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    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

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Depression Poll

Are you depressed?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 55 38.2%
  • No.

    Votes: 89 61.8%

  • Total voters
    144

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
By the way, much of the discussion on whether someone has depression or not is pretty useless. The diagnostic criteria are broad, unscientific and subjective. Criteria like these can't be more than a hint as to what treatments to try. So the more relevant question is whether someone benefited from antidepressants or psychotherapy. In my experience psychotherapy is pretty useless and antidepressants worsen fatigue while not fixing anything.
 

Misfit Toy

Senior Member
Messages
4,178
Location
USA
When I think of depression, I don't distinguish it from sadness, fatigue, etc. I don't get so technical and tear apart the word.

I wake up and think, I'm tired. I live alone and my life didn't turn out how I wished it did. It's freezing here, I have SAD, I'm perimenopausal. I want to do something today for the sake of doing something, but do I want to go out in 14 degree weather? Next up: pain. I'm in pain. My mid back is hurting.

I want more than this. I want more of a life. I would say I'm depressed and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not suicidal. Not even close. Am I always feeling like this? It's worse in the winter, but yes. I always want my life back, to not have pain and to not be sick so there is always a low level, sometimes high level of sadness, depression, etc. I can laugh, I am not catatonic but I'm down.

I don't gauge peoples mental state on my mental state. I believe Gracie J is happy.

but I would think that if someone was sick everyday, dealing with POTS everyday (I don't have POTS), unable to get out, or whatever....if that was going on, they would be depressed. That would be the normal reaction. Key word; normal.

If they've come to a place of total peace and tranquility over being home bound, housebound, etc, I would feel that that's a shame. It's good that they are accepting this, I guess, but I know I couldn't and most couldn't.

And dare I throw that out there, for fear of being ripped apart but, it's how I feel. How can anyone be overjoyed with this thing?

Everyone's level of illness is different. If you are out and about, have help, a family that's supportive, you may not feel depressed. The key word also is: HELP.

If you lost your house, can't afford meds, don't have that help, (I'm not even talking about myself) your significant other isn't the best.... depression probably is there.
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Given the number of vaguely defined, subjective and rather too conveniently diagnosable conditions included in that list, not to mention your use of "etc" at the end,

These are only "vaguely defined" if you if you don't know much about abnormal psychology and mental health. The mental conditions I listed are very well defined. And I am not quite sure why you are objecting to the word "etcetera."

In its race for respectability and the influence it thinks it deserves, Psychiatry has come up with labels for almost every quirk of personality and every kind of apparent non-conformity to arbitrary norms.

These mental health conditions are by no stretch of the imagination "quirks of personality". There can hideous degrees of suffering involved with many mental health conditions, mental torment that you could not even begin to imagine. These conditions are not "quirks of personality"; these condition can be are serious aberrations from a healthy mental state. They are a travesty of the human condition.

I have a very strong hatred towards mental ill health conditions, as I know from direct experience how hideous they can be. They are a scourge on humanity, in my view.

And mental health conditions cause largely unrecognized damage to human society: the Nazi party comprised a bunch of psychotic psychopaths, and I would suggest this underpinned their insane mass murdering of millions.

But such labelling can be uniquely damaging to ME/CFS patients on the receiving end of it, as well as detrimental to progress in finally understanding the disease.

If you have horrible mental suffering due to a mental health condition, once this condition is identified and labeled, this can lead to the appropriate treatments, and thus hopefully amelioration of symptoms. I cannot see how such labeling can be damaging to ME/CFS patients, except in the case where ME/CFS is misdiagnosed as say depression.

The fact that ME/CFS patients do have a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities means that even if we look at ME/CFS itself as a neurological disease, it's still important to address and treat any psychiatric comorbidities that an ME/CFS patient may have.

However, I agree it is a sensitive issue in so far as ME/CFS has been for so long viewed as a psychogenic "all in your head" condition, so it can certainly be damaging if medical professionals continue to take this erroneoius "all in your head" view of ME/CFS.

