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A thought on increased awareness of Depression/Anxiety

Brid Hegarty

Having watched the Donie O'Sullivan interview the other night and listening to the part where he spoke about the anxiety he had a number of years ago, it got me thinking. He didn't reveal any underlying reasons for why he had his panic attack. So for people who don't have depression or anxiety, the take home point to them might be that it's this thing that can come out of no where at any moment... which is probably not true? And couldn't this give anyone the option to pretend that they have depression? if they know people aren't going to ask them about it's route cause?

We all know that there's a lot more talk about depression lately which great, but there's never any mention underlying issue. We've seen the likes of the Kodaline lead singer who twice went on the late late to talk about his panic attack, but never mentioned anything about a recent life event before its occurrence. In my own experience any time I've had anxiety or deep sadness it would have been due to an underlying issue that I would have been very much aware of. Does that make me one of the more unusual cases of depression? Now maybe such people would not rather disclose such personal information, and I would understand that, but does it give a misinformed idea of anxiety and depression?

If I were a celebrity I would feel that there would be no point in me talking about such anxiety unless I'm willing to also talk about the events in my life that caused such anxiety. Or I should at least be willing to say that there were issues in my life that caused it which I would not rather discuss. Then at least I could talk about the issue on that premise. Is depression down to some issue like procrastinating about something that you don't have the courage to do, but yet that if you don't do will leave you becoming confused in regard to how you view yourself in the world. Are we really meant to believe that people get depressed because of the weather?

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[Deleted User]

If I were a celebrity I would feel that there would be no point in me talking about such anxiety unless I'm willing to also talk about the events in my life that caused such anxiety

sure its none of your business? I have depression & anxiety but I’m not gonna sit down and get into the hows & whys with any randomer who asks like.

I’ve explained to my GP & Psychiatrist and I owe no one any further explanation on the subject.

Whether someone’s pretending or not is another matter and still doesn’t mean you’re entitled to the reasons. Celebrities are just people as well, albeit well known they have problems just like all of us and are in no way obliged to share details of that problem with anyone.

Mrs OBumble

You have totally missed the point.

If someone genuinely has clinical depression, it usually does come out of nowhere: they have no (obvious) reason for how bad they are feeling. Oftentimes, logically they should be feeling great.

If you feel depressed because of a recently life event, by all means talk to support people etc. But don't self-diagnose yourself with an illness you don't have.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118444033#Comment_118444033

+ it’s (in my case anyway) a collection of things not just major life events.

on principle just because of this thread and the OPs nosey attitude I absolutely refuse to take any sort of deep dive into the potential reasons, but let me tell you something I got diagnosed by accident, almost, simply because I made a sort of joking comment to a doctor during an inpatient stay in hospital.

Dr: so how you feeling?

me: ngl I could jump through that bastard window atm

doctor then asked to chat with his “friend” who’s a psychiatrist. Turns out I have depression, mad.

but as Mrs O Bumble said, I didn’t even know I had depression. Basically because I thought having depression meant you were sad all the time and just spent all day in bed crying, that’s obviously ridiculous but I didn’t know any different.

mental health awareness should be about stamping out notions such as those— encouraging people to be honest with themselves and how they feel not about making celebs or well known people sit on TV and tell you about all the bad things that happened.

what would even be the point? So you can judge whether they have depression or not? I can see it now:

tv: yeah well I have depression cos [reasons]

viewer: THATS NOT DEPRESSION MATE FCUK OFF OUTTA DAH

what would be a better use of everyone’s time is removing the stigma that surrounds mental health, education and awareness. Like I know someone with anxiety, who people have (and some continue to) treat them like they’re literally incapable of doing anything for themselves. You know how people tend to treat old people like they’re babies a bit? Yeah, that.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118444033#Comment_118444033

Depression / anxiety take many forms and have many triggers, you cant apply a one size fits all theory. A trigger could be one event or a final straw kind of thing, or the return of a suppressed memory.

