Has depression or any other mental illness gotten in the way of your studies?

I once had a strong depression which stayed with me for a week - but it was because of smoking lots of cannabis for a short period of time.

The depression felt 100% unnatural, I was aware that it was a chemical imbalance in my brain and did not despair, rather I've tried to not let it impair my quality of life while it lasted and indeed was gone.

Again a very different feeling compared with a more natural form of depression such as one that comes out of a failure in life, but which again naturally wears of shortly.

I still hold to the belief that you have to shake off negative emotions, it's not useful in any way to expect them to wear of or simply accept them as something which is part of your personality.

Yes, people will kill themselves just to be seen as eccentric.

People kill themselves for lots of irrational reasons.

Some suicide in bombing attempts in the name of their divinity.

Just because people that hold such irrational belief exists does it mean I am forced to leave that way and pretend there's no escape from that?

You've never been depressed, you do not understand the dynamics of it and how it influences a person.

You're like a two-dimensional being trying to give advice to three-dimensionals.

Nah. Depression largely results from either dietary problems, or being trapped in and environment with feedback loops that are consistently disappointing or that beat a person down over time. The psychological adaptations to this vary and depend on the person, but it, along with suppressed sources of mental conflict, can result in depression. Etc, it's more complex than that, but that's the base and most generalized case.

Whether or not they can be willed away varies. Sometimes you lack the means internally and must find the information you require via your environment. One thing is a constant though, psychiatry is a worthless parasite that inhibits people identifying and addressing their real problems. They implicitly mark self discovery as worthless and treat patients carelessly as though they're broken for life.

>implying killing oneself could be rational

Doesn't the notion suggest it stemming from irrational thought processes?

Rational is a useless term as far as I'm concerned.

You're sick right now. It's not Permenant. Get some real help, not Veeky Forums help. You'll begin to feel better soon as you start seeking a positive solution

same

No, you.

I had been living a pretty shitty life (no friends or family, no car or license) and during my final year had suicidal thoughts. I was going for three degrees simultaneously and ended up only getting two.

>If you just reject depression it simply goes away

Holy shit. Are you fucking retarded?

Not that guy, but I think he was trying to describe random bouts of depression; not depression as a result of something.

>Muh free will

My nigga

thats a pretty cute boy in that photo ^_^

Random does not mean without cause.

It's funny how being on Veeky Forums long enough biases a person towards thinking something ambiguous must actually be a trap.

it did when i was younger. I used to frequently contemplate suicide for a variety of rather petty reasons.
I never went to therapy or took drugs, I just started exercising and now i'm quite happy in life. mind, i'm not smiling and singing all the time. i still feel sad sometimes, usually when i'm sitting on my ass doing nothing, around no one.

it might not work for anyone ITT, but it wouldn't hurt to try taking up a laborious hobby.

>inb4 pussy man-children complain about not having enough motivation
get discipline

>be ugly
>dye your hair red
>be an ugly redhead
lmao

...

get more sun they said
>spend an hour a day outside, still depressed
get more exercise they said
>play soccer 3 days a week, still depressed
do nofap they said
>go a month without fapping, still depressed
get friends they said
>go to college and get amazing group of cool friends, still depressed

There is no hope

yup, result: got kicked out of uni, had to redo all my degree at another uni

sucks to be you then, lad

Because you're following platitude advice and not approaching your psychologically mechanically.

It's mostly about diet and introspection, though exercise helps. I mean a bout of decent exercise, like walking 4 - 8 miles. Otherwise get a food allergy test (chronically high baseline endogenous histamine secretion will fuck you up hardcore), remove junk food and make sure to eat decently.

Then ask yourself the real questions. Identify what's making you miserable and if you can change it. If you can't, find the means to counterbalance or move passed it, within yourself.

>not approaching your psychologically
psychology*
/psyche

I dropped out of school. I wake up anxious. My whole body hurts from all the tension. The only thing that helps is sleep so i sleep as much as i can. Im waiting for this to go away. If it doesnt go away eventually im just killing myself. Life really isnt fun like this

See a doctor, take the fucking anti-depression pills.

I think my years of obsessive polysubstance abuse and drug-seeking behavior despite no physical addiction borders on mental illness as a type of caustic, recalcitrant compulsion. It's left me dumber, emotionally stunted, and two years behind my peers.

