Personal Narrative: Major Depressive Disorders

I’ve always been passionate about understanding others; stepping into their shoes and seeing, thinking, and appreciating the lives they live. I think it is important to take that extra step and see things from a different point of view. It is the only way to achieve a true understanding. I believe in this philosophy so much so, that it’s one of the main reasons I have this blog; to give others a glimpse of a life with mental illness. I’ve been in treatment for 2 months and 26 days and I think it’s time for another peek into my brain.

My name is (student name) and I am 29 years old, living with my spouse in a rented place and working in a Bank as a relationship executive. We knew each other very well before getting married and used to see each other in college. We got married about two years back and my wife immediately wanted kids but we have not yet conceived although the doctor says everything is normal.

The depression is overwhelming. I cry uncontrollably. At its worst, I cannot move. Gravity seems to have added weight tenfold. I wake up in my bed, struggling to get out. I am unable to. Breathing hurts. I try to cry out for help, but I cannot move my mouth to form the words in my disgusted mind. I am trapped in my own head. I am trapped in my own body, a body that is entirely numb.

It’s a struggle to get out of bed sometimes, I often just sit there struggling to comprehend the sequence of events which have taken place over the past year. I mean, I’m used to this now, its normal to me, but the fact that this has happened and that I am now ‘disabled’ as people would put it is hard to get my head around. And every time I look down I’m reminded of the pain and the struggle I faced, it’s a physical scar which links me to my grueling past, a physical and emotional journey.

I have never been diagnosed but researching this topic I have come to learn that I have all the symptoms of this disorder. I will not diagnose myself with this disorder but I will explain how I believe it is like to live with this disorder. Since I was about 12 years old I have suffered from depression. I become extremely upset at times. I explained above that people with this disorder have episodes of depression and anxiety. I have a recent story that is like that. I cannot really explain what brought it on but I woke up one morning depressed. I did not want to participate in the world that day. I had to even go to work that night and try my best to pretend nothing was wrong. My manager tried to send me home. I would not let him though because just like I am with all my other episodes, I felt worthless, like no one liked me, and that life would be so much better if I was not even there. I knew if I would have gone home like he wanted me to I would have tried to hurt myself. It is hard for me to live like that. I never know the way my next day will go. I have always been very emotional and I cling to people who give me affection. I do my very best to keep them in my life because they make me feel wanted. The majority of the time the way I act pushes them away though. I become very angry a lot. I become angry to what people say, what they do, or even just the most stupid things. I also feel some

I first realized something wasn’t quite right with me in 1996, I was stationed at Ft. Campbell, Ky. I remember wakig up and having terrible dreams, that I had never had before, but I pushed it out of my head. The dreams would continue to come and agitate me and make me very uncomfortable. One morning I finally woke up and felt I needed to get to the bottom of theses dreams, I called my older sister up who was living in Knoxville Tn. And asked her, “did these things happen to me”, her reply was, “Yes”. After that phone call I tried to commit suicide, which landed me in the hospital and on medication for depression, which was the first time I was medicated and labeled as being depressed. It would be years before the question came up again,

An accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that played a key role in shaping who I am today was we when I no longer treatment for my mental illness – Major Depressive Disorder.

Major Depressive Disorder or MDD is a very common clinical condition that affects millions of people every year. According to the Agency for Health Care Policy & Research, “ depression is under diagnosed & untreated by most medical doctors, despite the fact that it can almost always be treated successfully.

1. No matter how hard we try to prepare ourselves for challenging experiences and try to stay positive, it becomes harder to do than planned when the time comes. It was the end of the last semester and I was on the verge of emotional depression that totally overwhelmed me. During the exam period, I wasted my weekends on the Internet, chatting and Facebook-ing. I needed to submit an important paper on Tuesday morning. On Sunday night, after wasting so much time of mine and having a little red eyes because of so much exposure to electronic screens, I sat down to write my paper. Only then did I realize that the paper was due the next morning, not on Tuesday. I was extremely nervous because it was too little a time to finish it. Moreover, I was so angry with myself that I wanted to cry. It was a realization that I was off course in my study habits and that I had not overcome my habit of willingly putting myself in difficult positions. The more I thought about being in that mess, the angrier I got with myself. I got even angrier thinking about how it was not the first time in my life that I put myself in such a situation. I could not concentrate on my paper because of that emotional response. Then suddenly I thought that I just needed to talk to someone and calm down. I called my classmate and just told her about everything. She said that the instructor had actually extended the deadline until Thursday. It was such a relief. I thanked her profusely and decided

Living with Bipolar disorder and depression is like a bad Katy Perry song, "Hot N' Cold". I have had this internal conflict as long as i can remember, it slowly made its way to external. I have learned a lot over the years from it. One is you can not fix everything with a little pill. People are who they are not what you want to be.

\The book I have chosen for my essay is a simple one, very understated but near and dear to my heart, All the bright places. Just about all my life I have struggled with some form of depression, it has been a never-ending battle for years. It has consumed every part of me and my life I had to drop out of school at the age of seventeen due to unforeseen circumstances, I lost every one of my friends because I was dragging them down. My life has been a never-ending reminder that I am not god enough. In the book there is this boy named Theodore he is a person who is surverly sad, the medical term for it would be manic depression. Theodore does these things that no one knows he does he stays under water for a bit longer then he should in the bath,

I agree! Conditions have improved and certainly the corrupt institutions that were so fraught with abuses have now left our landscape. Unfortunately, in many ways, our jails and prisons now stand in their place housing untold numbers of people more in need of therapeutic treatment than castigation. There is no doubt my age played a role in my distress as I was still looking to my mother as an anchor to ameliorate the confusing and surreal nature of what I was seeing. Additionally, with regard to stigma, I clearly remember not wanting anyone to know my grandfather was dealing with a mental disorder. Somehow, his mental illness would spill over onto me and I would become tainted, my mental competency would be questioned. Does it run in the family?

Diagnosis. For a full year before her diagnosis, we could not be in the same room without an argument ensuing. Now, I know how to better handle my frizzy-haired older sister’s bipolar episodes. She comes to us for assistance when things get too challenging for her. But a few years ago everything was pitch black. My sister is manic bipolar. Bipolar disorder deals with intense highs and lows. Before her diagnosis, my siblings and I would joke that she was bipolar because of her capricious mood swings. Coincidence or not? Suffice to say, life has been a learning experience.

For the past couples of days Karen have been crying. One day, one of the staff member brought Karen to my office stating that she does not know why Karen have been crying. The way her body movement and her facial expression was I knew something was wrong. At first she did not want to say anything when I ask her a question, so in my best interest I had to let her sit and wait for her to speak on what was troubling her. So, it took a while then I ask her how she was feeling and she respond by saying she does not know. The problem I have notice in Karen was she was dealing with depression because she stated that she have not been eating and her mother had passed away. By Karen being sad and crying about the things that may be triggering of her