Also I dont know why you think they cant be self diagnosed ? There are plenty of sound books on the subjects with lists of likely feelings and causes and indeed coping mechanisms.

[Deleted User]

My father suffered depression all his life, as his psychiatrist explained in his case it was due to his basic underlying personality of being inwards looking. His father seemed to be likewise from what I heard tell “a quiet gentleman who spent most of his time in the garden shed smoking a pipe”.

I have a lot of my mother’s relative extroversion, yet when things go badly they can get me down almost as seriously as life got my father down. However, I come to a place where I spring out if it, when I grab life by both horns and try and do something about it and get away from situations that are seriously getting me down.

My father had not that impetus, it seemed. My mother had quite a depressing life, good, sincere and decent a man as he was (people always spoke highly of him) it was tough for her trying to keep positive and going forward, which she did pretty consistently through a healthy inner strength. She had odd moments of brief despair, as anyone would in her situation. She had a big flight/fight response and could be as volatile in reaction as myself, very occasionally though. She had very occasional panic attacks just as I did, just the way our nervous systems are wired, and just like her father was before her.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118444185#Comment_118444185

Self diagnosing is stupid, that’s why.

Like Jesus- I can’t believe this even has to be said, but believe it or not no book or WebMD can replace a qualified doctor. Medical school doesn’t exist because they’re hoping you don’t find out about the books and Google it’s because most people are not capable of self diagnosing since there’s more to an illness than matching the symptoms.

do you know how many different mental health conditions are almost identical to depression? I’m not answering the question for you, I genuinely want to know if you know yourself?

unless you’re studied in the mental health field you’re not qualified to diagnose yourself, your partner or the dog with anything.

If you have depression a doctor will diagnose it and help you get treatment. That’s another thing that needs to be put to bed, this fear of being open about your problems. As far as I’m concerned buying a book on Amazon to self care is a method of running from the reality.

im blue in the face telling people I hear diagnosing themselves to stop and go see a doctor. It’s free for some & €60 for others, but the benefits are massive.

theres a lit of services (most with waiting lists but anyway) that you can then be referred into to help your day-to-day living coupled perhaps with some medicine none of which are available to the self diagnosed.

why? you’re not qualified to.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118444326#Comment_118444326

This was pretty much the norm (inward directedness I've seen it called) up until around the 50s..

The extrovert is a product of modern Western society..

Ave Sodalis

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118444185#Comment_118444185

The danger with self-diagnosis is that it's too easy, and if something seems too easy, it probably is. It's a phenomenon in both medical and psychology schools, that students often end up diagnosing themselves based on a minimal understanding. They mostly don't have what they've self-diagnosed with, and bare in mind these people still have a better understanding than your average person. There was a TED talk once, back when they used to be decent and it was an honour to be asked to speak at one, that showed just how easy it is to self diagnose. This guy read a book, and was able to diagnose himself with a ridiculous amount of mental illnesses, none of which he actually had.

OP, I've been officially diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and PTSD, and get panic attacks. Whilst I don't mind saying I do, in particular to explain why I sometimes act the way I do or if I thought it would be a comfort to someone else to know they're not alone, I am not going to be telling people why. For one, often it takes an awful lot of therapy just for people to be comfortable talking in a safe environment with a safe professional. Therapy isn't just you sit down and get started. It often takes several sessions just to start skimming the top off problems, nevermind delving into the heart of it. Secondly, some of the causes may actually be triggering for other people who have experienced similar and are not at the same level as the person talking yet. For another, as mentioned, often there is no specific reason for depression. Sometimes people just have it.

It should also be mentioned that whilst talking about depression and anxiety, the symptoms of it, how to recognise when it happens etc., are all important in allowing people to recognise it within themselves and getting help for it, suicide is the opposite and talking about it frequently actually increases the incidents.

