Describe the day(s) you were diagnosed with depression!

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My mother came with me to the University of Alberta Hospital. We went to the desk and said I had an appointment. They asked if I wanted to see someone right now while waiting, to talk about what was going on with me or whatever, just for a few minutes and then come back and such-and-such a time... I said we'll just come back later... we went out and walked around the huge lobby of the hospital. It was a large place, the whole ceiling was a skylight, it was bright and cheery, there were tables for eating like in a mall food court section, there was a pharmacy and two gift shops. One sold books and one sold stuffed animals and stuff and was called Bearyland, a play on Fairyland. There were two cafeteria-style places selling food. Hospital room windows or offie windows looked out onto this indoor courtyard. There were many hanging green vines making the place more interesting. Transparent glass elevators brought you up to the next level, which you could look down on this level from.


We went down halls into another section of the hospital, where there was a waiting room with a play area for kids, people sat on chairs coughing and there was a free internet kiosk. My mother went on the internet and looked up some overseas volunteer programs for me. She said that she wasn't sure if going to the shrink was a good idea after all because if I was put on medication I couldn't go overseas; they said you couldn't be on anything. She said this might help more than medication would for me.


We went back into the Psychiatry waiting room through the second door inside the front door, which said Psychiatry over it in big letters. We sat down and read some magazines. My mother noticed two advertisements on the bulletin board asking for depressed and anxious people to volunteer to be tested by MRIs. She pointed them out to me. "Oh, but you can't be on medication!" she said with disappointment, as they would probably put me on something.


I went into the small single bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I ran my hand through my hair and tied it back again, adjusted my clothes, scraped the crust off from around the bar in my ear, My soul was broken so the least I could do was look good. My appearance was one of the few things I still had. I hoped that the doctor wouldn't get the wrong idea from the fact that I happened to be wearing all black that day.


I finally came out of the bathroom and my mother asked if I was okay. I asked if I'd been called yet. She said no. We waited some more. The receptionist gave me a clipboard with papers on it to fill out and sign. One of them said that by signing it I agreed that if I divulged information about how I could be a danger to myself or others I was subject to being treated without my permission. Another just asked questions about myself like address and other medical problems. There was a questionnaire asking me to circle the number 1, 2, 3 or 4, I think, 1 being "hardly ever" and 4 being "almost always". It was questions about depression. Did I feel guilty? Did I feel like I was a burden to others? Did I get pains in my head? Yes, yes, yes to almost all the questions. The doctor came in and called me, I went with him to his office. He seemed decent.


"I'm Dr. Duncan," he said cheerfully. He seemed happy to see me. I smiled shyly.


He asked what was going on with me. I told him.


He asked what my life was like as a little girl. I said I was the shy kid, a loser through most of high school, never had many friends. I said I had disagreements and differences with my mother.


I told him that I wanted to go into a disaster zone. He asked why. I said to help people and save their lives. He asked if he could say it a different way. He said, "How about if I said that your mind is a disaster zone and your life needs to be saved?" I agreed. I was astonished that he got me the way he did!


"What concerns me," she said, "is that you come so close to wanting to be dead. You said you wanted to go into a disaster zone." I told him I didn't want to be dead, just to get the stimulation I so badly needed.


He understood me. We seemed to click. He said I was starving. I agreed.


He asked how I felt right now. I said I felt more stimulated, aka less depressed, right now that I was talking to him, because I was getting it all out. He said yes, because that was a good interview. I think I also commented on how happy he looked and he said that he was smiling because this was a good interview. I asked if I was shouting, because I felt I was talking rather loud. He said no, that I did however sound very forceful, it probably sounded to me like I was talking loud because I wanted to get it out so badly and was finally getting it out. I agreed that I was just puking it out by then, because it couldn't stay in me much longer.


He asked me questions. He asked if I was being sent messages through the media. I said no, but I wish that would happen, I wished people would send me messages through the media!


He asked if I thought about killing myself. I said that under the circumstances it was one of the last things I wanted to do.


