Tag Archives: Depression

31/5/2007. Weather picturesGo to sleep, sheeple.

Curing insomnia in people with depression could double their chance of a full recovery, scientists are reporting. The findings, based on an insomnia treatment that uses talk therapy rather than drugs, are the first to emerge from a series of closely watched studies of sleep and depression to be released in the coming year.

The new report affirms the results of a smaller pilot study, giving scientists confidence that the effects of the insomnia treatment are real. If the figures continue to hold up, the advance will be the most significant in the treatment of depression since the introduction of Prozac in 1987.


Sleep Therapy Seen as an Aid for Depression (Benedict Carey, New York Times)

Albert Gonzalez/Photocall Ireland

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G writes:

From someone who suffers from depression I find it impossible to explain how it feels. Only some very very close friends know and although I’m close to my family, which also carries some history of depression, I haven’t shared “my secret” with any of them.

I’m uplifted by the progress being made in acceptance or at least acknowledgment that depression can touch everyone. Although we’re still a long long way off removing the stigma attached to those of us who suffer, hence my reasons for keeping it to a small group of people I’m close to.

I have little doubt that my family and work colleagues would treat me differently if they knew, which isn’t a criticism of them, but merely an understanding that a great ignorance still exists. I can have Monday Blues like everyone else, which are just that, Monday Blues, but my fear is that my family and colleagues would automatically assume that because I’m feeling down I must be at the pit of despair.

So, because, I find it impossible to explain how it feels I wanted to send on these selection of cartoons which appeared on Buzzfeed that might help people understand.

Related: LOLdepression

21 Comics That Capture The Frustrations Of Depression (Buzzfeed)

kenny

“These are questions of mental health and must be addressed in the proper way by clinicians. But taking your own life because a teacher had once beaten you, or a tutor gave you a humiliating dressing-down is an absolutely disproportionate, and indeed wrong, response to a bad event.”

Barry Singleton writes:

I came across a piece on the Irish Catholic on depression and suicide. Mary Kenny calls for lesson in stoicism in young people, which she describes as: “the Greek philosophy of enduring suffering bravely and without complaint.” – needless to say, this  flies in the face of all the campaigning and work done to encourage young people to talk, reach out and get the help they need.

The Virtue Of Stoicism (Mary Kenny, The Irish Catholic)

Ronan Costello of the Union of Students in Ireland writes:

Here’s a county-by-county directory of mental health services in Ireland. USI compiled this in 2011, but it’s particularly relevant to young people now as cyber bullying, depression and suicide are being discussed as issues of serious concern for our society.

 

Mental Health Directory (USI)

Stop moaning.

No.

You stop moaning.

Etc.

Barbara McCarthy (above) writes:

We’ve all been there – stuck listening to someone’s problems, repetitively, while thinking. ‘You have it so easy. If that was all that was wrong in my life, I’d be laughing the head of myself.’ The people who are having a fantastic time of it are few and far between at the moment, so the rest of us are so consumed by our daily financial struggles and day in day out woes, we just cant hold them in any more and will use any opportunity to tell people how bad we have it.

Pub talk has gone from ‘My wonderful wife (who’s just underwent a €20,000 butt lift and bingo wing removal procedure) and I are just ruminating on our next property move, we were thinking Provence or Estonia…’ to ‘We’re so broke, we can’t put petrol in the car, our 8 mortgages haven’t been paid in six months, the credit card was declined in a German grocery store.’

The next person will then interject; ‘Well my phone’s been cut off, my husband is up in court for tax evasion next week, the car which was on the way to being repossessed broke down because I forgot to put petrol in it, we’ve eaten nothing but porridge for the last six months.’ After that it sounds like a clip from Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen. ‘You think that’s bad, we’re living in a rolled up newspaper in a septic tank and sitting round a wish bone for the last year with nothing else to eat.’

Our predicaments are terrible without doubt and I’m not discrediting anyone’s problems, but because we’re all screwed, we’ve become completely self obsessed and can’t think any further than ourselves.

Continue reading →

“D’ writes:

This is my wife’s blog on her personal experience of post-natal depression and the lack of resources and support for women in Ireland for International Woman’s Day

Here is what I do know.

Services and support for people suffering from depression in Ireland are under sourced and under valued. There is also not enough knowledge nor help available for mothers who are pregnant and suffering from depression. Nor for post natal depression. I am speaking from experience and from reading of other mothers’ experiences. I began a course of anti-depressants three years ago. I then found out I was pregnant with my third child. My doctor’s advice was to stop the medication, cheer up and take iron.

When my third child was six months old. I knew I had post natal Depression. I was breastfeeding her. Two GPs recommended I wean my daughter immediately and start medication. I did not want to wean her. I spent hours online resourcing medications that were safe to take when breastfeeding. Thanks to that research and some support from a woman and doctor who I contacted via The Breastway.com I found out what medication was suitable. Took them for almost 10 months and got through it, it was a blip and I fixed it with the help of the medication and from the support of my husband. Had this happened [to] me six years ago when I had my first daughter, when I was not as internet savvy, the outcome could have been different. I should not have had to research what medication I could take. I am not a Doctor.

More Here: Depression- Be Swept Under The Carpet No More (TheClothesLine.ie)

(Drawing: Tavik Simon)