What’s wrong with calling depression “madness”?
“Our perhaps understandable modern need to dull the sawtooth edges of so many of the afflictions we are heir to has led us to banish the harsh old-fashioned words: madhouse, asylum, insanity, melancholia, lunatic, madness. But never let it be doubted that depression in its extreme form is madness.” –…
Childhood Bullying and Depression
I was bullied through much of my childhood, beginning when I was seven years old, which was when we moved from New Jersey to a wealthy town in Connecticut in which sports were worshipped. I was, to put it mildly, not very good at sports. Not only was I…
Roadblocks to Effective Psychotherapy Treatment
As I’ve mentioned before, I am a big fan of psychotherapy. Although medication has had a greater role in my successful depression treatment, psychotherapy helped me to recognize my inner demons and banish or deal with them, thereby leading to my becoming a much happier person overall, which I…
4 Reasons Depression is Hard to Spot in a Child
Most of my childhood was blighted by clinical depression. After I was diagnosed at age 27, my parents told me that they knew something was wrong but didn’t know what. Not surprising, since I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, and depression in children wasn’t even considered a…
10 Ways to Help When Your Child is Depressed
Being a parent is rewarding, but tough. One of the hardest things to deal with is your child’s pain. If your child is depressed, you probably are scared and feel helpless. Even I, with years of writing about and researching depression, have felt this way in the face of…
What are the Risk Factors for Childhood Depression?
I had untreated clinical depression starting from a young age. When I was finally diagnosed at age 27, I started trying to figure out why this had happened to me. Why would a child suffer from depression? What are the factors that can combine to create depression in a young…
5 Excuses that Might Prevent You from Getting Help for Depression
So you know you have depression, or you’re pretty sure you do, but you’re putting off doing anything about it. Procrastinating is a fairly common state of affairs for people with depression. I once put off renewing the registration for my car (before I was diagnosed with depression) and…
How Lincoln Survived His Depression
“No element of Lincoln’s character,” declared his colleague Henry Whitney, “was so marked, obvious and ingrained as his mysterious and profound melancholy.” I’m not sure how many people know that Lincoln suffered from lifelong depression (it was essentially dismissed by an influential biographer in the 1940s), but those of…
Understanding Someone with Depression – Three Common Behaviors
I’ve been on both sides of the depression fence. I’ve suffered from clinical depression for more than forty years. And also I have a son who suffers from depression, I have had friends who were depressed and have been in relationships with men who have depression. I’ve written about…
Doing Cocooning Right
We depressives are frequently drawn towards cocooning, the practice of hanging out in our homes for most of our free time. I think that usually that’s due to a lack of energy, but also a need to be “safe” in our own little nest. Given that it’s winter and…