Welcome to Breaking Depression!
I started this blog with the hope that I could help people suffering from Depression (also known as “Clinical Depression” and “Major Depressive Disorder”) and associated mental illnesses like Bi-Polar Disorder (Manic Depression), ADHD, ADD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and PTSD by sharing with them my 25+ years of experience coping, fighting, surviving, and living with these illness and disorders.
I am a 40+ year old father and husband who has been battling severe depression for over 25 years. Diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), also known as Clinical Depression) after a suicide attempt in my 20s I began psychotherapy and antidepressant medication under the care of a psychiatrist. Over the years I have had great success and great failure. I have had severe recurrences of depression that have spanned months to years. I am what doctors call “treatment resistant”, meaning that most antidepressant medications do not work for me. I have been also diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and surely had undiagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as a child. I have had multiple life traumas that have led to the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and periods of high anxiety and panic attacks. I was also once misdiagnosed as having Bipolar II a form of Bipolar Disorder (Manic Depression) that takes the form of Depression with Hypo-Manic (not quite manic) episodes that had sometimes been dangerous. This led to a volley of interventions that actually created a six year period of suicidal depression with interspersions of mania that I can only describe as dangerous and indescribably torturous. If there is a such a thing a “hell” than this was it! I was eventually drugged into an almost catatonic like state from which I and almost everyone else thought I would never emerge. It was my wife who kept hope alive for me when I had no hope of my own. Somehow she always believed I’d get myself out of it and I did.
From the very beginning of being diagnosed with Depression and the other mental illnesses just mentioned above I have never ceased to try to break free of the grip of depression. I have been prescribed upwards of 50 different meds (medications), sometimes being on as many as 6 different meds at a time. I have tried almost all of the different psycho-therapies available today, and have tried many other types of ways to break this depression in the fields of psychology, neurology, physiology, philosophy, religion, spirituality, diet, exercise, and many other alternative medicines, and continue to expand my library of hundreds of books of every kind that I thought I might be able to use to break my depression.
At the time of this writing I am currently not in depression. But I still have MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) which means that and I will still suffer some horrific hours or days, but they are only temporary!