My diagnosis?
Question:
When things were real bad last week, my therp got on the phone immediately and called the doc (on vacation in the Bahamas or somewhere) to get me different meds. She had to talk to several people (assistants, nurses and such) and she mentioned she had a patient with "severe depression" and this was an emergency (which it sorta was — it was that or the hospital probably, I didn’t feel safe). Anyway, I never have considered myself having severe depression. Always thought of it as dysthymia. Maybe it is dysthymia but I sometimes get severely depressed. Anyway, it sort of depressed me more! Ha! Ha! Depressed from my own depression diagnosis. *smile* I had thought those with severe depression were, say, constantly suicidal, can’t get out of bed, that kind of stuff. Any ideas? Am I wrong? What do you all think severe depression means? Am I just ignorant, unread on the subject? Turtle "Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s nut that held its ground."
Response:
The diagnosis between dysthymia and major depressive disorder is more a matter of how many of the constellation of symptoms (as described in DSM, whatever the current version is) you have, and how long they have lasted. My official diagnosis is recurrent major depressive disorder, and I have only been suicidal maybe for 10 minutes in my entire adult life. I also have almost always been able to go to work, or school, or whatever. However, sometimes it takes such an effort that I feel I have run a triathlon after a day is over. You can be what they call a high functioning depressive. Don’t take this to mean it is any better to be this way, because it makes it harder to get help and you can be miserable for longer. But, severe depression can be manifested in many ways. It is normal to find the diagnosis itself upsetting sometimes. Of course, you may want to discuss with you therp what she based her diagnosis on. Just don’t beat yourself up over it.
– Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – When things were real bad last week, my therp got on the phone immediately and called the doc (on vacation in the Bahamas or somewhere) to get me different meds. She had to talk to several people (assistants, nurses and such) and she mentioned she had a patient with "severe depression" and this was an emergency (which it sorta was — it was that or the hospital probably, I didn’t feel safe). Anyway, I never have considered myself having severe depression. Always thought of it as dysthymia. Maybe it is dysthymia but I sometimes get severely depressed. Anyway, it sort of depressed me more! Ha! Ha! Depressed from my own depression diagnosis. *smile* I had thought those with severe depression were, say, constantly suicidal, can’t get out of bed, that kind of stuff. Any ideas? Am I wrong? What do you all think severe depression means? Am I just ignorant, unread on the subject? Turtle "Today’s mighty oak is just yesterday’s nut that held its ground."
Response:
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