Oh, and yes, seasonal depression is a very real and very common thing, so people do get depressed from the weather.

fryup

An increased awareness of Depression/Anxiety can only be a good thing,

wish i was aware of it when i was younger instead of going through life as a total space cadet, depressed out of my face😕 ...i needed professional help

pappyodaniel

I had depression/anxiety before it was cool.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118446785#Comment_118446785

Really? Seems like the more we talk about it the more it pervades everything. We don't report on suicides all the time because reporting it can cause increased rates. Anorexia seems to be getting more common the more we hear about it. The people who spend the most time on wellness and "growth" (read: nonsense) tend to be the ones who fall apart quickly because they're looking for happiness rather than just living.

I don't know if there's even a way to design a study to test either hypothesis but I think it's fair enough to at least question that particular truism.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118447344#Comment_118447344

Yeah..this is true I think. .

By focusing on it we're maybe losing a sort of stoic quality, a certain amount of which you kind of need to get through life..

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118447347#Comment_118447347

Not necessarily stoicism as such. But there's a libertine-ness aspect to the way a lot of people seek "happiness" it seems to me.

I dunno, I always find I'm at my most content when I've had less time to myself for a few days. I tend to need stuff forced in me to do though, the crippling depression makes it very hard to make that choice regularly myself 😅

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118447350#Comment_118447350

I remember reading something back in the days when it was all paper and no screens that suggested that people were much less likely to be depressed up to about the 18th century. They were also less likely to be happy, and the notion was that these two things were interconnected. For the last 250 years or a wee bit more societies have adopted individualism and happiness as central and desirable features. But prior to that people were less interested in being happy and more interested in being saved - and in many ways there was more of a focus on the next life than on this. If happiness is one side of the coin in an individualistic, wealthy and decadent society, maybe depression is the inevitable other side?

chrissb8

I do definitely get the feeling it has been commodified by some and used as a way to get the pity parade/extra attention. I guess there is no way to prove it when someone cries it, as there are 1000 reasons or ways anxiety/panic attacks can show.

I just have a sense, and it is just a sense from my cynical side so this is just an irrational thought, that there is an extrapolation of certain events in people's lives and then they build the myth that they were depressed at that time, or riddled with anxiety/depression.

When in actuality it was probably just a period of feeling sad or down, which is just life. The risk I see is that people will think there is something wrong with them when they are just sad. That there must be something inherently wrong and then go down the route of I was suffering from depression or I had anxiety. When in actuality that is just a part of the human experience and should be taken as the process of living as opposed to jumping to the worst-case scenario that you are now mentally off and wrong.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that it is normal and ok to be sad. It isn't always depression or anxiety but those feelings are normal and need not be a self-diagnosis of "I suffer from anxiety" or "I get bad depression". They are some of the feelings that come with feeling low. You are just a living breathing human who has bad periods like us all, and that's ok. I feel it's extreme to go to the aforementioned places immediately and can hinder people into thinking it's out of their control and that's just the way it is.

But it's a delicate nuanced thing and everyone is different, and as I said before it's just a cynical observation. So don't mind me and my ignorance if I offended anyone.

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118448885#Comment_118448885

Being depressed, is far, far more than being “sad” anyway

fryup

^^^

yep, for those of who dismiss it as mere sadness take a look at this...

it actually physically alters the brain structure, studies have shown those who suffer from depression will actually develop dementia at a very early age

[Deleted User]

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118448985#Comment_118448985

Your statement is true but even the medical sector is moving away from that. It used to be that if you were depressed due to a recent bereavement then it wasn't depression, it was reasonable sadness at something bad happening. They've gotten rid of that now.

Dr Phil on Joe Rogan of all things was pretty worth watching. Didn't agree with everything he said but he made the point that if someone is drinking/doing drugs, their living situation is ****, they're broke and are worried about making rent then it would be crazy for that person to not be feeling feelings that match the diagnostic criteria for depression. Sometimes people should feel ****. Or at least it's a logical reaction to some situations.