Depression: True Stories

DVD Excerpt: I'm Jeanne Blake. Depression is an illness that affects your moods; your sleep, appetite, interests and ability to concentrate. It can make you feel as though life isn't worth living. These symptoms reflect a change in the neurochemistry of your brain. Depression can sneak up on children, adolescents and adults. Sometimes they don't even realize they have it. In this program Chamique Holdsclaw, Mike Haas, and Angie Vasquez describe living with depression and how treatment changed, and may have even saved, their lives.

Chamique Holdsclaw: My body just collapsed. Like my body just said, you know, this is it. This is enough. I was just moody. I was angry. It's like I could only think about things like my grandmother, how much I missed her.

Jeanne Blake: Chamique met regularly for treatment with her psychiatrist. Her doctor prescribed anti-depressant medication.

Chamique Holdsclaw: The therapist said 'just look at you, look at all the great qualities you have. You are your grandmother. Be proud about that. Be proud when you take steps forward in life to know that this person June Holdsclaw helped get you there. We all suffer losses and it affects people differently but she goes you know you have to just sort of kind of change the way you think a little bit.' And she's like, 'I know it's gonna be hard, but you know take one day at a time.'

Jeanne Blake: When Mike thinks back on his thoughts of suicide he can see how depression caused him to lose perspective.




Mike: When, you're suicidal you simply don't believe that it's going to get better but now that I've, I've been through that and I've seen that it gets better. What I've really come to realize is that you don't have to deal with things on your own. There's therapy, there's medicine, there's programs that are designed to help. And, as someone who used to consider everything completely hopeless, I've really have been able to find a new sort of will to keep living and keep facing good and bad.

Angie: I'm Latina and in my culture a lot of people don't like to admit or talk about being depressed because it's seen as a sign of weakness but depression can happen to anyone and it's not a sign of weakness and I'm glad that I speak about it because I'm not ashamed and my life is so much better now because I talk about.

Jeanne Blake: Angie, Mike, and Chamique show us that depression is an illness that needs to be discussed openly. They tell their stories so you'll know what to do if you see signs of depression in yourself or someone you care about. With help from a professional, depression can be treated and lives can be transformed and saved.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• depression
• stigma
• Chamique
• Holdsclaw
• recovery
• early
• diagnosis
• treatment
• suicide
• prevention
• transform
• save
• lives
• teens
• stress
• self-harm
• Jeanne
• Blake
• mental
• health
• professional
• suicidal
• anti-depressant
• medication
• psychiatrist

[Winter077]

The cure to depression is people. Hit and run advice is useless. You (the mentally sound) must visit the depressed and just BE WITH THEM. Don't say anything, just sit with them. Listen to them if they want to talk, but don't force conversation. They might push you away because their self-esteem is low, but don't let that stop you. Be persistant and visit or call them daily. They need to feel unconditional love, not fake sincereity. Love them with all your might. Karma will love you back!

[amber23451]

depression is hard to live with and if you can live with it then you are luckey and they are right there are other options other then death couse i to live with depression

[zealot256]

@stepdancestepx0 There are people that are there for you if you want to talk. I know talking helped me. I'm here for you, you can message me if you want. I'm only 17, but I tried to commit suicide multiple times and recovered.

[candistyx]

@Winter077 That's the cure for loneliness. I know a lot of people conflate the two these days due to the highly isolating nature of modern society. But there is a depression that exists separately from loneliness.

[RishiP85]

Been suffering with this for about 10 years...a lot of my music on my page is influenced by it....maybe some of you can relate to it...

[stepdancestepx0]

depression never goes away :( It wont leave me alone

[PHmizpah]

I once suffered from severe depression two more than two years ago. I can perfectly identify to their descriptions of feeling down and wanting to end one's life. One thing that causes this is our in-born temperaments. I am almost a perfect melancholy (other temperaments are sparky sanguine, bossy choleric and flip phegmatic) so it means to say that I always think and so introspective to the point of bringing harm to myself because the things I think about border on pessimism and losing hope.

[LeliaElliston]

A difficult subject to address. Well done!