Major Depressive Disorder: a quick personal summary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorderAbout age 7, I was no longer a carefree happy child. Something went out of me. Somehow I remember this.
Skip to age 13, when my acne went from very trivial to (IMO) extremely bad. MDD really set in now. Acne stayed around till age 24.
Age 17: This may seem weird to some, but I really latched onto disco music in 1975. It made me happy. Yes, disco is not famous for being intellectually and artistically rich, but it made me happy. A natural anti-depressant, if you will.
Skip to age 18: I went off to school in Gainesville, FL. I had morning classes. It was usually extremely hard to get up and function, and go to class. Yes, I had NOT been partying or drinking the night before, and had tried to go to bed early. I just thought this was somehow normal.
Skip to age 37: I had severe difficulties functioning at work. Lack of energy, lack of motivation, procrastination, feeling like crap, sad. I finally went to a doctor at the HMO (where I worked also), and he diagnosed me with MDD and put me on Zoloft. Ugh, the first few days on Zoloft were horrible. I see why people quit, but I stuck it out and those side effects went away. I did start feeling better pretty soon, which was placebo effect and I suppose some effect of the medication.
I'm still on anti-depressants 21 years later. I've tried going off cold turkey (DO NOT DO THIS, lesson learned), and had my meds changed a few times due to either cost skyrocketing or the beneficial effect wearing off. Life is good now.
Moral of the story (cliched but so true): Get help, get diagnosed, and feel better. Best wishes to all my friends here, especially if you have MDD or bipolar or another mood disorder.
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I do my best to be courageous, but it's not easy, as we all know. I do hope others learn and benefit. Thank YOU, and have a wonderful day! 
it is settled science that adolescence changes the circadian rhythms, turning the biological clock to got to bed later, and to sleep later.
imho, sleep disturbances are as often the cause as the effect of mental illnesses. especially in this age group.
my older son, who has a free running clock, couldnt make it through high school. over the course of each month he cycled from being a night owl to being a lark, as they say.
when he was a lark, he was fine. when he was an owl, he would fall apart. i couldnt drag him out of bed w a shotgun.
if i did manage that trick, his deterioration was stark. at one point he had a near psychotic episode.
i had the choice of drag him through school, or let him keep his marbles. i chose the later. to this day he harbors anger at me for letting him drop out. what the heck i was supposed to do about it, he doesnt have an answer.
the science on this is so clear. and it could be fixed pretty much w the stroke of a pen by making high schools, at the very least, start later. go from 10-5, instead of 8-3, and LIVES WOULD BE SAVED.
but no. and to top it off they start high schools an hour earlier than grade schools. and commute times are almost universally longer, especially for kids in selective enrollment schools.
my youngest had an hour+ train ride to a downtown school. most of her first semester, she decided to ride the train all day rather than go to school. this started the process of a long depression, and sleep problems.
one of the high schools here (the one the youngest went to, tho after she left) proposed those changes, and the jocks, usually larks all, and the parents who needed their teens at home to watch their sibs, revolted. the plan was dropped.
a more expensive way to deal w it is to have an overlap of 1st period classes, added at the end of the day, so that kids who are owls could have a staggered schedule.
this is a big soap box issue for me. teen suicides would be slashed by just letting kids be kids and sleep when their body tells them to sleep. at least dont move the schedule in the opposite damn direction.
sleep deprivation is the one truly fixable cause of depression. but talk to shrinks and they will insist that it is a symptom and not a cause.
(also, tell that to my ex, whose one and only deep depression resulted from an abscessed tonsil that was causing sleep apnea. tonsils removed, problem solved.)
and the long term effects are not known, but i suspect that many take years, if not lifetimes, suffering under this stupid curse.