Ignore this fool. Don't treat depression like you're broken and are suffering from an insurmountable and intrinsic mechanical failure.

Your depression is something you're eating, something you're doing, or something around you. You are not broken for life, and if you get on those pills, which are barely better than placebo in all but the most extreme cases, you ain't goin' anywhere.

Hopefully this will be a more helpful response than the other responses to this post:
Clinical depression is a real, biological disorder that can be observed with fMRI scans, sMRI scans, PET scans, etc... This is because it affects (and is affected by) the production of a number of neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine.
The reason why diagnosis of the disease is still difficult is because (like most mental health disorders like addiction, anxiety and schizophrenia), it has no robust biomarkers.
The reason why it's still not accepted by many people as a real disease is because of the unfortunate lack of distinction between clinical depression and 'feeling depressed'. When you feel depressed you eventually bounce back, but when you are clinically depressed you may stay depressed for weeks or months at a time and it may hit at completely unexpected times for no obvious reason. Unlike normal depression which comes and goes in response to certain events, clinical depression usually affects those who have a family history, and have experienced two or three traumatic events; fucking up their brain chemistry (in the same way excessive consumption of sugar will eventually fuck up your insulin levels and you will have diabetes).
Hope that helps you understand depression a little better.

>recognise you have a problem
>established, recognised, safe way to solve that problem.

>Use kale and essential oils.

It doesn't solve the problem, nor is it without side effects.

It's disgusting what the drug culture around the US and Europe has done to people's common sense.

Dude if he was an overweight, 18 year old who never leaves the house, has no friends and spends all day on the computer, i'd agree with getting his life in order before taking any pills.

This dude isnt, he leaves the house, goes to college, plays sports, has friends and is still depressed.

He can go to the docs and get professional treatment or keep limping along because retards like you make people scared of safe medicine.

As someone with a job, in university, exercising, eating healthy, have friends and family who help me, and take Sertraline for depression, I can tell you that depressed people understand that there are side effects to the medication (for me, smelling metal for about an hour every day, acid reflux for a few hous after taking it, and occassionally an unpleasant swishing sound when I move my eyes either side of my head), however the side effects are preferable to how you feel without the medication. If I stop for a few weeks, I feel incredibly angry at everything, have violent dreams, suicidal thoughts, all sorts. Then when I take the medication again, it all stops and you can tell that it's definitely helping.

I have autism so people give me social anxiety. Also I have trouble doing basic stuff like school work in general. Not that it's hard or anything. I just lose focus because of my maladaptive daydreaming and sensory issues. I also have no friends and my family thinks I'm retarded.
tldr I'm probably a useless cunt with an IQ of 106. I can do math really well though.

>anti depressants
>safe
you could at least google it before hand, champ

I've always done well but some semesters I simply had to take a lighter load than normal, the hard part was accepting that. Do what you gotta do.

Yeah I'm on Bupropion and I my tongue is pretty much metallic for an hour after taking it each day. SSRI's were heinous for me side effects wise though. Not being able to get a boner under any circumstance was fucking surreal.

>it all stops and you can tell that it's definitely helping.
You remind me of long term stoners.
"When I stop smoking for a few days I'm practically on the verge of crying and everything is awful!"
Anyway. You're masking your real problems and running away, refusing to dig and take responsibility, which is probably a common feature of your general approach to life. Too bad, so sad I guess. It's up to you whether or not you're willing to change, or if you prefer to drug yourself so you can feel decent continuing to be something that clearly simply does, not, work.

Anyway, I've been there. I spent my whole childhood there, and I didn't learn to move on until ~19. Your predicament and the nonsense you've come to accept is all very unfortunate, but not everyone comes to avoid false answers. Sorry to be so dismissive of your experience and what you place value in, but that's how I see it. As long as you accept it's a lifestyle choice, which you seem to.

working over 40 hours a week at a shitty job, paying bills, and going to school full time. yeah.
I wish i could fully focus on my studies.

Countless phds and studies negated by your PHD in googling.

Go rub some peppermint oil on your temples.

Authority.
Countless studies have shown they're no more effective than placebo.

i got diagnosed with severe depression in grade 12 and i did what that guy said and just stopped being depressed

honestly i can't get depressed anymore purely because it's not something i want

I've been posting above.
There are cases where depression cannot be willed away, and its core causes will need to be unraveled and slowly reconciled. This can be a process that takes years and the older you get, the harder it can be to bother with core change in oneself or one's environment.

