivial conditions? Or the Harvard-educated Brown professor who posits that depression is nothing more and nothing less than a disease; who views mild versions as precursors to a career of depression getting progressively more debilitating to the mind and body of the afflicted, not to mention th! eir families, employers and society? And it is right here, in between t! he solid arguments of doctors Kramer and Glenmullen, that the genre of the depression memoir finds its reason for being. As the experts explain the biochemistry and sum up the statistics and case histories, the memoirs allow depression to speak for itself. Two of four new books, Jan DeBlieu's Year of the Comets: A Journey From Sadness to the Stars (Shoemaker & Hoard; 201 pages; $23) and poet Donald Hall's The Best Day the Worst Day: Life With Jane Kenyon (Houghton Mifflin; 258 pages; $23), help create a new subgenre: the married-to-depression memoir. It's not quite fair to put Hall's book in this box, as its focus is really on that other disease, leukemia, which ended up taking his wife, poet Jane Kenyon. But he does devote a chapter to her famous manic depression, and both his deft hand and his years of experience illuminate the illness that "became almost a party to our marriage." Science writer DeBlieu turns to the night sky for salvation as her husband gets blindsided w! ith a frustrating and frightening condition that eventually gets diagnosed as depression. In Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression (Hyperion; 226 pages; $23.95), model-actress Brooke Shields has penned a celebrity coming-out story on postpartum depression. And hip New York performer Elizabeth Swados lets the pictures do the talking in My Depression: A Picture Book (Hyperion; $16.95), illustrated in simple black-and-white sketches. The books by Shields and Swados have minor literary merit, but they are user- friendly and helpful in destigmatizing the illness. Disorder, disease: Who cares what we call it? As these memoirs under review show, depression is a force to be reckoned with, and much too important to leave solely to the Ivy League experts practicing along New England's I-95 corridor. Yet in his new book, Kramer comes out not only against depression, but also against depression memoirs. His problem with these, as he calls them, "autopathographies! " is that they glamorize depression and help spread the lie that the il! lness is related to depth, moral insight and creativity. "We associate depression with a heroic artistic stance," he says, and first-person accounts only strengthen this fallacy, adding to the myth of depression as spiritually enriching and depressives as "in touch with what matters most in life." Even worse, depressives sometimes refer to their condition with "hints of pride." He accuses us of being altogether too protective toward the disease, defending it as natural, necessary, even noble. In the current crop of memoirs under review here, it is hard to find a glamorous image of the illness, unless one counts Brooke Shields' photo shoots. The accounts by Hall and DeBlieu offer valuable views from people intimate but not overwhelmed with the condition. As professional writers, both DeBlieu and Hall are necessarily sensitive beings whose work brings them routinely to the edge of wonder -- to space and infinity, in DeBlieu's central metaphor - - and therefore to great depths! of emotion. The stark difference between their healthy despair and the debilitating depression of their spouses goes a long way in demonstrating the distinctiveness of the clinical condition. As anyone who has ever been in the presence of severe depression knows, the illness is despicable. But when Kramer asserts that "depression has no saving grace," he almost seems to be baiting us. Isn't it possible to learn something from the condition without ennobling it? Aren't there times when depression might be telling us something important, such as, "Break up with that guy; he's no good for you"? Searching for an evolutionary explanation, DeBlieu wonders if "[w]e are wired, perhaps, to become sad when we are leading lives that are not rewarding." When an experience, however awful, is so intertwined with one's life, it seems understandable to feel some ambivalent tenderness toward it. People feel pride when they make it through wars, divorces and, yes, diseases, too. It's not un! heard of to have gratitude toward one's cancer or stroke, for the insig! hts it spawned. Even Kramer concedes that "[i]n our lives, depth seems so endangered and happiness so overblown, so commercial, so stupefying, that we may be inclined to cling to some version of melancholy." But his larger point -- and it's a good one -- is that depression is not sadness or melancholy; it is "a loss of emotional responsiveness." And in case we thought it was crucial to our humanity, he points out that the "opposite of depression is not indifference to the human condition" but "a resilient mind, sustained by a resilient brain and body." Perhaps, in a compromise that will please no one but the poets, depression is a disease and also more than a disease and also less than one. Though they share many aspects, the experience of this illness is different from that of, say, psoriasis or pulmonary cancer. It affects our moods, not our skin or our lungs. It is also blotched with gray areas that spill over into everyday life: You don't get little fragments of things ! that feel kind of like cancer the way you get hints of depression, in the form of grief or despair. "Against Depression" is a fascinating, informative and provocative book that helps frame the conversation that will take place over the next 20 years. But to get the full picture of the disease, we need to hear the voice of depression itself, speaking through the people who live with it. We need poet Hall's description of depression as "black rather than blue." We need numbers and feelings, statistics and stories, anatomy and metaphor....Show more

