I’ll add my perspective as a male recovering from depression:
- A questionnaire asking about sadness would have missed me. My emotions didn’t take the detour over sadness on their way to not caring anymore.
- Asking me about hopelessness would also have missed me outside of my deepest downs.
- While, in retrospect, I did become more easily irritated by people (especially when asked to do something when trying to wind down), asking people around me about acting out would have missed me, as I generally like my fellow humans and have a desire to please and respect for people teaching me something, so expressing that irritation would have been rather rare. It also would have been short lived as I’m quick to forgive.
The best ways to have discovered my depression earlier would have been to
- ask me about feeling overwhelmed by all I felt I needed to do
- note how long and often I needed downtime
- note how I increasingly failed to do things I needed to do in time or at all
- ask me about feeling like I’m wasting my potential and/or disappointing people around me
- ask me if I thought I was lazy despite not wanting to be
- maybe ask me about being more easily irritated rhan I used to be
Because this wasn’t caught, I spent years with undiagnosed depression. Years in which unhealthy coping mechanisms had time to entrench themselves. It was only caught because suicidal thoughts scared me so much that I sought help when they appeared a second time.
Really appreciate you sharing your insight here. It’s given me a lot to think about. Thank you!
I really resonate with your comment and also struggled with depression throughout my teens into adulthood until I learned about late diagnosed adhd and how those who fly under the radar for that can often lead to chronic burnout which is very similar looking to depression. Have you ever considered you might be ADHD?
Definitely not ADHD in my case. My depression came from family history and having internalised harmfully high expectations.
Edit: Oh and likely genetics that produce less serotonin than would be ideal.
Edit2: Also, it developed way too gradually to be a burnout.
This is a brilliant comment, thanks for sharing your personal experience. It sounds like you’re talking about this in the past tense, but as someone who has lived a long while with unhealthy coping measures, I’ve learned that “better” is less a state that you reach, more an ongoing process of trying to stay on top of the things that would drag you down; how are you doing nowadays?
You’re right on all counts. With the help of therapy and medicine I was able to reach a state where I was able to start an apprenticeship as an automation specialist in a regular firm without any concessions that would need to be noted on the certificate of proficiency (just a bit more leniency for sick days (unpaid)). Just a few weeks ago I received my federal certificate for this profession and I’m now starting to look for jobs (luckily, the market is starved for automation specialists).
But as you guessed, it’s still an ongoing process. For the duration of the apprenticeship I had to work 100% and as a consequence was sick a lot (part my body complaining about being overworked, part not always having the willpower to power through). I’m planning to only work a maximum of 80% in future, maybe just 70%.
Some days are still very difficult. Just last week I shut down completely for two days because of the combination of needing to prepare my work project for handover, looking for a new workplace (my current one only deals with apprenticeships, it’s kind of like a school in that regard) and being hounded at home about deep cleaning my room and parts of the house in preparation for moving out (was living with several other people for the duration of the apprenticeship and will move out next month) all at once.
I’m very grateful to the state (canton) I’m living in for all the help I received without counting it as debt against me (unless I suddenly win the lottery jackpot, inherit a fortune from an unexpected benefactor, or start earning disgusting amounts of money). Because of that, I’m hoping I can find work in this state so that my taxes may help in continuing these policies for other people rather than benefit an unrelated state.
Good to hear you’re better, but it seems weird that your symptoms weren’t caught earlier. Even a very simple questionnaire like the MADRS has explicit sadness as only one dimension. You would have been asked for lack of initiative/procrastination, stress/anxiety and negative self-talk. Sounds like someone didn’t do their job properly (unless you hid your symptoms from your family doctor or didn’t go, of course).
For a long time I (and people around me) just believed I must have become a lazy person and that I just needed to get over myself. The idea that I might be ill didn’t even come up. When I struggled to write my bachelor’s thesis I did visit an insurance-approved psychologist, but all that guy did was trying to find ways I could motivate myself, with no attempt to find out what was causing me to struggle in the first place rather than just reinforce my perception that I must just be lazy. After a couple of months I stopped going because all those visits did was making me feel worse. Also, because I chose to go to a psychologist directly rather than being delegated there by a doctor/psychiatrist, insurance only covered half of the cost, so it was a waste of money as well.
Really the first idea that it might be a mental illness rather than a personality flaw and being a general failure of a person didn’t come up at all until I read a book in which I saw a lot of myself in the protagonist’s mother who was said in the book to have depression. That same week I had my second bout of suicidal ideation, which drove me to get help asap.
I think this is an important finding to promote in regards to mental health. The mental health of men and boys is not really handled all that well (you either man up or get told to be more vulnerable/open/etc, without any real chance to handle it due to stigma and societal norms). I think one, it can help us spot teens who are having depressive thoughts, and give us a chance to help address it early. I think it also helps open up guys to better understand their emotions, which is the first step to managing depressive thoughts and treating depression. Given the article, I wouldn’t be surprised if men grow up with an idea of “i’m not depressed because i’m not sad, hopeless, etc.”, when their aggressive reactions are brought out by depressive thoughts (vs crying, loss of motivation, etc).
Any info on how this applies to trans people? ~Strawberry
That’s a whole other can of worms, and I’m gonna guess much more difficult to quantify and study due to physiological, psychological, and hormonal inconsistencies vs sociatal influences…
