My Personal Depression.

Hello Everyone,

I would just like to go through how depression had affected me as a person and how I am currently managing it in the hope that others with the condition will see this and know that they are not alone and that it is manageable.

I have had depression since my early teens and have struggled with it an awful lot. Many times during my depression I felt alone, empty, scared and was quite frankly a nervous wreck. In my early teens, when the depression first raised it's ugly head into my life, I didn't know how to cope and resorted to self harm. At the time, self harm provided me instant relief to all the insecurities screaming in my head but has unfortunately lead to physical scarring and ironically more insecurities but based on my physical appearance on top of the insecurities I already had at the time.

I had gone to my local GP, in the hope that some help would be available to me but unfortunately at the time the GP wasn't a great help. I mentioned my issues to my tutor at school who then advised and set up an hour a week of counselling for my depression and self harm habit. With this, I eventually managed to stop the self harming although with great difficulty as it had become such a regular and compulsive habit.

Once I had left school, at the age of 17, I had managed to stop self harming and the depression seemed to even out. That is, until I hit the age of 18 which it then went progressively down hill. This happened shortly after I had moved out of my dads place to somewhere roughly 30 miles away to do a diploma. A couple of months after my move, my father was admitted to hospital for a serious life or death condition which occurred unexpectedly which is when my depression started to go down hill.

I went to my GP, a different one from the previous and she was very helpful. She give me a lot of advice and under her instruction, tried an antidepressant known as Certalipram. After months of adjusting the dosage it didn't work so at that particular time I had given up on medication. I was advised to take up voluntary work when I didn't have college to help distract me in my free time and it helped. A lot. I have now been a volunteer in my local zoo for four years and within the first couple of years, my depression hadn't caused many issues for me as I was doing something I'm passionate about.

Unfortunately, my depression did rear it's ugly head again and to this day I'm still struggling, however am going through the medication stage currently to try and make it more manageable. My depression came back again due to stressful circumstances, I had moved out into a flat with my current partner after leaving quite a horrific house share and under financial stress. I was unemployed with no experience for work, no self confidence, self worth or self esteem. My partner supported my through this, helping me emotionally, introducing me to new people to improve my people skills and helping me to complete application forms, create a CV, completing covering letters and how best to be in under interview situations.

I then finally became employed as a community care enabler, providing care to four individuals with complex high needs and severe conditions, one of which requiring two different emergency medications for his condition. When I first started to work with these individuals, I had such a confidence boost and my depression then eased for about a month.

Unfortunately, not long before I became employed, my partner became unemployed and my financial stress became much much worse and has continually gotten worse. My partner has now been diagnosed for Asperger's Syndrome and Psychosis and is not receiving any financial support and I bring in less than 1000 per month which is not nearly enough to support myself and him. Due to this, my financial situation then got to the point where I was in debt and had received letters saying that we were going to get taken to court.

Sadly, the stress didn't end there, continually for the past two years and since being employed from last year, I have also had a lot family stress. My grandfather has been diagnosed with Alzeimer's and is sadly not in the early stage, I often visit my grandparents to provide care for him and to provide respite for my nan who is currently going through depression. Over the years, I have also provided care to her son, my father, with his condition, he had a bleed on the brain resulting in him having an operation which has then left him with epilepsy, weakness in the right side of his body, unable to read, write and communicate verbal very well and is partially blind in his right eye.

To make things more difficult my other family, including my mum, my nan and my younger siblings were living in Kent which is three hundred miles away from where I currently am and is where I grew up. My mother and I never really had a good relationship, she abandoned me twice for drugs and drink and kept having children just so she could get more money in, however, my nan down there is a different story, we are very close. Sadly she is on my mind a lot as she has a lot of serious health conditions too MS, epilepsy, kidney failure and heart problems are just a few of what she has.

What I'm trying to say is, between working full time in a challenging role being underpaid, providing constant care and support for my boyfriend, caring and providing support to my grandparents and father, being emotionally supportive of my nan in Kent over the phone and having constant financial stress my depression has now got worse than what it has ever been.

Although I have not started self harm again, which I am grateful for, despite how much I get the urge to, I have never felt so low and empty in my entire life. About a year ago I decided to try medication again and went on to the lowest dose of Zoloft which helped but barely, so over the year it was gradually increased to the maximum dosage that my GP was able to prescribe. Whilst it helped a little, it didn't help me as much as I needed it to. I am now in the process of being weaned off of Zoloft slowly and have started a new medication - Mirtazapine. I have been on Mirtazipine and varying doses of Zoloft for 8 days now and feel quite odd if I'm being honest.

Since starting the new medication, I am still unsure on the affect it is happening but I seem to be nearly ok some of the time. Obviously, meds take a while to kick in so it may help me in the short future.

Obviously, I'm still not managing my depression very well and struggling to keep my head above water. I do feel more positive about the future however, since discovering this site where I can have someone to talk to and actually be able to be a listener for others and knowing that I can assure them that they are not alone. This site in the past week has been a very big positive step for me.

I also do have severe social anxieties which has prevented me to do many things in life, causing panic attacks in social aspects of life including joining a help site such as this. I find it stressful communicating with others even though this is just a forum it has been a mighty huge step for me to take to actually open up about myself to others. I've learnt that despite my depression and social anxieties, I can do this, I can live my life and have learnt that there is help out there. When there is help, there is hope.

Thank you for reading this, you'll have to excuse the fact that it's so long winded, I have never done anything like this before and has been quite challenging for me. But I am glad I have done this as it's a positive step for me in managing my own depression and may prove to be helpful and eye opening for others.