DEPRESSION

What does that mean? For example, you break up with a man you have been seeing. It would be reasonable to be sad. However, if you are so sad you cannot get out of bed in the morning because the day seems so bad, and you feel this way for six months, that seems like depression.

Common symptoms of depression include:

• Difficulty experiencing pleasure. Imagine how you feel when your child runs at your in the morning and throws her arms around you. Imagine how you feel when you go to a friend’s home, it is beautiful day out and they have made your favorite meal. Now imagine never having those feelings. The world doesn’t have any color, joy or laughter in it.
• Loss of appetite.
• Difficulty sleeping.
• Lack of energy, feeling just too tired to do anything and not seeing any reason to bother.

One action staff should take to assist consumers with a disability is to insure that the individual has a complete physical evaluation to identify and treat any physical causes.

Employment for persons with depression. 50% of people with depression are work-impaired. If you don’t get up in the morning too many days in a row, if you don’t have the energy to do your work, you lose your job. That may contribute to more feelings of sadness and hopelessness. As with all other persons with disabilities, vocational rehabilitation staff should work with these individuals to write their career goals and plans, and to find jobs where they can succeed. Follow-up after employment should also be provided. If an individual begins to show symptoms of depression again, staff members try to get them therapy before these symptoms cause them to lose the job due to poor attendance or performance.

REAL VOICES - This page from the website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation gives an insight into what it is like to be a person living with depression. Here are a couple of quotes from it.

• "I was the sort of person, like Tigger, you know, [who] bounded out of bed in the mornings and couldn't wait to face the day. I absolutely adored life. And all of a sudden I was thinking about how to end it. And I knew that was terribly wrong, but I didn't think in my mind 'I have an illness' — it's just not how you conceptualise depression. You say to yourself, 'Get on with it; what's wrong with you?' … I had been brought up in a world where you were totally self-reliant and you didn't give in to whims and moods. It was simply unacceptable."
  Kay Jamison - Life Matters, 22 January 2001
• 
  "What I feel more than anything when I'm really depressed is that lack of safety around my own person. The fact that if I allow this to go on, or if it does go on, no-one comes in to save me, that I will not be saved, that I will die probably at my own hand. That is very hard to explain to other people."
  Leonie Manns - Life Matters, 4 May 2000

Click here to read more from their website.

Also, if you have not yet gone to the Virtual Library Bookshelf on Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, we would recommend it for more resources on depression.