Rocio Karvis: my doctor says it is a disease just like heart disease or diabetes

Alisia Sutphen: No it' more of a imbalance or low neurotransmitters. Can be treated. Your just low or have some sort of misfiring going on.Which could make it a virus.

Kara Tabian: So I was on my computer watching youtube when I noticed a bee scurry across my keyboard. I got really scared and left the room to arm myself. I came back wi! th weapons (a shotgun and a hand grenade) but the bee was nowhere to be! found. Now, I'm sitting here with my weapons and I'm scared out of my mind. What do I do next?

Shad Bushweller: Call the cops, get the president on the phone.

Coleen Carignan: yes it can be if it is a continually thing even on and off.

Warren Kotter: Depression is a disease, but people who don't have it can get depressed if things aren't going well for them. In other words anybody can be in a bad mood, but people with clinical depression can be in a bad mood all the time for no apparent reason.

Patricia Dornbos: It is not as much a disease as a Mental Condition.

Coleman Ocegueda: But of all the types of depression why isnt it a disease?

Jesusita Dykhoff: Yes...it is a neurotransmitter disorder.

Sol Allphin: You need to release all the stress. And be careful with your habits.Try a coping group. Maybe also see if you can get to a hospital and explain your depression to them. Tell them all your pass symptoms. Tell them you feel suici! dal too if it 'll help. They may give you the meds you need and more support help. If not try a couseling group that you can talk about your depression with. Then see a shrink or doctor.I will give you some numbers to call. See if talking it out helps.For women with depression: Call 888-866-9778Crisis for youth: 800-442-HOPE (4673)...Show more

Vernon Martorana: Anna, It does sound like you're in a depressed state. Certainly no one here could diagnose you with clinical depression, but I would suggest you seek some counsel. A professional, clergy, or really good friend/mentor that you feel you can share openly and honestly. You need to love yourself for who you are and not worry about what others have or do. There are lots of people out there who I'm sure would love to be your friend if you gave them the chance. Sometimes you just have to say, "Screw this! I'm not going to feel thi s way anymore!" And go out and do the things you enjoy. As you do them, you'll meet other! s with the same interests and will make friends. But you have to make s! ure you are open to making new friends and that starts with you liking yourself. Think about all the great things about you. Make a list if you need to. Focus on all the positive things you have in your life and what you have to offer others as a friend. And once again, I would definitely suggest you speak with someone who can help you with positive reinforcement. Life isn't easy. We all feel this way from time to time. I've been there a few times and nobody would ever know it, because on the outside I appear to be a very successful person who has everything going for him. Truth is, we all suffer from feelings of inferiority at times and we need to remind ourselves how great we are! Take care & good luck! David...Show more

Jammie Taddei: Be prepared. Get every weapon you can. That bee has informed the nest where to go. You are their next victim.

Malcom Fenoff: Get some hairspray or some kind of chemical spray and spray it on the bee. It should drop dead

Bi! bi Tyron: It is a disease because it harms and weakens your body...sometimes phisically sometimes emotionally

Jasper Mangel: No, it's just a mental state.

Kim Gerbino: okay im just a couple years older than you im 19 and i went through the same stuff ( cutting, drinking, smoking, and shop lifting) so i know how you feel and yes ive had times where i was going to relapse, but your probably have a stress disorder you can go to the doctor over it and get treatment. why is money an issue? your only 17 don't worry about money in less your about to lose your house or starve to death. And i went through this time with my dad where i didn't talk to him and it stressed me to. you just need to call him and talk to him and get back to a friendly level with your dad on just a talking basis it'll take stress off and you don't need to drink alcohol is a depressant it wont help. and talk to your mom or one of your friends about cutting you just need someone to listen to you. ! and when your talking to your ex tell him you need actual advice not ju! st him saying it will be ok And talk to your mom she mite be able to help...Show more