Even those ME/CFS patients with serious mental health co-morbidities that call for appropriate psychiatric care stand to lose much from the continued prevalence of the idea that ME/CFS is or may be a psychatric disorder. As long as that lie has life in it, our hope of a cure is jeopardised.

In my view, the issue is less about classifying what ME/CFS is, and more about pinpointing the etiology of ME/CFS. The ongoing mistake that the psychiatric profession is making is assuming that ME/CFS, as well as mental health conditions of all sorts, are largely psychogenic in etiology.

Psychogenic means that the cause of an illness is psychological rather than physical / biochemical. In above posts, the terms "life circumstances" and "environmental causes" have been used to denote such psychogenic etiologies.

I think the grave error of psychiatry is to assume that not only ME/CFS, but also conditions like depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, autism, etc are psychogenic, rather than looking for biochemical causes.

This bias to thinking in terms of psychogenic causes for mental health conditions is systemic in psychiatry, and has to change. It is in fact changing, and the new generation of psychiatrists and psychologists seem more interested in examining biochemical causes of mental health conditions, such as viral etiologies. But this change is not yet fast enough nor extensive enough. The psychogenic paradigm still holds much sway, and until this paradigm is pruned back into proper proportion, and research into biochemical explanations for mental health is expanded, I think progress in understanding and treating mental health conditions will be hampered.
 
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chipmunk1

Senior Member
Messages
765
In my experience psychotherapy is pretty useless and antidepressants worsen fatigue while not fixing anything.

.... self censored potentially offensive commentary.....
 
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chipmunk1

Senior Member
Messages
765
If you lost your house, can't afford meds, don't have that help, (I'm not even talking about myself) your significant other isn't the best.... depression probably is there.

does anyone know if people who live in 3rd world countries under horrible conditions are frequently depressed?

people there might not have a house, don't have medical care, don't have enough to eat, might fear getting killed, are ill and untreated etc.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Apologies for my somewhat "snappish" reply last night, Hip. Nothing personal. It's just that for many of us the issue of depression is quite sensitive. As in my case, we have been told for years our ailments were "all in our heads". Not sure it's the fear of the "mental health stigma", but more to do with the way we have been told countless times that our illness "wasn't real", and we were just depressed, if not outright lazy. It can elicit an instant reaction from many ME/CFS patients, specially after the UK psych lobby successfully hijacked the syndrome for decades, building pseudo-academic constructs to tell the world "it's all in our heads".

Like others have posted here, I don't think being sad or beaten down by life is the same as clinical depression. The serotonin chemical imbalance at the core of depression does not need a reason or motive to manifest. On the other hand, I think it is perfectly human and normal to be upset, sad, beaten down or even bitter after years of suffering a chronic illness and experiencing the awful consequences of such condition in all aspects of your life. I don't equate sadness with depression; many people do, but for me they mean different things.

I think that this poll, to get around these concerns, should expand the questions a little. This issue may require more than a "yes/no" answer. I think it would make sense to expand the questions to ask if the patient experienced depression before CFS, or only after CFS. Also if the use of antidepressants helped at all. It may add a few layers of grey instead of a black and white "yes/no" answer.

I didn't perceive your reply as snappish, nor take any offense. And I am full agreement of how bad it is that ME/CFS is viewed by so many medical professionals as an "all in the mind" condition, and that many professionals are so badly trained when it comes to ME/CFS that they cannot even distinguish it from depression.

However, this should not cloud the issue that ME/CFS patients can have depression in addition to ME/CFS. And if the depression is not that bad, it can be hard, even for the ME/CFS patients themselves, to disentangle the ME/CFS symptoms from the depression symptoms.

In my case, my ME/CFS symptoms remain fairly constant, but my depression comes and goes, so this makes it easier to disentangle the two.

For example, about 9 months ago I went through a very good period where although my ME/CFS symptoms had not improved, my depression and anhedonia symptoms had got much better, for some reason. During this period, although the same restrictive limitations were imposed on my life because of the ME/CFS brain fog, fatigue, PEM, etc, I felt very happy and engaged with all the little things I was able to do around the house. This made it clear to me that you can be very happy and contented even with the much reduced opportunities and restrictions that ME/CFS puts on your life, provided that you don't have the comorbid depression.

