Originally Posted by
girl_geek I have not experienced any mental health problems myself, but I've had friends and family who have:
My brother was diagnosed with depression over a year ago and is still fighting it and only slowly improving. Since no one in my family had ever had any experience with depression before, we didn't recognize that that's what was wrong with him until it got really bad. He'd always been a straight-A student in high school, and his IQ is border-line genious. But when he got to college, he started struggling with some of his classes and started experiencing a lot of insomnia. At first we just thought he was playing too many video games and was just neglecting his sleep and studies. His first semester he did manage to get good grades, but he quickly declined after that. His second semester he got terrible grades, even failed some classes. He was hardly getting any sleep, and when he could sleep he'd sleep so heavy he's sleep through his alarm and miss classes, or when he did attend class he was so sleep-deprived he just couldn't concentrate. We also caught him lying about his grades and whether he had been attending classes (which is understandable; he was scared my parents would just yell at him). He did have a few friends, but whenever he was with them all they'd do was play video games. Fortunately my brother opened up to my parents one day over email, and said how he was just depressed and did not enjoy anything in his life anymore, and that really scared my parents. He was officially diagnosed with depression soon after that.
For the past year he's been to counselling and has tried various antidepressants and sleeping pills -- we still haven't found a combination of drugs that work well but he recently tried a sleeping pill that is allowing him to be on a more regular sleep schedule. He's slowly improving but it really is a slow process -- we still occasionally catch him lying about his grades and class attendance, even though my parents keep emphasizing that they will not be mad at him for his grades, they just want to know what's going on so they can help. I've also noticed that when he's at home, he's more animated when he's talking and he talks more -- when he was depressed you had to pry any information out of him, and he'd never show any emotion when he was talking, like he was trying to hide everything. There's also a few guys in his dorm that have been "taking care" of him once they heard of his diagnosis, making sure he is awake for classes, being there if he wants to talk... His grades are still not up to what they should be, and he's lost all of his scholarships (he did have a full ride), and it will take him at least an extra year to graduate -- but if he can get over his depression now, then we're hoping he'll be able to get and keep a job after graduation and work back into a normal life! But I guess his main symptoms were insomnia and losing interest in everything he had previously enjoyed (except video games).
Also, my husband is diagnosed with social anxiety disorder and has been taking medication for several years. He said he was always a "nervous" child, and would worry and stress over things that normal kids wouldn't. He was very shy in high school and only had a few close friends, and never went to school dances or things like that. In college he also developed a few close friendships, all roommates, but was otherwise pretty shy. He also started college as a Computer Science major but found the classes very hard, which only added to his anxiety. After 3 semesters he switched majors and started medication, and he said the difference was like "night and day". And I know that the medication did help and it wasn't just a change in majors -- after we were married, he decided to quit taking his medication since it was giving him some sexual side effects and he thought he didn't need it anymore. He works as a bank teller (so obviously he deals with the public all day long) and after he quit his medication he would get so stressed at work and couldn't even relax when he came home, and he just hated his job. I could really tell a difference in his anxiety and stress when he was off the medication. After a few weeks he decided to go back on the medication, but he switched to a lower dose so now he gets the benefit of the medication with only minimal side effects.
So I guess his symptoms were anxiety and stress while in public, which would even carry over into the rest of his life -- maybe he had some symptoms of a more generalized anxiety disorder as well, I don't know.
Another common symptom of many mental disorders is a feeling that you're the only one who feels that way and no one else will understand you -- my brother and husband both said they hid their feelings for a long time because they thought something was "wrong" with them and no one would understand them if they tried to explain.
As for medication, well, before these experiences I also always wondered whether medication was the right answer for everything. I still think there's instances where medication is not needed (for example, it sounds like shiso is doing pretty well right now!) but sometimes medication really is needed. As I learned in my psychology class, many disorders are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. In particular, with depression you usually only take medication for 1-2 years. During that time the medicine produces the chemicals your brain needs, but at the same time you should be going to counselling so that your brian will learn how to produce those chemicals by itself when you quit the medication. (I'm not sure about anxiety disorders, because my husband said his doctors told him he could take medication for the rest of his life and it would be no problem, but you normally don't do that with depression.)
So if you are worried whether you may have depression or something, it would never hurt to talk to a doctor, or at least do some research online -- after my brother was diagnosed, my parents did some research and were amazed to see that he had practically all the symptoms of depression and they had never known it! (But then again, for a long time he never told them how he was feeling either!)
Sorry for the long post, but hopefully that will give someone some insight!
thanks for posting all that. i'm glad they're doing better.