He asked if I ever thought of killing others. I admitted that yes, I had. I said that I wasn't denying that I had anger issues, and that I thought of shooting up schools and that. He was not intimidated... he was very understanding. He knew exactly why I wanted to shoot up schools or go on an exciting shooting spree elsewhere.


He asked other questions before that I don't remember right now.


He asked what day of the week it was. I said I didn't know.


He asked me what month it was. I had to think about it.


He asked me what year it was. I even had to think about that.


He asked me what city I was in. I paused and said "Edmonton, of course!", I would have felt stupid if I wasn't so depressed.


He asked me what the following meant: "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." I knew that this wasn't the right answer to give, but I said, "Are you trying to tell me that I shouldn't driticize if I'm in a-- if I'm in the position I'm in?"


"No, I'm not trying to tell you anything. I'm just asking you to answer the question. What do you think it means?"


I fumbled and stumbled and was too depressed to concentrate.


I said, well, that's a hard one, and it was hard to explain. He said, "No it isn't, it's straightforward."


I got up and looked at his paper, asking what that was. He showed it to me, unfazedly saying that it was just a test of abstract thinking. I noticed slots he had to fill out: "Judgement", "Abstract thinking", etc. He sensed my apprehension/embarrassment and said that he believed I had the capacity to think abstractly, but that it was totally shot right then. He said that the depression affected my memory, everything, because all I was focused on was the depression and the urgent need for stimulation, and once I was treated I would get my memory back and all that.


He said that if the treatment didn't work, he would then have to find a hospital bed for me and really treat me faster in a shorter period of time. I asked what treatment. He said medication. So I guessed that meant they would just give me more drugs at once in the hospital, where there would be medical personnel there to revive me if I overdosed.


I could tell he didn't like sending people to the mental ward, or he was trying to say it in a way that wouldn't freak me out, because he knew lots of people were sensitive and scared of mental wards.


He looked at the paper where he was making notes about me, and said that right now it seemed that I was in a very severe depression, with tendencies that were psychotic, but that he would give me an antidepressant, not an antipsychotic, because he believed that the psychosis was caused by the depression and that it wasn't the way I thought that needed to be fixed, but the depression.


He said to go back into the waiting room and finish filling out the questionnaire, and then he would bring me back in to meet a psychiatrist and the 3 of us would talk. I asked what the difference was between a psychiatrist and a psychologist. He said that a psychiatrist was more higher-educated, he was higher up in the food chain than the psychologists and was a medical doctor.


He told me never to mind filling out the paper about the study they were doing on depressed volunteers-- he wasn't going to be selfish and ask for my help, since I was the one that really badly needed their help.


I went out and told my mother that I was supposed to see him and another doctor. I finished filling out the forms and gave them to the receptionist just as he was coming out again. My mother asked if she could come in too and he said sure. He took us into the office of Dr. Ginter, a psychiatrist. He also introduced a student intern who just sat there being quiet, watching and learning.


Dr. D. said that they were giving me something to take the edge off the depression, and since I had said when he had asked back in his office if I had trouble sleeping, they were also giving me Seroquel to help me sleep.


Dr. G. had written out a prescription. He said he was giving me 10 mg of Celexa a day for the first 5 days and 20 a day for every day after that. "Okay?" he asked, knowing that in my awful depression I might ask for a higher dose. I said that sounded okay.


They filled my mother in, saying that I was really depressed and that I felt dead, and that concerned and disturbed Dr. Duncan. She said, "Oh, well she doesn't have many friends. I an see why she would get depressed." Dr. Duncan said that what he found interesting was that I said I felt dead and her response was "Oh, she doesn't have many friends." He said, "If my daughter told me she felt dead, I would be really disturbed." He said it in a way where you WANT him to feel disturbed for you, not in an insulting embarrassed way the way my mother said that some things I said (about my depression) disturbed her.