So I would say that if you are feeling down, just for you own sake, consider that you might well be suffering with some mild depression, and perhaps consider trying out some antidepressants.

I used a number of antidepressant supplements that have beneficial effects on boosting mood, such as high dose inositol 15 grams daily, and Spanish saffron 60 mg daily (some studies showed this herb can be as potent as Prozac). And very low dose amisulpride (12.5 mg daily) I find useful for both my anhedonia and depression in general. I got very fast acting antidepressant effects from the nootropic drug noopept, when I took 50 mg intranasally each day. Noopept also helps with the frequent urination symptom that ME/CFS patients can get (noopept is a peptide analog of the active fragment of the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin).
 
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MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
When I think of depression, I don't distinguish it from sadness, fatigue, etc. I don't get so technical and tear apart the word.

I wake up and think, I'm tired. I live alone and my life didn't turn out how I wished it did. It's freezing here, I have SAD, I'm perimenopausal. I want to do something today for the sake of doing something, but do I want to go out in 20 degree weather? Next up: pain. I'm in pain. My mid back is hurting.

I want more than this. I want more of a life. I would say I'm depressed and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not suicidal. Not even close.

I don't gauge peoples mental state on my mental state. I believe Gracie J is happy.

but I would think that if someone was sick everyday, dealing with POTS everyday (I don't have POTS), unable to get out, or whatever....if that was going on, they would be depressed. That would be the normal reaction. Key word; normal.

If they've come to a place of total peace and tranquility over being home bound, housebound, etc, I would feel that that's a shame. It's good that they are accepting this, I guess, but I know I couldn't and most couldn't.

And dare I throw that out there, for fear of being ripped apart but, it's how I feel. How can anyone be overjoyed with this thing?

Everyone's level of illness is different. If you are out and about, have help, a family that's supportive, you may not feel depressed. The key word also is: HELP.

If you lost your house, can't afford meds, don't have that help, (I'm not even talking about myself) your significant other isn't the best.... depression probably is there.

No one has claimed to be overjoyed.

There is a big range of states between depressed and overjoyed!

I have ME, I can't use my hard-won Masters degree, I can't afford to run a car, I have suffered extreme poverty, etc. I have not had any help, apart from some charity workers cutting my hedge once, and my younger brother fixing a leaking tap and a couple of light fittings. But my family never seem to have understood. One brother even said "So you're still claiming to be disabled." That hurt like hell. My friends have gradually improved their understanding, but it's not great. I should perhaps give them a leaflet - I can't expect them to understand if I haven't told them properly.

But I am also lucky - I have a house which I have almost paid for, I have Phoenix Rising, I have a few friends, I live in a nice area in a safe country...and I am alive. I have all the things I need - electricity, running water, sanitation, medications, supplements, fairly wholesome food. I am able to enjoy things. I appreciate what I have - when I remember.

It's scandalous that people can't get the meds they need, either in the UK because they simply aren't available, or in the US because healthcare isn't free.

I'm frustrated at the things I can't do, but I don't dwell on them.

I shudder at the memory of my own depression, and sympathise greatly with those who suffer from it. It is ghastly.
 

Tired of being sick

Senior Member
Messages
565
Location
Western PA USA
@Valentijn
The fact that the thought depression angers you should ring a few bells..

It is impossible to have full blown CFS/ME and not be depressed about it
for the fact their capability to live normal productive lives is severely diminished..

Who ever claims to not be depressed about these facts are truly lying to themselves..
 

Aurator

Senior Member
Messages
625
These are only "vaguely defined" if you if you don't know much about abnormal psychology and mental health. The mental conditions I listed are very well defined. And I am not quite sure why you are objecting to the word "etcetera."
You seem to have missed my point. I'm not objecting to your use of etc. Its use merely illustrates that the full list is actually much longer than even the fairly long list you've already given. Some of the conditions in your list are vaguely defined and prone to subjectivity in their diagnosis. If you are not already aware of the latitude displayed in descriptions and diagnoses of conditions such as "social anxiety" then there's not much I can say to disabuse you.
mental torment that you could not even begin to imagine
How do you know? I'm afraid you're jumping to conclusions and making unwarranted assumptions about my own experience.
Strangely, the remainder of your comments appear for the most part to be professing disagreement with what I've said whilst actually coinciding with my own viewpoint, so there's not much I can profitably add to what I've already said.
 
