“But what if I drop the baby?”: my life with postpartum OCD I always wanted to be a mom. When I met my husband, even though we were young and knew that starting a family was years away, it was something we still talked about and planned for. We picked out names that we liked, [...]
My first episode of depression happened over 10 years ago. I got very, very sick, and ended up in hospital following a suicide attempt. What was already a messy situation was even more complicated because at the time I was working as a nurse on an inpatient psychiatry unit at the major hospital in the [...]
When I first experienced bipolar symptoms in college it was as though sadness had gotten jacked up to an excruciating level. From the time of my early teens I had dealt with depression and the occasional suicidal thought. There was some irritability as well, but nothing that caught me off guard. My depression was familiar [...]
I've been suffering from depression since my early twenties. I've been fighting with it, I've been angry at it for ruining my life, I've tried to embrace it as part of me, I've tried to accept it by actually accepting myself with the dark side and all. It hasn't been easy, that's for sure. From [...]
Hello, my name is John A Wilson and I struggled with severe depression and suicidal thoughts from 2008, at the age of 26, when I had just graduated as a part 1 architect but with not one vacancy for a job In my locality and unable to move because I was engaged at the time. [...]
“Depression.” It’s a word that's tossed around a lot these days, yet it isn’t fully understood. What most people don’t understand about being depressed is that there are different kinds of depression and different stages of it. We all get depressed. Our moods fluctuate. We’re only human. Some of us, however, can’t as easily control [...]
In 1990, when I was 15 years old I had my first depression. At first I was just a “grumpy teenager”, but soon it was clear to my parents that this was not “normal”. At that time people did not really speak about depression or mental health. Not in my village in the Netherlands, anyway. [...]
My first thought was, “This is some hippy-dippy shit, right?” Mindfulness sounded like something for crunchy granola type people, something for people trying to get in touch with the harmony of the universe or align their chakras with crystals and bath salts. It sounded corny. It sounded like a reincarnation of the fake it till [...]
I wanted you to save me. That's why I stayed with you. But I was wrong. You can save me or fix me. I have mood swings. Sometimes I run around the house cleaning everything, singing at the top of my lungs, and I'm euphoric, haven't slept for days. I want to please you, be [...]
Ever had one of those dreams, where you try to cry out for help but no-one could hear you? That's how I felt, no one could hear me calling out for help. My eyes filled with tears as I thought of my mother. I wondered if I'd ever see her again. I didn't remember what [...]