Dr. G. asked me if I ever recieved psych treatment in the past. My mother said drama therapy. He asked about diagnoses and I faltered. Should I tell them> I knew my mother would tell them if I didn't, but still. What if they played down my depression in favor of the AS? I honestly did not (and do not) believe that I have AS any more, just social anxiety that gives me some AS symptoms.) My mother told them about my AS diagnosis. Dr. G., who had a rather abrasive manner and didn't quite look people straight in the eye, and seemed shy, but he was still nice, seemed uncomfortable, as though he thought he might have AS but didn't want anyone to know it. He put on a slight (subtle), haughty, "I'm-better-or-healthier-than-you-because-I-don't-have-AS" air that didn't really work. My mother didn't notice it, but I, an Aspie or ex-Aspie, did.


Dr. D. handed me a card and I looked at it, too depressed to register what it was. He said not to lose it; it was my next appointment. I put it in my purse.


Dr. G. asked if we had medical insurance. We said yes, I had just gotten a medical card the other day. He said that drugs weren't covered under it. Did we have other medical insurance? No we didn't. (We had to wait a day to call Social Services to cover it... I didn't have any black holes from then to then because I was happy that I had been to see them and had gotten attention-- not jsut attention, but understanding attention-- and that had made me almost giddy, though still way down in the depression. Two days later I had the drugs. )


Before we left, Dr. D. said to me, "I want to tell you something you don't know. Sleep isn't death." (I had told him before that I preferred not to sleep because I felt I may not wake up, I might get trapped in my head with the blackness.) I said I knew that. He said, "No you don't." I think I said "I knew that" again, he said, "Listen. I know better than you. Just take the pills."


One of them, I think Dr. D, thanked my mother and said she was a real help and provided useful information.


We went upstairs, found a bathroom, came back down and she decided we should eat something there.


We left, and I was happy. My mother was a bit relieved too. We ate in the cafeteria-like section of the lobby. We had tortellini and spaghetti sauce and I had milk and she had coffee, and we also had dessert. We talked about the hospital, how it was different from Montreal. She asked what he said about me and I told her what he said about me being so depressed that I was almost psychotic. She said "oh my God" but wasn't so shocked or embarrassed or disgusted; she didnt' really believe I was that way.


We went to the pharmacy and discovered the meds weren't covered and we had to wait. 2 days later I had the drugs and they made me giddy! Which was just what I needed at the time. I didn't know much about antidepressants but I sensed that they had given me the best one right then for my kind of "undestimulated" depression.

Wow that was a long read
All I remember about my first professional depression diagnosis was I went to this doctor at my school who also diagnosed my AS. Its all in that report my mom is still refusing to give to me She promised too! Before I leave Ill go through all her stuff to find it if I have to if she wont give it to me.

I was confused and scared out of my mind. I was also having flashbacks about when I was five and six. I've thought that everybody was leaving Canada, because they were disapointed with my un-Canadian behaviour. I was thinking that my dad's front yard was going to turn into a forest. I was thinking that I'd go to Heaven, if I used Crest toothpaste, and I'd go to Hell, if I was to use Colgate. I was out of my mind.

Username, who else "diagnosed" you with depression?


CockneyRebel, I take it you don't even remember being diagnosed with what I guess was psychotic depression?


I forgot to mention more details of that day... Dr. D. asked me if I was heterosexual (he'd guessed I was for some reason) and I said yes, but I would turn if I was in prison for the rest of my life and had to or something. He said that's okay and that's understandable. That (and the tone of voice he said it in) is when I knew that he was a tolerant open-minded great guy!


He also asked if I ever had addiction problems with street drugs or alcohol and I said no, not yet. He saw the seriousness of my situation but knew that it could be fixed, so he wasn't serious! That's what I love about him!


He also said when me, him, Dr. G, my mother and the silent intern were in the office that I had some funny ways of thinking about things or something. He was concerned that the depression was affecting the way I saw things.

I could explain it all, but that time of my life has been and gone, and I don't want to dig up the freshly buried resentment and despair I was going through at that time.

Lets just say I did it for someone else's benifit, but was slapped in the face.