Definition Of Depression

[FayetheAspie]

I have a question about what counts as a depressive episode. If someone gets sad and cries 2 or 3 times a day for a few days or so in a row is it still depression if they are still able to find things to enjoy at times during those days? Don't you have to like be inconsolable and stay in bed all the time for it to be an actual depressive episode?

 

[Judge]

Difficult to answer in any generalized manner, given there are different- even more intricate forms of depression. Similar to autism, it's not a condition that can be so easily defined in any "cookie-cutter" fashion. Perhaps this can better answer such a question:

Types of Depression

I was formally diagnosed with chronic major depression back in 1982. Though I suspect this is something I have lived with since I was 15 years old.

For me it always ebbs and flows...and most of the time I'm quite aware of either. When it flows I may keep busy, but I seldom get any enjoyment of out things I otherwise love to do. Causing me on occasion to live literally in no more than 24 hour increments, not looking beyond my own horizon in my own best interest.

It can also be triggered by circumstances or people around me who may not realize how they can inadvertently bring me down into a depressed state with too much negativity in too short a time period.

Perhaps the most practical thing I try to do over things I truly have control over is to avoid making big personal decisions when my depression flows. Though in the real world it's easier said than done, especially if you have a job requiring big decisions daily. For better and for worse I tend to mask my depression apart from my autism when possible.

All I can say from my own perspective is that an "episode" may not necessarily reflect a serious- or permanent condition depending on a number of things to consider apart from its duration, and whether it repeats itself whether cyclical or not.

 

[Boogs]

Difficult to answer in any generalized manner, given there are different- even more intricate forms of depression.

Seconded. It's a spectrum (of course!) and it's at least partly about how much it effects normal daily function as to how it's diagnosed. On top of which as @Judge says, there are different types that can't be directly compared.

Some people can live with low level depression all their lives, but still be able to function on a day to day basis.
You can have an depressive episode for a short period, but it may well be founded on life situation rather than any mental or organic condition, and you wouldn't be likely to be diagnosed as depressed unless it persisted and/or kept returning, and, had a significant negative impact on daily function.

In other words, a diagnosis should come as part of requiring some sort of intervention. If there's no need for intervention (including talk therapy) then no need for a diagnosis.

Caveat - that's not medical rules or procedure to my knowledge but what I gleaned from my own experiences and my fathers knowledge as a psychiatrist. Pinch of salt as always!

 

[Jonn]

I have a question about what counts as a depressive episode. If someone gets sad and cries 2 or 3 times a day for a few days or so in a row is it still depression if they are still able to find things to enjoy at times during those days? Don't you have to like be inconsolable and stay in bed all the time for it to be an actual depressive episode?

I have heard it expressed that way.

Using personal experiences, being an expert in due to my 10 years of suicidal tendencies in my 20's:

At the time I describe depression as being in a deep, dark pit that I couldn't escape from.
It was a feeling that was omnipresent, in the background, if not front of mind.

Suicide was a way out of the misery and constantly considered.
I had various plans and attempted suicide a number of times.
I bough a motorcycle hoping it would help me along.

Spoiler

Spoiler:
I didn't do it.

Since those days, I have never been depressed, despite the continued gang-stalking.
Mountains of sadness, but no desire to leave this mortal coil prematurely.

 

[Misty Avich]

Usually for me a depression episode is triggered, like when being reminded how crap I am at having friends or that I'm definitely the only person in my family with ASD or that someone who experienced all the risk factors of having an ASD turns out normal. Probably anything linked to being reminded of ASD really can trigger a depressive episode. I mope about and think "it's not fair I'm like this and they ain't". It probably would help if I just accepted the fact that I'm on the spectrum but I can't. I just can't.

But even when autism is pushed to the back of my mind and I'm focusing on other things, I still do things what a person with depression would do, such as spending a lot of time in bed and finding it hard to motivate myself even at work.

 

[AprilR]

I have never been unable to leave the bed, though i have been suicidally depressed before. I think everyone experiences depression differently. For me it is an emptiness i feel, that i am useless and life is worthless. Thoughts like" why bother doing x, No one cares about you you are better off dead. " I don't have the will to live some days. I just do things i should do, going through the motions of what i should do and sometimes it helps

 

[FayetheAspie]

Thanks for all your descriptions. There tends to be a reason and usually is more like I'm just a little down and have frequent crying that I generally hold in except when by myself. Small joys can still be found during such times so probably don't count as depression. It rarely ever last more than 4 or 5 days anyway. I have been more depressed before but it takes something really major like loss of someone or something I care about to trigger it.

 

[Judge]

Since those days, I have never been depressed, despite the continued gang-stalking.

Sounds like we have more in common than you may think. In both my childhood and early adult years, I had numerous yet unwanted exposure with various groups of such people.

Though I think the worst was when I was a warehouseman/truck driver, having to frequent parts of town where simply wearing the wrong "colors" could get me beaten or killed.

As a kid in 60s Virginia it didn't help being Catholic and categorized as "unwanted" (and worse) much like people of color by some pretty strange people who seemed to like placing burning crosses in some peoples' front yards. Nothing like seeing some kids innocently on their way to catechism while being jeered at and called "Papists". Small wonder I cut my ties with religion a few years later.

And having to live occasionally on the other side of the country put me into close proximity at times with "one-percenters" who tended to loiter near my school. The sort of people you absolutely do not want to look in the eyes, even as a child. Confusing for me at times given my parents emphasized the need to always look people in the eyes.

Ironically I too wanted that motorcycle. Only to fit into a social group that turned out to be terribly toxic. Apart from my parents being outraged at the idea of two wheels without pedals. Never got one, yet even at my age I still think about it. FOMO...

Though in my own case while such scenarios would bring me down at times, my condition remains pathological. Like my Autism and OCD, my kind of depression is for the duration and always has been. I just deal with it the best I can, and try to stay abreast of when it ebbs or flows.

 

[Aspychata]

l hit a true depressed mode in my life. l was stalked for 4 years of my life by a man who l didn't know. This situation led to a bunch of complexities, and l hit true depression. It was like being in a bubble where l found only enough energy to get to work and to come home. l did eventually jump on a antidepressant which gave me the right chemical cocktail to resume living again, and l stopped the pills after about a year. I only wish to say to you, if you feel like you have zero energy to get thru your day or you are contemplating perhaps ending life, please seek therapy, or go to Emergency dept , where you can be observed and then referred to a medical professional to help you pull thru.

 

[Kayla55]

Don't be delusional: my underlying theme is when I'm gone hopefully the least I left behind was few improvements for people with autism to work in happy environ, and awareness that it won't kill people to include us, we actually very helpful and caring in our own ways.

One of my observations if you not watching your diagnosis is that it seems like other people are deliberately holding you back, that always brick wall as to why I can't have my own business. Hopelessness causes depression border onto manic, or at least how I felt.

 

[Jonn]

"I get knocked down,
But I get up again,
You're never going to keep me down..."

Spoiler