Depression Unveiled

 

     
There’s many people who are depressed and have a high risk of suicide.   They don’t always follow each other, but  also experience severe suicidal thoughts.   I’m trying to make sense of this fact. 

Let’s start by unraveling how depression sneaks up on you.  You can feel completely normal one day with just a slight increase in anxiety and stress.  You probably remember how this felt.  Your mind ruminates on a single thought,  how empty you feel about your life.
Then you might try to distract yourself with work, family obligations.   However,  the harder you try to supress those unwanted thoughts you actually are consumed with them.  You decide that maybe it’s just you overreacting,  so you sleep longer than normal.  Dreams turn into nightmares and you wake up in a sweat.  Your sleep is disturbed and your eating patterns change.  Work no longer helps you so you start taking days off due to iillness.  Depression begins manifesting as physical symptoms appear.  So you falsely believe that your just sick.  Anything to believe it’s only outside situations beyond your control that are making you depressed. 

Days turn into weeks into months that you feel life isn’t worth it.  You can’t focus on anything for too long.  Finally you turn to a doctor to perhaps give you antidepressant for this problem.  You expect a quick recovery,  but medication doesn’t help and your psychiatrist diagnoses  you with clinical depression.   You ask but don’t understand this label given to you and decide to educate yourself on this subject.   This only adds to your confusion.  

Then one day at work you take extra time off on your lunch break.  No one even notices.   During lunch you park your car at a store parking lot and listen to sad songs.   You sink further into a depressed state of mind.  You contemplate suicide because there’s no one you can talk to about how you feel worthless, hopeless  and don’t feel there’s any reason for you to live.  So you go back to work and fake it.  Smiles are simply a way out of discussing how bad you feel.  Some people might go to a psychologist for help.  You reveal all sorts of your life to a stranger.   Intimate details flood your mind and when you leave you remember  secrets of your past that are intrusive.  At your psychiatrist s appointment he prescribes a higher dose of antidepressant.   You start gaining weight and feel dispair.  Isolating from family and friends comes next.  You try to explain how you feel and they only contribute to you sinking further into the tight grips of depression.   They might make cruel remarks like why don’t you just stop feeling sorry for yourself and just get over it.  This really stings and you doubt yourself.  No amount of counseling helps. 

What do you do next?  Suddenly thoughts of dying consume all your waking thoughts.  How will you do it, when should you do it and by what means should you engage in committing  suicide?  Well by now you feel helpless so you might decide on taking some extra pills, or maybe turning your car on inside a garage and just go to sleep permanently.   In either case it’s appealing cause you feel this way would be painless.  There’s a huge amount of pills you’ve stored away and begin your descent into a hellish nightmare.  One by one you start popping those Xanax pills.  You forget how many and take more as you feel no effect yet.  You might make a gesture for help by calling a friend, but hang up when their answering machine is the only thing you hear.  As a last resort you call your psychiatrist and you don’t say a word just mumble you are depressed and make light of how you actually feel.  The last person you decide to speak to is the 911 operator.  All of a sudden you colapse on the floor.  There’s no one home but you. What happens next is a mystery since you are unconscious and stopped breathing, but you don’t feel anything.  You can’t move or talk but you start to feel pounding hard on your chest and try to communicate that this hurts.  This is the moment when you are alive again.  Cpr was administered, then the defibulater was placed on your chest and your heart begins beating again.  The paramedics decide that your airway is compromised so  they get orders to begin to intubate you while still in the rescue truck Enroute to the nearest hospital.  At this point you feel yourself struggling to get them to stop as there’s so much pain. When you finally become conscious again your in ICU with a tube down your throat and your on a one to one.   Someone is always with you.  They take out the tube once your breathing on your own.  Doctor comes in to see you and nothing you say is coherent to them.  You stay in the intensive care unit being monitored closely.   Suddenly you become acutely aware of where you are and try making sense of everything.  However, you can’t remember anything about what happened.   Piece by piece you reconstruct the time missing.  Then once medically cleared they send you to the psychiatric unit for the police baker acted you.  It’s very humiliating and embarrassing.   You convince the doctor that you are well enough to go home.  He doesn’t believe you so you stay confined in the hospital ward.  You are finally discharged and go home.  

Family and friends don’t understand why you tried to kill yourself and are very angry with you.  So you believe you were selfish and had no regard for hurting them.  It’s all about how they feel and nothing about you and your feelings.  It’s sad but the cycle begins again.  What a tragedy. 

There you have it an intimate revelation into the first hand account of a person’s suicide attempt.  I’m telling you this for those considering suicide as a means to end your pain.  This is NOT the way, Please don’t copy my deperation and get help.  Call someone who can really help you.  There are 2 ways I’m aware of to treat active suicidal intentions. 
     ECT TREATMENT
     LITHIUM
     INVEGA INJECTION.   ONCE A MONTH
These methods have greatly helped reduce suicide.  Ask your doctor to consider these options.
May God bless each one of you in crisis.