Doug

I first experienced Depression when I was 17 and had started at university. I had always been a worrier and quite a shy and nervous person, but low feelings and misery began to overwhelm me, and I became withdrawn and really felt things were falling apart.

When you are young and experience Depression for the first time, it is completely debilitating, because you don’t really know what is happening to you and what is wrong with you. I think everyone does experience episodes of low mood at some stage but feeling low all the time and being unable to lift your mood up again is extremely frightening indeed.

When I first became depressed, I also had tremendous feelings of guilt and confusion at feeling so miserable, because all I had wanted for years was to go to University, but now I was there, I was feeling so wretched. In addition, everyone else my age seemed to be so positive and full of energy and enjoying life, something that made me feel completely isolated and lonely. I felt that everyone expected me, as a young person with my whole life ahead of me, to be full of life and happy and that no-one would understand why I was depressed when I couldn’t really identify a reason for me feeling the way I did.

I saw my GP, and I was fortunate in that she was sympathetic and reassuring. She prescribed me with anti-depressants, which definitely helped me feel better and over a period of time I got back to some kind of normality.

Although I’ve suffered relapses since then, my advice to other young people suffering from Depression and low mood is please don’t suffer on your own. Go to see your GP, accept that Depression is something many other people your age will also be experiencing, and take whatever help is available and suits you best, whether that is medication, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or other talking therapies.

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