Dear,
The statistics shows that the prevalence of depression among general population is about twenty-five percent. For people who are facing great challenge such as medical school students, the prevalence of depression is more than sixty percent. People had all kinds of reasons to be stressed and depressed. We can try to prevent them, but often we still find out that we are in a deep “hole”, therefore it is equally important for us to know how to recover from depression.
Unfortunately, I am also depressed now. Before I tried to get online today, I had decided to write down my own sad feeling, try to relieve the burden and get some comfort words. But your post has hit me hard, leaving me a bitter smile but changing my idea of this post.
I am depressed since nothing has been working for all most one month. I have been patient for one try after another. In the end, they all left me nothing enjoyable, not to mention that I have not had any idea on what is going wrong. Facing the approaching deadline, it is really hard for me to free my mind from the problem, a constant painful “scorch”. Even when I write to you now, I am still thinking about the trouble. But I also realize that I am trying to do something to distract myself from the “scorch”. By writing to you, I may get a chance to rethink about my own problems. I hope that, in the end, I will have a clearer idea on what I am facing and what I can do.
In most of cases, a depression is caused by a primary stress, but significantly enhanced by other minor elements. These elements can make a case very complicated that is hard for us to analyze. Just like all the factors mentioned in your post, I, too, have many other things bothering me at this moment (excuse me for not mentioning the specific reasons). It seems that nothing (my work, my life,… everything) is really working right, which deprives my interests on anything in general. It is really hard for me to say which way is the best way out. Fortunately, my case is a little simpler in comparing with yours, so I will put all my attention on the most important one while dropping off others temporarily. In your case, I believe that you need to find out what is the most important thing in your life now, just like Charles’ suggestion, and try to make progress on the goal, if any; it should be helpful to relieve your depression.
I can only partially agree with Charles on the notion of Thanksgiving, a way to appreciate life. Generally, I am a grateful person for whatever God has led me in my path. But often I can be entangled by the overwhelming problems temporarily, and become depressed, though hardly for a long period of time. At these very moments, I find that I have hard time to embrace the idea of appreciation since I can not realize the value for my gratitude. I do not know whether God forgives me or not. But I do believe that I can be temporarily blinded under certain circumstances. But I do not think that this is an unacceptable behavior. Instead, I look it as a process of growth; a process that lasts through my whole life.
Depression is the very common mental illness. It has been taken seriously in the developed western countries, but unfortunately ignored by people in eastern Asia due to great historical culture influence. Japan is a typical example with the highest depression prevalence rate from the available official data. We have the same problem too, an even greater challenge with economy development in the future. I am grateful that this forum provides us a channel to communicate with each other. I hope more people will get help from here before the society can pick up this task.
Thank you for leading me through these thoughts. I hope it helps you too.
Mia