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Messages
15,786
@Valentijn
The fact that the thought depression angers you should ring a few bells..

It is impossible to have full blown CFS/ME and not be depressed about it
for the fact their capability to live normal productive lives is severely diminished..
I'm not angry about the thought of depression - I'm angry that you are judging millions of people who you have never met, and making blanket assumptions about them. It's beyond daft.

Are you equating depression with dissatisfaction with some aspect of life? Being unhappy from time to time? I would agree that those are widespread in any chronic illness (and in healthy people), but they are a far cry from depression. You are doing patients with actual depression quite a disservice by trivializing their experiences.
 

Gingergrrl

Senior Member
Messages
16,171
No therapy is great. You can make at least $100 an hour sitting while your client does the work for you.

I don't think you realize how offensive this comment is to someone who has dedicated their entire life and career toward helping people within the field of mental health and social work. There seems to be this often rabid bias on PR against the entire field. Everyone hates it when generalizations are made against people with ME/CFS (I hate this as well) but no one seems to have any problem with trashing an entire group of people (social workers, therapists) as if they are evil and not human.

I volunteered on a suicide hotline on a weekly shift for TEN years. I never made one penny off of this volunteer job and helped thousands of people and it was one of the best experiences of my life. I did two unpaid internships (each a year long) helping homebound seniors and then worked for five years in geriatrics doing home visits to elderly and disabled clients (and my salary was extremely low.)

Once I got licensed, I got a job in an outpatient mental health program that was part of a hospital. I worked with the most severely and chronically ill mental health patients that had been abandoned by society and did this for 12 years until ME/CFS ended my career. I did finally get a salary that I deserved and worked for with my Masters degree (although I can promise you it was less than half of the amount that you quoted!)

No one goes into this field for the money and I loved working with my patients and their families. I worked with many psychiatrists who were wonderful human beings and who took phone calls from patients throughout the night for free. We spent half our time fighting for our patients when insurance companies were denying the patient coming to our program and denying their meds. I did advocacy for patients within a system in which I was told that something literally could not be done, and I did it anyway. When I had mild CFS (but did not yet know it) I continued to work for another full year because I did not want to leave my patients.

I am honestly finding some of the recent threads on PR so hurtful and offensive that it makes me want to leave this board. And I am not posting this so anyone says, "No, please stay, etc." I am just finding it lately more stressful to read the posts vs. helpful (whereas my private conversations with people from PR by PM, e-mail and phone are very helpful and I have made some wonderful true friends here.)

I am just wanting it to be known that some of these comments are really hurtful and invalidating to the millions of mental health professionals who actually care and dedicated their lives to helping others. And this is not directed at Valentijn and the poll itself is a perfectly valid idea and interesting.
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
If you not already aware of the latitude apparent in descriptions and diagnoses of conditions such as "social anxiety" then there's not much I can say to disabuse you.

I actually have some social anxiety symptoms, and its very clearcut in my mind what this is, and I can tell you it is utterly different from the generalized anxiety disorder that I have.

I'm afraid you're jumping to conclusions and making unwarranted assumptions about my own experience.

Well, when you suggested that mental health conditions are merely a "quirk of personality", yes, I certain jumped to some conclusions about your experiences.

WIth a statement like that, you seem to making a mockery of mental health, and by extension those with it.


the remainder of your comments appear for the most part to be professing disagreement with what I've said whilst actually coinciding with my own viewpoint

There is in fact very little you said that I agree with. And I disagree that with your view that ME/CFS is not a psychiatric condition. Cognitive dysfunction (brain fog, etc) comes under psychiatry and mental health, as does emotional lability, which is a listed ME/CFS symptom in the CCC. All I said, which you didn't mention at all, is that I think the psychogenic view of ME/CFS is wrong, but I do not disagree with the idea that ME/CFS is a psychiatric condition.
 

