When you have chronic depression, a depressive episode can rear its ugly head unexpectedly. You’re just going through your days, living your life, managing your depression as best you can and then . . . you feel the decline. This happened to me this week, surprising me because I had just survived a brief dip in my mood in early May. I wasn’t expecting this depressive episode so soon after the last.

Depression Won’t Define Me Back some thirty-five years ago when I was a child, the word depression wasn’t readily used as a diagnosis, rather, it was used to describe a point-in-time state of being. "I’m depressed because I have no friends." While this use of the word is obviously still valid, depression, in all its varied forms, has come to mean so much more. Back in those days, we’d call it a bout-of-the-blues or feeling down-and-out to which our mothers would emphatically state, "snap out of it… stop feeling sorry for yourself!" My Mom didn’t realize (though, who could blame her) that this prolonged, repetitive, inescapable, inexplicable "mood" that plagued me was actually an illness.

Hi, my name is Amie Merz and I'm glad to be teaming up with Jack Smith on this blog and sharing my thoughts, knowledge and experience on coping with depression. I am a counselor in private practice (my credentials: MA, LPC, NCC, CASAC, ICAADC, SAP) in a rural area south of St. Louis, MO. in the United States. I have worked in the mental health field since 1991, with all age groups, income levels, issues and dynamics. I have learned that mental illness does not discriminate; so many people have been affected by it. My hope is that the negative stigma of getting help can continue to fade away so we can help more people feel better.

Hi, my name is Jack, and I suffer from depression. I was first diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder about seven years ago, but I’ve been waging war on this brain disease for a long time. And it is a disease. It is not a character flaw. It is not an excuse for my shortcomings. It is not a spiritual defect. It is not a case of the occasional blues. It is real, and it is painful — physically painful. It is maddening and it can be gut wrenching. It is an illness just as diabetes is an illness. I call it a war because war is hell, and so is clinical depression.