by Chelsea Padget

Created on: September 23, 2008   Last Updated: September 07, 2010

Living with depression is not only mentally painful, it is also physically painful. Depression is a serious disease that has a high risk of suicide because of the feeling of loneliness, helplessness, and the loss of friendships, family, and support. Your days are filled with nothingness, and you can't find a reason to live. If you don't get help as soon as possible, you are at great risk for suicide.

Most people who are depressed either don't know it or can't find a reason for it, or both. Then there are the people who are having situational depression. This is depression caused by one or more specific situations that the depressed person feels they either cannot do anything about or they feel so overwhelmed that the problems are too big for them to be able to even begin to fix. So, without their control, they fall into a deep depression.

When you are depressed, you exclude yourself from friends and family, activity seems too overwhelming to participate in, so you don't. Tears of loneliness, fear, self loathing, sadness, confusion and self hate won't stop flowing. Sometimes you don't even know why you are crying, but just can't seem to stop.

You also suffer from insomnia, inability to concentrate, chest pains, back pain, loneliness and helplessness, among many other feelings that are different for each person that suffers from this horrible disease. Some people are even good enough to hide their depression from other person's, although they usually cannot fool their family and friends that are closest to them.

Severe depression causes thoughts of suicide, leading to thoughts of how exactly the depressed person will carry it out. This also, unfortunately, leads to the actual act of suicide. If the trying of suicide doesn't work, the depressed person usually starts feeling angry about the failed attempt and might try again in a different way. But usually when depression gets to this point, someone close to the depressed intervenes and the depressed is forced into an in home psychiatric clinic. This happens when the person who catches the depressive actions reports them to the depressed persons' doctor. The doctor has a legal obligation to keep the patient (depressed person) safe and unable to hurt themselves. The doctor can legally admit the patient into a psychiatric facility for treatment, although the patient can check themselves' out at any time.

The first course of treatment involves antidepressive medications. If these do not work, either another drug is added and/or psychotherapy or ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) is added. The patient is also watched for signs of attempting suicide (suicidal thoughts, threats, or messages; hoarding medications; talking about death and feeling of futility; giving away prized possessions and changing behaviors).

Depression is a serious disease that affects millions of Americans every day. No one should take depression lightly and if you observe any signs of depression in a friend, family member or loved one, you need to get them into their doctor as soon as possible to get help for this person before the depression progresses and you lose your loved one unnecessarily.

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