Is this depression?

I think I might be depressed and have been for a while. i have been thinking of going to my GP, although i went a while ago and he was totally unhelpful and basically just brushed everything off as a phase. I am 18 and I really don't know what to do next.

The problems:
- find it hard to work and concentrate, feel absent/ out of it
- don’t sleep at all, or like last week only can sleep, go to bed immediately after dinner
- don’t enjoy anything, only want to go to bed
- feel the need to drink so much alcohol to cope in the evenings
- make plans to run away somewhere fresh, but don’t fulfil them due to fluctuating levels of energy.
- Binge a lot when unhappy and make myself sick using carbonated drinks and my stomach muscles.
- Feel misunderstood, compromised, stripped of my dignity. Because of guilt and just things that people say who don’t know how I am feeling.
- Avoid doing anything I don’t have to. I try to have coffee with friends during the day and do nice easy things, but that’s it socially. I don’t go out in evenings.
- Sometimes make cuts on my wrists when feeling empty, lost, angry. Its a warming feeling. Also used to burn myself with a lighter and a hot knife, but stopped last year.
- Sometimes tempted to cut a bit deeper… but I know the feeling will pass over so I drink enough to send me to sleep.
- Feel oppressed or blinkered a lot of the time.
- Find it hard to motivate myself to work because I can’t see what I am working for. The thought: If everything that I am working for were given to me now, would that make me happy? Instinctively I would answer no.



Things I do to help:
- I try exercise every evening
- I go for very long walks when I can
- Listen to classical music when I go to bed, or whenever I’m in. grieg, Beethoven, brahms, pachabel etc.
- Burn ylang ylang, lavender etc.
- Tidy/ clean my bedroom when I can, change the pictures on the wall
- Try to keep on top of my work by making plans repeatedly and trying to work through them
- I try to wait until dinner for alcohol, and only drink socially
- Take a multivitamin and have tried various herbal pills.
- Smoke rolled cigarettes when I want to binge because they make me feel light headed and its just helps for some reason. But this is probably once a day, not really a habit.

These help, but sometimes things deteriorate and I don’t know what to do. I have exams soon and I need to somehow get through them.

Sorry this is long, but i would really appreciate any advice

[Hensley258]

Understand that just because your very young does not mean that you can not suffer from Major Depression.

You GP brushed you off simply because he is not a trained Psychiatrist, but rather a doctor of the body and probably known very little or nothing about mental illness.

Given the symptoms you described (it is my oppinion) that you are suffering from some form of Depression. There are many different types and forms of depression.

Your symptoms are consistant with Depression (maybe Bi-polor in nature)
You will need to make an appointment with a Psychiatrist and bring him or her a list of all these symptoms your having. This will help the Psychiatrist to give you a proper diagnosis and get you back on track.

AGAIN I must stress that I am not trying to diagnose your problem, but rather letting you know that your symptoms are consistant with mental illness which can be associated with different types of depression.

Do yourself a huge favor and get in to see a Psychiatrist for proper disagnosis. A regular doctor doesn't have the tools needed to help you.

[whodunnit]

Hi,

I don't agree that what you have described is depression at all. A few things are related to depressive symptoms but really the basic thing you are describing is a lifestyle of drinking heavily, feeling dreadful and sleeping it off.

Why you are doing that may be related to depression but the actions you record are simply what you do to escape something. Sounds like your family and life and job to me. It sounds like you just don't like any of it and choose to drink it away instead of trying to resolve the problems and face what needs to be fixed. Such as changing jobs, where you live, how you live and so on. The more you drink the worse you'll feel. You have no life from what you say so the only result of drinking and sleeping is what you feel right now, and worse.

A diagnosis of depression is totally reliant on your description of your symptoms and if you said much the same here to your doc they too would think you are basically just unhappy and drinking too much.

Try and define your feelings rather than your actions. They are the key to depression diagnosis.

There is no hint of bi polar symptoms in what I read. The only relevant thing there is the bninge drinking but many do that with no hint of bi polar.

Go back and talk to the doc about your feelings.

[Hensley258]

You described the following:

"find it hard to work and concentrate, feel absent/ out of it
- don’t sleep at all, or like last week only can sleep, go to bed immediately after dinner
- don’t enjoy anything, only want to go to bed
- feel the need to drink so much alcohol to cope in the evenings
- make plans to run away somewhere fresh, but don’t fulfil them due to fluctuating levels of energy.
- Binge a lot when unhappy and make myself sick using carbonated drinks and my stomach muscles.
- Feel misunderstood, compromised, stripped of my dignity. Because of guilt and just things that people say who don’t know how I am feeling.
- Avoid doing anything I don’t have to"

All of those above feelings and actions are indeed symptoms of some form of depression.
I know plenty of people that drink and do not have those symptoms so I think chalking it up to just alcohol and a life situation is way off base.

Often times people that are suffering depression will self medicate with alcohol. Obviously this is bad, but I can understand this has become a way to cope for you that is not healthy.

I wouldn't venture to say weather your symptoms are uni-polar or maybe have some bi-polar components to them, but if this depressed state has presisted for a long time then it's a good bet that just thinking positive and ending your alcohol consumption will make them go away.

[aniseed]

Alcohol helps me cope at times like this, but there are other times when my alcohol consumption is very light so i don't think I have an alcohol problem. I could stop drinking, and I have done this in the past, but its really the one thing I seem to enjoy and i find it really hard to imagine carrying on living without having something.
And when i talk about bingeing that it food, not alcohol. Its a habit I can't control at this time, although I have been able to stop in the past.