[Sunny_01]

Originally posted by Z
A woman who lived across the road from me committed suicide last year, she'd locked her front door so that her little boy wouldn't come home and find her dead body, but the poor thing had been sitting outside the house for hours (we'd walked past him and everything, and had been considering inviting him into our house because obviously he wouldn't have a mobile phone to phone his dad etc.) and then a neighbour called for the police to see if they could find out what was going on... Very sad. That's the only case of suicide that's affected my life, in that I knew the woman, but it's not something I'm familiar with so I can't really pass comment.

I know a girl who claims she is depressed. I say claims, because she's a very attention seeking sort of person (crying wolf and all that, I don't know whether to take her seriously) which is bad of me, I suppose, because if she really is depressed and it's a cry for help - I'm ignoring it. But, a recent example, she signed into MSN and spoke to me for the first time in a while, the usual Hey/how are you thing, then she said "I'm signed out from college due to depression." followed by "But I'm in Florida at the moment, at least I get a longer holiday!"

My question to anybody who's been depressed before is - if you are depressed, do you ever feel open enough to speak about it, and to "look on the positive side" in the way that she did? It's easy for me to scoff and say she's contradicted herself, she's made some kind of optimistic statement, she's clearly not depressed, but I've never suffered from depression before, so I don't know what it's like.

If your friend is on medication then yes she probably is ok to talk in that way about it and to still feel positive about the future.

My bi-polar is "mainly" controlled pretty well and I am a positive person who can always look forwards, yet when a depressive episode hits I cant think straight, I cant function and it can turn really quickly. Now I know bi-polar is completely different but it is in principal very similar. I say as long as she has hope that things will get better then thats great.

On the flipside of there not being enough services there is a huge strain on the ones we have with those who are not actually depressed, just unhappy trying to get onto the sickness list to avoid work who are using up valuable services. People are very quicky to say they are depressed these days, I would rather be telling people when I am really well to be honest.