Depression is an illness caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain which affects how you feel, think and act. Research has shown that depression is a medical illness just like diabetes or high blood pressure. There's a lot of variety in how people experience depression. It can be mild to severe. Some of the symptoms of depression are:
* Feeling down, hopeless or irritable
* Taking little interest or pleasure in things you used to enjoy
* Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much
* Feeling tired or having little energy
* A poor appetite or overeating
* Trouble concentrating
* Wanting to be alone more
* Moving or speaking so slowly that other people notice
* Feeling so restless that you move around a lot more than usual
* Feeling bad about yourself, thinking you are a failure or that you've let yourself or others down
These symptoms make it difficult for you to work, take care of things at home and to perform your activities of daily living. Depression should always be taken seriously and is treated with antidepressants, psychotherapy or both.
Virtually any trauma, defined as an event that is life-threatening or that severely compromises the physical or emotional well-being of an individual or causes intense fear, may cause post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Such events often include either experiencing or witnessing a severe accident or physical injury, receiving a life-threatening medical diagnosis, being the victim of kidnapping or torture, exposure to war combat or to a natural disaster, exposure to other disaster (for example, plane crash) or terrorist attack, being the victim of rape, mugging, robbery, or assault, enduring physical, sexual, emotional, or other forms of abuse, as well as involvement in civil conflict. Although the diagnosis of PTSD currently requires that the sufferer has a history of experiencing a traumatic event as defined here, people may develop PTSD in reaction to events that may not qualify as traumatic but can be devastating life events like divorce or unemployment.
As I journeyed through the last three years and having to place my children back in foster care to get mental health treatment I found myself feeling depressed. Two years ago, I was placed on Prozac to help me with my depression. During this time, I continued in counseling with my therapist. As I have continued to work, raise my 15 year old son and process the purpose of why I had to relinquish my parental rights to my two youngest children, I found myself loosing my battle with depression. Every time I turned around, something would remind me of my children I no longer had. The hallways at the hospital where I work were full of reminders of the trauma I had gone through with
different hospitalizations and emergency room visits for seizures, injuries, pneumonia, cellulitis, status epilepticus, over night EEG's and out of control behavior. Work reminded me of all the times I had taken my daughter there for dangerous behavior only to spend 8 hours in the emergency room and then be sent back home because there were no psychiatric beds. I kept trying to put on a strong front but found I could not hardly get out of bed and that I did not want to go to work. I just want to
stay in bed with the covers over my head. I don't want to face the world or anybody in it. This grief
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I am currently under my doctors care, on another antidepressant and remain in counseling. My
medications have been changed and I had a bad reaction to one of the medications I was placed on so
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