Decoding Depression – What Next?

In my last post, I mentioned about how I discovered depression. I have consulted a couple of my psychiatric friends after that but nothing helped. While some of them hinted about a possible anxiety disorder, some just shrugged off as simple “mood swings”. However, all of them asked me why I believe that I might have depression. This has lead me to go through self evaluation. I asked myself questions that I was ignoring for a long time. I was living my life in self-destructing mode. A suicidal feeling does not mean that you feel like you jump off the cliff or hang yourself from the ceiling fan. It may be a feeling of lack of aim in life. It may be a feeling of not taking care of yourself. It’s different from the feeling of frustration out of daily stress in life. It’s just the feeling of letting yourself die.

I also realised that though I don’t panic in tough situations but I do get angry in minor situations. When I am angry, I hurt myself and sometimes I hurt others who believe I am angry on them.  There was a time, I believed I had great control over my anger. However, I was terrible when I was tested. It’s normal to get angry but with age, you generally learn how to handle situations. With me, it was going the reverse way.

Now that I had identified depression, I had problem gaining trust from doctors. This proved to be a hurdle bigger than most of us can imagine. It’s not easy to share the details of your life to someone however close they may be. We lead different lives with different people. Very little part of our personality intersects together in all the lives we lead. Sometimes, we also have dark secrets. How can you share those with a complete stranger.

After trying hard to deal with the issue of trust with doctors, I decided to make personal research before consulting a professional. I know, it’s not the right thing to do but that is the way I am able to deal with it. With the little research I have done, I have come to the conclusion that there is little clarity about depression in the medical fraternity itself. Depression is grossly misdiagnosed and mistreated condition. Most of the doctors tend to prescribe anti-depressants as soon as someone mildly shows symptoms of depression. There is however a new school of doctors who avoid anti-depressants as much as they can. They also believe that, depression has other physiological causes far from the brain. Knowing about the new school of professionals, I started feeling better. I no more felt depression to be a conspiracy of the medical fraternity.

Being from a small town, it was difficult for me to find someone from this school. So, I decided to continue my research. While I am still continuing my research, I have started feeling better. Maybe it is because I have decided to confront the issue. I have also started having certain foods like dark chocolate more often. I don’t know if it really helps but I found several articles in web mentioning it.

I will keep trying it myself until I meet someone I can trust for my life.

(*Disclaimer: This is just a first person account and not a medical advice. This blog is written keeping in mind the level of unawareness we have regarding mental health. Depression is a symptom, a sign that something is ill in the body that needs to be remedied. There is no catch all treatment for it. Each case is different and needs individual case analysis by a professional.)

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