Depression

I started my research on depression. To be specific adolescent depression. I have found some interesting facts about depression. The question of what is depression has been asked and the response is that depression is an illness that involves the moods and thoughts of a person. At times the individual can not communicate their feelings to alert anyone that they have a problem. I never realized that depression affected children as young as two years of age.

I have family members that suffer from this illness. I did not understand their mood swings in the beginning, but now things are clearer for me. I know realize that the aggressive behaviors and the abuse they would inflict on other people.

My nephew was diagnosed as a manic depressive when he was in his senior year of high school. Some of his symptom were him being extremely aggressive and abusive to his siblings, and he started to have hallucinations. He was visualizing things in his mind that were not occurring. This was causing the doctors to misdiagnose him, because they over medicated him leaving him to just be able to sit around and stare out. He is an adult now, they have gotten control of his medication but there are times he still has an episode of acting out.

My sister I believe suffered from depression as a child and was one that was not diagnosed. Because of this she has developed an abusive behavior. She likes to become physical with people and is very short tempered. She has been put on medication and it seems to have her always in a negative state of mind. She seems to always find fault with people and is very self-centered. You cannot talk about a subject without her turning the topic on herself. That becomes so very annoying because you can never finish what you are discuss. She controls the conversation to the point that you just end it and walk away.

I am learning a lot from this research. I believe this will help me to be a little more patient with my relatives and not try to avoid them when they are around. Now I understand that this is something that is out of their control.

Helen