There are also more mechanical problems, like high histamine levels that will cripple you and cannot be ignored. Masking it with drugs is just treating the symptoms, which is childish and degenerate behavior for a medical institution.

A few days is not the same as a few weeks. After a few days, you maybe start to experience mild side effects, but after a few weeks is when you really notice the difference. This is why doctors increase dosage after a few weeks of taking SSRIs, or reduce dosage of medication for a few weeks before changing medication, or tell you to come back a few weeks later to say whether your medication is helping you or not.
It isn't in the slightest bit like a stoner taking weed, and your experience of teenage angst is something everyone can relate to, but only someone with depression can tell you "it's not the same".
If you care to look up the research yourself, you're more than welcome, otherwise I'll direct you to my other comment, here:
Or this lecture by the popular neuroendocrinologist , Robert Sapolsky:
youtube.com/watch?v=NOAgplgTxfc

I think I had a protacted mental breakdown from the ages of 16−22 because life kept fucking my shit up and I couldn't see myself having a future despite my academic success.

But then I changed my academic ambitions and now I'm attending university and am doing extremely well. Sometime during this I got my heart torn to shreds which was really the straw that broke the camel's back. I was either going to kill myself or rebuild my pysche piece by piece. I eventually managed to do it but it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life and I'm sure the hardest thing I will ever go through.

I really despise the person I used to be but I'm a different person now.

It wasn't teenage angst.

I read your other post. I'm not saying "depression doesn't exist" or "depression has no mechanical basis in the brain", I'm saying you're misfaming the basis and nature of why the brain has come to occupy this state and fall into the patterns it has. You're making the assumption that it's an intrinsic mechanical failure that "just happens" and you can;t interface with it with anything other than drugs. This is obviously an absurd proposition that borders on asinine.

Anxiety.

I had a nervous breakdown in chemistry when the professor started prelab demonstration at my lab station.

I was prescribed xanax. 0.25mg dosage in the morning.

I took it for 2 weeks and quit the regiment early because I finally realized my anxiety was irrational.

I still had a straight A semister and I am still an anxious guy, but its undercontrol and slowly going away as I spend more time with new people.

If you accept that depression exists, then let me clarify that the medication helps, and it is preferable to not taking medication. I am doing everything else that I can do to help, and to some extent, the support of friends and family helps, as does the exercise. I'm not saying it's something that can't be overcome, but it can be helped greatly by medication.

>but it can be helped greatly by medication
And it can be functionally resolved without.

Do not "maintain", learn.

Xanax can be taken on an as needed basis. There is not needed "buildup" for it to start working. It's a quick fix if you need it type of thing.

I figure this might just be something you need to experience yourself for you to fully appreciate, since I used to think the same way as you.
Don't get me wrong, I despise self pity (as does Stephen Fry, who is bipolar: youtube.com/watch?v=B2Ta0yFoNG8), and when I first started medication it was out of desperation for something to help me feel normal again, and I had no plans to stay on medication long term. This was a couple of years ago, and I think I will eventually stop taking medication when I feel I no longer need it, but the tricky thing about clinical depression is that once you've had it, it's very easy to slip back into the depressed state. Oftentimes, it can be best helped by recognising it early on, which I didn't.

Yea, its great for revisiting the situation you had anxiety in to find the trigger.

I've been depressed to the point where I'd go days barely being able to generate thoughts, much less sentences. I'd wander around aimlessly and usually end up just laying down on the floor and staring at a wall.

I've been a lot of kinds of depressed, and yes, I get it. You don;t seem able to let go of the idea that anyone who doesn't agree with you, hasn't experienced it.

Then all of these mechanical statements, these vague heuristics:
>but the tricky thing about clinical depression is that once you've had it, it's very easy to slip back into the depressed state. Oftentimes, it can be best helped by recognising it early on, which I didn't.
It's all mechanical. It's all about how the machine works, and you're consistently refusing to engage with what I've been saying. There are other ways to interface with these internal systems, and feedback loops, such that you put in place systems that afford lasting change.

If you find yourself tending to rapidly shift back, it's because you never really identified or fixed anything. user, I'm sorry, but this cult has to end. Drugs have a use, but they mustn't become a lifestyle. They must be a short acting tool.

