How To Love a Depressed

A Guide by India Sullivan

Dedicated to my Johnny, heres hoping you can understand and love me even more after this book is complete.

Introduction

Depression comes with many stigmas and difficulties both for the person who is diagnosed as well as those who surround that person. Relational issues are bound to spring forth whenever a mental illness is introduced, no matter how seemingly small. Many people go undiagnosed with depression, and this can be dangerous and difficult for all involved. Those who get a diagnosis are given the opportunity to attack their depression head on, but not all choose to do so. In this guide, we will discuss the difficulties, the treatments, the history, and the tell-tale signs of depression, as well as how to love and care for someone who has been diagnosed. The goals of this book are to inform and instruct, and hopefully, improve your relationship with your loved one when times get difficult.

A Look At Depression
Chapter 1

That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key. -Elizabeth Wurtzel author of Prozac Nation.
Within the last 50 years, Major Depressive Disorder has evolved as we have continued to learn more about this mysterious mental illness. The psychology community has changed the way we have viewed depression as a culture, taking it from an emotion with little credibility to a scientifically proven mental illness. Major Depressive Disorder has many names, such as clinical depression, MDD, major depression, unipolar disorder, unipolar depression, and recurring depression. The word depression in itself however is ambiguous. It is used as a bit of a blanket term to describe any feeling of sadness by the every day Joe, but when we dig deeper into psychology we are able to find out more about this still new mental illness

History of Depression
Chapter 2

When I refer to depression as being a new mental illness, I am really only trying to say that we have not been doing research on this disease for very long. It is relatively new to the scientific community, but depression has been with man since at least the age of enlightenment. The Ancient Greek physician Hippocrates described a syndrome of melancholia as a distinct disease with particular mental and physical symptoms; he characterized all "fears and despondencies, if they last a long time" as being symptomatic of the ailment he was describing. It was a similar but far broader concept than today's depression. This was truly our first documented look into the history of depression, and as far as we can tell, depression is no new ailment. Sigmund Freud, who is greatly thought to be the father of psychology, likened the state of melancholia to mourning in his 1917 paper Mourning and Melancholia. He theorized that objective loss, such as the loss of a valued relationship through death or a romantic break-up, results in subjective loss as well. Such loss results in severe melancholic symptoms more profound than mourning; not only is the outside world viewed negatively but the ego itself is compromised. The patient's decline of selfperception is revealed in his belief of his own blame, inferiority, and unworthiness. He also emphasized early life experiences as a predisposing factor. Meyer put forward a mixed social and biological framework emphasizing reactions in the context of an individual's life, and argued that the term depression should be used instead of melancholia. The first version of the DSM (DSM-I, 1952) contained depressive reaction. The DSM-II (1968) called it depressive neurosis, defined as an excessive reaction to internal conflict or an identifiable event, and also included a depressive type of manicdepressive psychosis within Major affective disorders. It wasnt until the mid-20th century that researchers theorized that depression was caused by a chemical imbalance in neurotransmitters in the brain, a theory based on observations made in the 1950s when certain chemicals were introduced to patients with depressive symptoms. The term Major Depressive Disorder was introduced by a group of US clinicians in the mid-1970s as part of proposals for diagnostic criteria based on patterns of symptoms (called the "Research Diagnostic Criteria", and was incorporated into the DSM-III in 1980. The ancient idea of melancholia still survives in the notion of a melancholic subtype of depression. Treatments of Depression Chapter 3

You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it. Albert Ellis

Current Social Views on Depression Chapter 4 There's nothing, repeat, nothing to be ashamed of when you're going through a depression. If you get help, the chances of your licking it are really good. But, you have to get yourself onto a safe path. Mike Wallace

The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape. Leonard Cohen

Medical Effects of Depression Chapter 5

Title page Intro A Look At Depression History on Depression -Treatments -Previous Beliefs Current Stereotypes on Depression Types of Depression

Medical effects of Depression Treatments today for Depression SSRIs So the Person You Love Has Depression How Do I Know I have Depression? -How Can I tell when its coming on Personal History with Depression Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind. James Hillman

SSRI History The other thing is that if you rely solely on medication to manage depression or anxiety, for example, you have done nothing to train the mind, so that when you come off the medication, you are just as vulnerable to a relapse as though you had never taken the medication. Daniel Goleman

Bio Psycho Social Model What Is My Emergency Plan? What Can You Do For Me? From Me To You