How??? [doubting depression diagnosis]
 

Sometimes, like this moment, I don't understand how I ever got a diagnosis of Depression.
I mean, I know I have been pretty debilitated, but Depression, me? Was it ever really that serious?
Really?

I look at the diagnostic criteria, and can't properly match them all up to me and how I was when I was most ill. There are things I still struggle with, sure, but how can I ever have had enough of the criteria to 'merit' a full on 'Recurrent Depressive Disorder' diagnosis?
I was having a breakdown, yes. But depression? What?

And what the hell is 'normal' and 'undepressed'?

Some of you have known me all the nearly 5 years I've been here on RYL, what do you think? I genuinely cannot see it clearly through my own eyes.

I haven't known you very long Katie.
But ultimately all I and others can tell you is that diagnoses are very variable and subjective anyway.

Who can really say what is normal?

I haven't been officially diagnosed with anything as such, though things have been floated around. When I feel fine then everything is ok and I am normal, but when I'm upset then I just cry and cry and don't feel normal at all. "Normal" people don't hurt themselves. "Normal" people can go to a social event without panicking, "normal" people don't go home and cry after a throwaway hurtful comment from a stranger.

But then, does doing all of these things make us "ill"? Or just more sensitive to others?

I would say, from what I know that you have had periods of something like depression; but don't lay too much emphasis on the diagnosis. Science has a long way to go before we can definitively say "this person has depression" or "this person has PTSD". Most people lie somewhere in between and have aspects of many different "disorders" or "illnesses" even if they are proclaimed "normal".

Thanks. :)

I understand about the having a bunch of this and a package of that, that's how it is!
'Even' my GP says how it's important to look at my feelings rather than 'how depressed am I right now?'

Thing is, bottom line, a Consultant Psychiatrist has given me a diagnosis of major depression, and this has been verified by my GP, my psychotherapist [who looks at things more openly than official criteria style], and Occupational Health. What's more, it takes into account past episodes of illness that I described to the psychiatrist. So he must have matched things up to the criteria. He even said 'longstanding treatment resistant depression'. :|
I'm much much better now. I know that.
I just. feel like I'm a 'fraud' in some way. Surely people who 'really' have depression have it much more apparent than I have?
Does that make sense?

It makes sense; but I'm still not sure it is as simple as that.

Often the "severity" of mental illness is judged on how well that person continues to function. Sometimes we can be made to feel that if you can still get out of bed and get dressed in the morning then we must be ok; regardless of actual feelings, or how much of a struggle getting up can actually be. If we can do that then we are fine.

Why?

If I chose to I could sit around all day in bed and refuse to get up, refuse to get a shower, refuse to eat. Very quickly that would get me sectioned and a diagnosis. But my feelings and emotions would be no different.

Your GP speaks sense. Embrace the depression diagnosis as a way to help the professionals treat you, rather than an all consuming aspect of your personality. You are you. Many people may have depression. But still none of them are the same as you, or experience exactly the same feelings. Everyone is different, even if they have the same label.

You are not a fraud. And somewhere deep down you know that. Your feelings are valid. And if they are depression feelings then they are still as equally valid as anyone elses experience of depression.

That makes a hell of a lot of sense to me Katie. I end up feeling guilty that I'm taking up valuable resources that could be used to help others because I can't possibly be 'ill'.

Thanks... I'll hopefully respond in more detail tomorrow. For now... it's still confusing. No one sat down with me and went through why I was given my diagnosis. But then I wasn't in a state where much made a lot of sense.
But here I am, I've been on anti-depressants for nearly 6 years, and am in the slow process of reducing the dose, but my GP is in no rush to do this, as she's wary of my ... being engulfed by darkness, I guess I'd describe it as.
I don't see myself as wasting resources, I know I need help with what I have been living with in myself for many years - but depression? Back before I was diagnosed it was all just to me a mass of distress and worry and jumpiness and bleakness and exhaustion and vulnerability. Which I was worried might have been Schizophrenia, but apparently isn't. The relationship I feel to my symptoms [although my symptoms are less 'severe' now] I feel in right now is pretty much like how I felt towards my difficulties before I was diagnosed. But I have much more understanding and awareness of the complexities of my head of course now! It's a feeling of "How can all this be ... that?"