Yep. I compensated for not being able to go to class by studying more than anyone expected of me. It might pay off yet and desu I'm kind of a beast now.

ADHD and bipolar messed with my med school. 3 years behind. Things are looking up, though. I've accepted I'll always struggle in some things and try to focus on my strengths. It was tough to realize I can't keep up with my colleagues, and at times it felt - and still does sometimes - that I'm out of sync in this world. But you know, I can make a positive difference and I'm fighting for my patients because I am like them, struggling sometimes like they do.

>But you know, I can make a positive difference and I'm fighting for my patients because I am like them, struggling sometimes like they do.
Keep up the good work user. I considered going into medicine as well because I knew the world needed people who knew how miserable life can be, and won't throw people to the wolves.

>Authority.

Google

Of course, I value the research over anecdotal evidence (with all the placebo and confirmation bias that can creep in), so I don't want to rely on the argument that you need to experience it to understand it. However you sound like someone who hasn't experienced it, and hasn't read any research on it, either.
Perhaps I'm just misunderstanding you: if all you're saying is that I need to change my lifestyle, then I agree. I'm certain that if I make certain changes (a less stressful job, more time socialising, etc) then it will help, but I live in the real world and some of these changes are difficult to make. I've made changes where I can: as I said, I exercise more, and force myself to do things even when I don't want to do them, but it's a gradual process. Medication helps, and I don't understand what's wrong with saying that.
I never said anything about rapidly shifting back into depression, so if you have been depressed before, then this may be projection. It's a known phenomenon that those who have experienced clinical depression before can easily slip back into a depressed state again (and catching it early is the best way to prevent it). In addition, it's known that some people experience regular cycles of depression every few months, so it can become an annual rhythm.
I think you need to rethink your position on drugs, because there are many cases where they can actually benefit an individual, and so far the only alternative you've suggested is "try doing everything you're doing, but without drugs". Not too helpful, dude.

Dont bother trying to argue with that projecting INTJ user. Medication does indeed help. And it is possible to get better with therapy AND medication. Just as its possible to get better with therapy alone or medication alone. Everybody is different and different things work for different people. I get you senpai. You seem quite intelligent but also know your limitations. Keep up the good work.

Yeah.

Started taking anti depressants a few weeks ago though and they've helped a lot.

High hopes for the next semester.

My school mates were shitty and awkward towards me when I came out as trans and my anxiety went through the roof. Thank all get out I'm about to graduate and never have to deal with any of these jerks ever again.

>im taking the modern equivalent of a lobotomy to make those nagging questions go away
>im in state run education

You'll do just fine

>im projecting

t. someone who has never went through depression

t. brainlet

Thanks man, it's appreciated. I'm working on it.

t. pain

That sucks dude. I never had the reduced sex drive thing myself, however a curious side effect to SSRIs I had was that I no longer had any desire to listen to music.

odd, I didn't know stating facts could be considered a projection, or even if it was, make them less true?

It sounds preposterous, but as someone who has been there for years of my early adult life, it's the only cure. Accept your fate and move along.

How do you know you're depressed and not just experiencing the crippling apathy of adult life?

>countless studies can't be wrong!

How anyone could sincerely utter this junk knowing the widespread reproducibility crisis and monopoly in academic publishing is beyond reason.

6 corporations own every journal in the US, yet they would never obstruct science, certainly not anything contradicting the excellent social control mechanisms in widespread use today

>SSRI’s
>modern equivalent of a lobotomy

Citation needed.

Well theres a pretty clear difference. If you want to commit suicide every day
you are depressed.

painscience.com/articles/anti-depressants.php

better yet

goo gl/98Jq8T

or maybe you're experiencing the natural death drive, stemming from a highly restricted, toxic environment?

>This article needs to be updated. Although it is accurate as far as it goes, it no longer goes far enough, and lacks modern perspective. The trouble with SSRI drugs is old news now, and focussing on them here overshadows more relevant, recent developments in treatment for depression.
>Evidence now shows that new generation anti-depressant medications, like escitalopram and sertraline, are probably more safe and more effective than older and better-known SSRI

Did you even read it yourself? Topkek

That sounds like depression. Wtf is natural death drive? A new buzzword?

>A new buzzword?
>death drive
>new

I took a term off school, idk if it was a motivated by depression but I sure as hell didn't do it because I was so happy with my life.