What age were you when chronic depression started?

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I think I was 14 when I first became depressed but I can’t really remember ever not being this way, so perhaps I was younger. I just say 14 because that is when I experienced a traumatic event which I think is probably the root cause of my chronic depression. But I think I have a naturally negative disposition. I've never been a happy, carefree kind of person.

I remember the first time I had a suicidal thought. I was 16 and thought to myself, if I fail my exams I have the option of killing myself. That thought actually made me feel better and less pressured about my exams!

I’m 26 now. My depression has been constant. It doesn’t come and go and I don’t have ups and downs. Just downs. I’m always depressed and think I probably always will be.

First when I was five or six and started school I remember contemplating suicide. My mother said I was a very happy child till about then and then it was like I was someone else. It came again badly when I was in 5th grade and then on and off. In college my sophomore year I was diagnosed with it and my father had a fit saying that they were full of s#$%. The last year of college I was living abroad in Florence Italy and that is when I totally had a breakdown and it was so scary because it was not like normal depression and I didn't understand what was happening to me. There was no one around and I was having anxiety and panic. I ended up coming home halfway through, but my mother kept trying to make me go back and kicking me out of the house since she had "paid for a place for me in Florence and I was not welcome in her house". My mother also does not believe that depression exists and still thinks that I should get off of my medicines. I cannot express how much medicine has helped and she has not. For the last many years I have been on medicine and things have been better although now when I see myself starting to slide into depression I know that it is time to call my Doctor.

12 years old the noise of middle school was too much for me to bear. kindergarden the delusions started so said

Up until my late teens I was doing alright. Sure I was different and spent most my free time alone playing lego's or on the PC but I hadn't yet understood the ramification of being an adult with Asperger's

Then it hit... right in the middle of college. I made no friends in 2 years.. not a single one. I decided to leave college (dumbest decision I ever made) and life has slowly gone downhill from there. I'm 31 now and have spent the past 10 years of my life working extremely hard manual labor for minimal wage. I know I could have done better if I had better support through my critical time in college, but that didn't happen. So now I work for those who actually finished college.. and it hurts... I feel like i'm the bottom most denominator among the people I grew up with. They've got careers now, most of them are married with children, and i'm still working crappy minimal wage work living alone in a basement apartment in a rough neighborhood. I used to have episodes of depression that would come and go. But for the past 10 years or so it has been constant and non-stop. I wake up and go to bed feeling hopelessly depressed. I think the only thing that makes me more depressed than my career and financial situation is the fact that I can't talk/socialize with people like a normal person can... I know nomatter how hard I work I will never be able to develop those small little socializing skills that lets me connect to someone else and get ahead in life... nobody talks to me unless they have to.. nobody thinks of me as a friend.. and i'm tired... really tired. Starting to wonder how many more years I can pull this off... how long until I just refuse to be other people's worker/servant. There is a certain freedom in suicide. No one can take advantage of you anymore once you're dead. No one can treat you like crap anymore once you're dead. I think that's what seems so attractive about suicide when it comes to aspies. Ideally, no one should have to live with these thoughts in their minds, the world should be run in a way that every person gets to live their lives to the best of their abilities without being used and abused and kept in poverty due to the way we were born. Nobody cares tho because there is no money to be made in this and we live in a disgustingly greedy world.

I hope you stay with us. I am on medication that made me feel better. I completed my junior year in university then had really bad reasoning. Instead of asking myself "what is the best choice of your alternatives?", I asked "why continue in school when the jobs for degreed people are not exactly what I want?". I stopped going and am at the bottom of the job/profession ladder. I am unskilled labor making $10.85 an hour in U.S.

Would you be able to go back to school? Your avatar looks young. I am in my 60s.

Since I can remember Pain is the only thing that's telling me I'm still alive

When I hit puberty at age 11. But I believe I had symptoms before that. I remember being so sad at school, I would just bust out crying everyday. This was during early elementary school years like age 8 or 9. I can only remember being happy at ages 6 and below.

Wow. A lot of us on WP have depression, huh?

I was abused as a child so I'm sure that's when my depression started. I didn't get suicidal till I was in my teens, though. I used to think of ways of offing myself. Back then I concluded that jumping off a tall building would do the trick.

I did eventually try suicide but I was 30 years old. I thought I'd went as far as I could go and could take the misery no more. I swallowed 48 sleeping pills and washed it down with Michelob Light. It earned me two months in a psych hospital.

What did I learn? Nothing. Depression is chronic with me. It never goes away. I don't get suicidal all the time but my affect is usually low. I took meds back then and take Risperdal now. I don't even know if it's effective. I'm starting therapy next year so we'll see how that goes.

My heart goes out to all those on WP who are blighted by this common affliction. I can't stand it. It's like living with a burglar of dreams. I didn't publish anything new or write anything in 2013. I'm hoping 2014 turns out to be a more fulfilling year.

I don't know. I've always been blighted by unhappiness. I found my mother very confusing. She was/is extremely inconsistent because of her own mental health problems and I never knew where I stood. One day one thing would be ok, then next it was the worst thing ever. I've learned to keep my head down and stay out of the way.

School was awful. I didn't fit in at all. I was really depressed in high school. I don't know why that was worse. I had a group of good friends and it didn't matter than I didn't fit in because neither did they. All through adulthood I have been up and down. I feel like now in my 30s my life is more difficult than it's ever been. Maybe because I haven't reached the life goals my peers have. I haven't settled down and had a family. I don't think that will ever happen for me.

10-12

I've always been depressed. Always. For me, feeling depressed is 'normal'--I have no idea what people are on about when they say "oh, I want to be normal" versus being depressed.

I get loads of things done, I'm super ambitious and motivated, I have relationships with others and friends, I enjoy things, but I have always been (barring meds) clinically depressed. I have the problem where the situation in which I grew up was so bad it would have depressed anyone, so I have no idea if I wouldn't have been depressed without it.

For some reason no therapist seems to be able to locate, I've never needed to be institutionalized for it, and mostly I don't even need therapy. I'm not a danger to myself or others. During particularly bad periods, I temporarily go on meds, but that's about it.

14 when my current cycle of curshing depression and ennervated highs started.