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Indeed. (I was ‘just’ bullied but it still affected me.)
If you add up all those weight you get school
school, graduation plans, being forced to meet up expected grades, going to extra classes becoming what your parents want because you do not know how to choose for yourself! …….. YEAH children don’t have ANYTHING to be depressed about! …. sheesh!
insulting teachers, screaming parents, fear of the principal, school bullies, self defense is a must , being humiliated, being the class joker!
failing in exams = the end of the world!
not reaching parental expectations = the end of the world
not entering the RIGHT schools and the RIGHT courses = the end of the world!
not becoming what your PARENTS WANT YOU TO BECOME = the end of the world!
being compared with others who are better than you all the time.
parents cursing at you because you are more of a fail than other’s kids ……. should i continue? …….
if the world needs to end THEN END IT!
Wow
Not to mention that depression isn’t even always caused by external factors. Sometimes it just randomly happens, despite an otherwise ideal life.
Exactly. It’s one thing for a child to be depressed following bullying/abuse, but the kids with chemical imbalances/other biological factors get the short end of the stick.
About right.
Full-on Major Depressive Disorder in a kid who is only NINE?!
IMPOSSIBLE! Here in 1956 we are enlightened enough to know that MDD is ENTIRELY a cognitive disorder, and children of that age do not have cognitive machinery well-enough developed to be depressed.
Go away, kid. Come back in 1986 when the DSM gets updated.
I’m a queer incest, child sexual abuse and domestic violence survivor. This is the best strip yet to me. Thank you. <3
I dealt with none of the things you did, Jenny, and yet I still suffered. Added to it was the guilt of suffering for “no reason”. I hope you have found peace. I’m glad you are a survivor
I was beaten and menaced so badly and for so many years I still have PTSD
I remember being particularly depressed one day as a child. I was probably in 4th grade or so.
I was sitting at the dining room table, trying to do a puzzle but getting no enjoyment out of it. I felt sad and hopeless, but I couldn’t tell why. I didn’t have any really deep issues. My mom noticed my behavior and asked what was wrong, and I told her I didn’t know, I was just feeling really sad.
Her response? “What do you have to be sad for? You have so many things to be grateful for. Think of all the kids that don’t have what you have.”
Of course, that made me feel even more depressed.
I remember being in about the fifth grade, and a commercial came on for an antidepressant; it was the one with the little sad circle with the rainy cloud over its head, and the sad circle took the med & the cloud disappeared. I remember telling my mom that I felt sad all the time, too, and wanted to see a doctor about it. She said, “Everybody feels that way,” and essentially that seeing a psychiatrist was unnecessary… a scam of sorts. I wish something inside her had said, “I might feel this way with the stress of being a wife, mother, adult, etc, but it isn’t normal for a child to feel this way; maybe we should talk to somebody.” Of course, it’s more likely that she HAD, in fact, felt that way since her own childhood, so there was nothing alarming to her when I said that.
These days, she keeps encouraging me to take my son off his ADD med. She keeps saying, “But he’s doing so much better! He’s doing really well!” And I say, “Yes, mom; and that’s due, in part, to the medicine he’s taking!”
story of my life. also the illness itself. i was just born sad. things like the symptoms listed were just added on later
Spot on. Had my first suicidal thoughts when I was 7-8…
What’s queen incest Jenny fields?
Depression is chemical.
Carol Davison, everything is chemical when it comes down to it.
Wait I’m wrong. It’s all so situational-your loved one died, and can be found physical.
Its not always chemical, and anti-depressants are not always the cure. Every anti depressant I’ve ever been on has just made it ten times worse. They kept giving me SSSRIs and they just made me sicker. Do some reading about serotonin syndrome.
As a depression “cure” they were fuel on the fire. Because my serotonin levels were NOT the problem! I had doctors prescribe them who had never had a problem in their lives and had no idea how some depression worked. Therefore they saw anti depressants as a sort of fuel additive
. Depression can also be your mother beating and torturing you, your dad beating and torturing you. You go to school, and the kids beat you stupid for being different, Then you go to the teachers, and the principal and they tell you, if you are different you deserve to be beaten. You go to gym, and more kids beat you, with the gym teachers hearty approval. Then a decade or so of being run down by a pack of kids every single day who live for the chance to give you another savage beat down, I don’t mean a little punching either, I mean a real curb stomping. Or maybe they just decide to just kill you.
And if they don’t get that chance because you are too fast, they vandalize your house, and property, and then you get beaten more because its your fault for “antagonizing them” maybe your grandfather comes over and beats you too. I couldn’t even have a bicycle, They would steal it. If I locked it up they cut the tire off it, if I read a book they ripped it up in front of my face.
Anybody who even tried to be my friend became a pariah for talking to “the freak” I found someone to love at 15, a few years later they died of cancer. I was practically an animal for 15 years, till I got real help. I listened to Pink Floyd to cheer up, it sounds like a joke, but I’m serious. it was the only music I understood.
This kind of life leaves scars that anti depressants just laugh at. It takes YEARS of therapy to even start to dig out the core traumas. So this “Depression is chemical” as a one size fits all for all depression, as a cure is just bad medical practice for lazy doctors who think a handful of pills is a substitute for a therapist who actually tries to find out how you got that way and not treat you like a broken machine.
Medication as an addition to therapy, I can see that. But people saying we just give pills since after all depression is “just chemicals”, are not just ignorant, they are part of the problem that leaves so many for who a chemical patch is just not enough out in the cold.
That sounds familiar….
I couldn’t agree more. Plus, as Nick Deloreto noticed, one can just be “born sad”. Which makes them more vulnerable for all above factors. Plus, when others notice that person’s lack of resistance, they take advantage and push even harder. Vicious circle.
clay, congratulation on 200 depression comic
who’d have thought
keep up the good work
I have been a queer identitified person since my teens (bullying) who also suffered incest by her father as a young child. That is is what that means.
Been there, Dana.
Apparently I have not. I got my post deleted. 🙁
My dad said this earlier today about my neighbor. I was super pissed off.
this = depresion
200 http://t.co/NkxYJ4rPkm via @depressioncomix
Charlie Brown? Is that you?
He’s bouncing around like snoopy.
There’s definitely a Peanuts/Calvin &Hobbes vibe here.
I was trying to kill myself at 7