I know that 'depression' is the loosest possible description and doesn't cover everything that causes me distress. It's almost a generalisation. But it's the primary thing that a trained psychiatrist 'picked on' as the 'label of choice' for me.

You see, if I were to subjectively describe my distress states, it would indeed describe a state of depression - what happens when my mind shuts down and cannot bear a feeling. Suppressed feeling, and recovery is involving me in unsuppressing and becoming conscious and learning to feel... safely. It was never safe to feel when I was growing up. But when I look at the medically sanctioned diagnostic criteria I think "Really? At a stretch, yes. But?"

Persistent sadness/low mood. *
Loss of interest and pleasure. * [How can you lose something never had? Is much better now though. Is also phasal.]

Disturbed sleep. * [It has been all my life, in varying waves]
Decreased appetite. * [I had this when I was most unwell, but is fine now.]
Fatigue/loss of energy. * [in waves, and I push through it though.]
Agitation/slowness. * [I get VERY agitated at times. But do others notice?]
Poor concentration/indecisiveness. [Yes, but not severe enough to mark, really?]
Feeling worthless/excessive or inappropriate guilt. * [Speaks for itself, really...]
Suicidal thoughts. * [Episodic, depending on stressors.]

So. Hmm.
When I was most unwell I really couldn't work. I would sleep during the day, because I didn't feel safe enough to/couldn't sleep at night.
I had and still have to some degree, waves of paranoid feelings.
In the past I had delusions about my body - mainly 'Cancer phobia'. But apparently this wasn't psychosis?
I can be irritable and cranky.
Sometimes I just withdraw and hide, although I am becoming much more social.

[quote=makedamnsure;2416334]

Often the "severity" of mental illness is judged on how well that person continues to function. Sometimes we can be made to feel that if you can still get out of bed and get dressed in the morning then we must be ok; regardless of actual feelings, or how much of a struggle getting up can actually be. If we can do that then we are fine.
quote]

I completely agree with this, and couldn't have put in any better myself :)

Katie try not to feel guilty as you are in no way a fraud you cant help that the psych give you that diagnosis. I do have severe depression and sometimes i think i cant be 'ill' yet thats just me not thinking straight type thing. I haven't know you very long katie so i cant really say but i know psych judge how bad the depression is with how many symptoms you have and also how long its been going on for so that could be were you got that diagnosis from. Weather its actually what you have, sadly i have know idea.

Hope your okay

laurenxx

Thanks Lauren.

It's been going on in one form or another since my late teens. And I was anxious... from birth, basically. Before even. Maybe the length of time is an important factor, like you say. I hadn't thought of that.

And at uni a tutor said to me "everything seems like a real effort for you. *sigh*" Why the hell didn't they DO anything then? Did she not realise that's a huge red flag for depression, or at the very least, some long standing emotional struggle that needed help?

I don't know. I think part of the weirdness is that I was having difficulties LONG before I was diagnosed. I wasn't officially diagnosed until I was 35. I had been struggling since I was at least 17. [and had other stuff before then too, as I mentioned.] I had a major breakdown when I was 24, for which I never sought professional consultation or support.

I really do prefer to see myself as having suffered a series of breakdowns, with incomplete recovery between them, and which gradually became a chronic state in the run up preceding my getting the right kind of help, and which I'm continuing to work my way through to recovery.

And I think my split-ness is at least partly a result of my having to stuff down all my struggles and try and 'pretend' nothing was wrong for so many years, because I was terrified from things my father said to me as a child, and my frozen in childhood mind still believed could happen to me - being locked up, the key thrown away, and put in a strait jacket.

Does all that make sense?