I come from a long line of depressives. That's not to say that life was miserable or that I spend my days lamenting; oh, not at all. But when it comes to depression, believe me, I've pretty well seen it all.
Yes, I've experienced down times, the why-do-I-even bother times; the where's-the-point-in-even-going-on times. Depression blooms in my family like some deep, dark hidden flower that infects us all. But no-one talks about it.
Yet, my own experience has been that we need to talk. We need to explore our depressed moods; to try to understand the triggers and the causes. We need to empower ourselves and our loved ones by declaring that we are depressed and we're going to talk about it openly, learn to cope with a little support from our friends, keep abreast of all the latest studies and research, minimise the damage to our lives and learn to live happy and fulfilling lives.
Depression has had a major impact on my own life. Witnessing depression in people I cared about drove me to take a degree in psychology, follow that up by training as a counsellor and working with depressed clients in private practice.
Now I'm a full time writer - visit http://www.glenysoconnell.com/ or run my name on Amazon.com and you'll see some of my work. I've even written a book about depression, due out this summer, and I'll talk more about that later.
Like most other projects, beginning a new blog is difficult. It's exciting, and scary, too. Blogs mean we are baring some part of our day to day lives, and people who are feeling depressed hate to do this even more than most. So I hope you will bear with me and offer your comments and support as I set up this blog and explore depression, depression treatments, and all the changes taking place in this illness which affects anything up to 25 per cent of the population at any given time.
When you think about those figures - up to 25 per cent, or one in four people, at any time are suffering from depression, and about ten per cent of the population have reported feelings of suicide to their medical professionals - then its certainly time we talked about this!
I'd love to hear from readers, whether you suffer from depression, know someone who does, or just hold an opinion, please leave your comments!
