We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

I went/going through exactly the same scenario you had. The main point I took (and it took me a few years to do so) is that when she starts on a depressing spiral, no matter how much I love her, I need to separate myself from it. Be slightly colder towards her problem and focus on myself, still take care of herself but not be sucked in too her 'imaginary' problems (like being late for something, or something at home isn't perfect), while that may seem harsh, it was the only thing that worked for me) I started with depressive/suicide thoughts after years of this situation when I always lived a relatively stress free and happy life and I couldn't take it anymore. I explained to her this, and how, even though it maybe be worse for her, it was better for myself and our child if at least I was able to remain 'saner'. It is still hard as well.

As toby mentioned, depression really is contagious. Maybe not 'I'm going to blow my head off' contagious, but after a few years dealing almost 24 hours with someone you love that is depressed, your outcome of life ends so messed up you start spiralling too.

All the luck toby! Bruno

"Sympathy is an extension of empathic concern, or the perception, understanding, and reaction to the distress or need of another human being. This empathic concern is driven by a switch in viewpoint, from a personal perspective to the perspective of another group or individual who is in need. Empathy and sympathy are often used interchangeably, but the two terms have distinct origins and meanings. Empathy refers to the understanding and sharing of a specific emotional state with another person. Sympathy does not require the sharing of the same emotional state. Instead, sympathy is a concern for the well-being of another. Although sympathy may begin with empathizing with the same emotion another person is feeling, sympathy can be extended to other emotional states."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sympathy&oldid...

- figure out my mood. this is about keeping checklists on how long i sleep, how i feel, if i took my medication, if i ate correctly. this sounds terribly stupid, but it is very hard for me to even understand what i am feeling. seeing a little graph that tells me "you have been sleeping 16 hours a day for the last 2 weeks, and now you are barely able to sleep for 3 hours, something is going on" is very helpful.

- figure out what i need to do when certain patterns have been recognized. this is for example upping up on sports, being careful about diet, going out to see people when i'm in the down phase. and conversely cutting down on sports, going out, meditation (which makes me way too energetic and stimulated), stimulants when being too far up.

- figuring out my own personal triggers and signs for depression. this is starting to come along, and these are kind of "personal" things. if i want a new tatoo, or learn a new skill or programming language, i should be careful because this is what usually accompanies mania.

it also involves meeting with other people with the same illness, and just for a few hours every year feeling that you are not the only one in that mess.

an interesting thing about the mood graphs is suddenly realizing that a lot of these mood swings actually come out of the blue, or are more related to seasonal effects. it is my brain tricking me into finding causes and patterns and reasons. i don't want to commit suicide because nobody loves me, it's more i think nobody loves me because i am depressed because i haven't gone out for 2 weeks and missed out on my medication 3 days in a row. or because it is december.

i find CBT (at least with the practictioner i have) to be a very no-bullshit pragmatic approach to handling the psychological side of the illness.

but seriously (and in a way, thank god i have bipolar), medication works extremely well, and the one i take (lamictal) has almost no side effect.

We need to have sympathy. Not because we've diagnosed someone with a disease, but because they're a person.

Rates of depression are skyrocketing all over the developed world and whatever we're doing clearly isn't working. Personally, I think the most obvious issue is that a group of intelligent people have simply accepted the notion that what's relevant isn't someone's life circumstances, but some vague and baseless notion of "abnormal brain chemistry".

The idea of depression is a miserable cop-out, it's simply victim-blaming. We say that there is something wrong with their brains, rather than saying that there is something wrong with society. If someone is unhappy, we need to support them. It is a dismal failure of our humanity if we require the justification of medical necessity to show basic compassion.

Swartz had obvious reasons to be miserable and obvious reasons to want to kill himself. We failed him, we fucked up. He didn't die of a disease, he killed himself because he quite justifiably felt that the circumstances of his life were intolerable. We didn't do enough as a community to support him and protect him. He was a young and vulnerable man, bearing the wrath of a spiteful government. It's shameful for us to even consider for a moment that there might be something wrong with Swartz's brain, when our failures to care for him are so obvious.

If we need a scientific explanation for why we should care about each other, that's our problem. If we require a doctor's say-so to provide support for someone in difficulty, that's our disease.