Aurator

Senior Member
Messages
625
Are you equating depression with dissatisfaction with some aspect of life? Being unhappy from time to time? I would agree that those are widespread in any chronic illness (and in healthy people), but they are a far cry from depression.
Yes, the ongoing failure in many spheres to distinguish the two is not at all helpful.
The closing words of that paper ("Diagnosis of psychiatric disorder in clinical evaluation of CFS") someone quoted earlier: "We recommend that in the sensitive circumstances of CFS doctors pay particular attention to accuracy and clarity in the making of psychiatric diagnoses".
 

MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
@Valentijn
The fact that the thought depression angers you should ring a few bells..

It is impossible to have full blown CFS/ME and not be depressed about it
for the fact their capability to live normal productive lives is severely diminished..

Who ever claims to not be depressed about these facts are truly lying to themselves..

So 75% of respondents are lying to themselves, or others? Don't you think that's either unwarranted amateur diagnosis or simply insulting?

Who is not angry when someone misdiagnoses them and they know that it is a misdiagnosis? Many of us have had quite enough of that.
 

MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
I am honestly finding some of the recent threads on PR so hurtful and offensive that it makes me want to leave this board. And I am not posting this so anyone says, "No, please stay, etc."

I will though. :D

Sadly there will always be insensitivity in forums. I am saddened when people here misdiagnose, misrepresent or make light of other illnesses, as though it is 'us against them'. We live in the same world as 'them', and many of us have 'them' as friends and/or family members. They suffer too. Their lives are not rosy. There have even been cases of terminal cancer patients being declared fit for work after Work Capability Assessments.

As for MS, it can also be progressive and terminal, as in this inspirational woman who died recently.

Would I rather be her, or my friend who may soon die from leukaemia?

NO!
 

Raines

Seize. Eggs. I don't know. Zebra. Eighties.
Messages
201
Location
UK
I answered yes to the poll.

Although at the moment I am under a lot of stress my depression isn’t too bad. It has been much much worse.

I am depressed, and I have ME. I am depressed because I have ME, infact I list depression as one of my 4 main symptoms.

The problem with having both is other people (especially drs), once you admit to depression many just forget the ME or write it off as a symptom of the depression.

The amount of arguments I have had with people trying to explain that if my depression was cured tomorrow I would still be ill with ME.

I take antidepressants, and they do help my mood, but I can only tolerate a small dose before the side effects get too much.

Those depressions scales are difficult to fill in, I had to do one recently and I filled it in twice, once for the depression and once for the ME, yes a lot of symptoms overlap and its complicated.

For example how often do you

...have trouble concentrating.......feel tired or have little energy........

These are ME symptoms, yes a small amount may be from the depression but I have to answer every day, because I do feel these things every day. I put a star next to these questions to say they were symptoms of the ME (the star wasn’t appreciated).

Another example how does it effect (on a scale of 0 to 8)

...............your ability to work.............home engagement.............social and leisure activities............

I filled these ones in twice once for the depression and once for the ME, for example I can’t work at the moment, so for ME on work I answered 8 but I also answered 1 for depression, as my depression is not stopping me from working, needless to say answering the questions twice was not appreciated, I did feel a little sorry for the woman trying to put my results into the computer, but they are trying to judge my level of depression, and answering for both the ME and depression won’t give a fair view of my depression. On the other had I don’t want to only answer for the depression as then that gives a false picture of how limited my life is.

For me the depression came after the ME and they overlap and they are seperate and its complicated.

ME is still thought by many to be a type of depression, and that is a huge problem.
 

Kati

Patient in training
Messages
5,497
Kati said:
Shave your head and tell people you have cancer. You'll receive homemade meals, offers to cut the grass, clean your house and much more.



I think many people may find this very distasteful. I certainly do.

I was pointing out that some diseases get more respect than others. Cancer is on top of the list.