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Friday July 30,2010

Grief & Depression -- Same Difference?

by Leandra Walker

It started in 1988.

I had just received a promotion to head up my department. My husband started a new job. We were finally secure financially. And I sank into the deepest depression of my life.

It was like being wrapped in cotton. Nothing could touch me, reach me. John described it, "You went away someplace. You just weren't here any more." I took no interest or joy in anything. Oh, I managed to drag off to work every day, but my heart was no longer in it. I was sad. Sadder than sad. And I couldn't understand why. I stopped eating, sleeping, caring. I started weeping for no reason, and couldn't stop.

Several months of intensive therapy along with one of the newer antidepressants gave me back my life.

And then John died.

If I thought I'd been in a deep depression before, well, this was a descent into hell.

I had enough sense to make an immediate appointment with a therapist who had helped me through my father's death the year before. And as sleeplessness became an every night occurrence, I talked with my meds person about adding a nighttime dose of a sedating antidepressant. I started seeing a Reiki practitioner to help me through the spiritual struggles as well.

Then I realized something: I wasn't depressed, I was grieving. There really is a difference. Depression is an over-reaction to something (or nothing) resulting from a chemical imbalance, and it often runs in families. Grief is a "situational depression;" that is, you have a very good reason for feeling as you do. The love of your life has died and taken what was left of your life, too. Not only are you missing and mourning your lost love, but also your role as husband/wife/caregiver. Who are you, anyway? And why are you alive when your reason for living is gone?

Occasionally, an episode of grief can uncover an underlying mild depression that's been there for months or years, just waiting to be discovered. For these people, it may seem like grief grows into clinical depression, but that usually isn't the case. It was there all along, but now with the grief on top of it, you have to face it and treat it.

There have been debates about the use of antidepressants in grief right here on our own forums. Some people believe that taking antidepressants is a cop-out, an attempt to escape from the pain. Well, yes. If you had a headache, you'd take an aspirin, wouldn't you? Ah, but you have to feel to heal, you say. True. Modern antidepressants, unlike the old days of tranquilizers, allow you to feel the pain but prevent you from becoming completely incapacitated by grief.

If you have a good support system, a therapist, friends, maybe a grief group, and you still aren't coping, you should talk with your doctor about how you feel and why. Grief toxins can build up in the body and inhibit your own production of endorphins.