Seriously, thank you. As a psych grad student (doing his dissertation on depression, no less) and someone who has suffered from depression for a few years, (plus someone that was emo in high school, heh) I was shocked reading this thread. Being emo and being depressed are WAY different. You can be both, but being depressed is more then a mood and it is not possible to just will your way out of it. Many depressed people CANNOT see the positives in life, not that they choose not to, but that they can't. Further, I am against medication, for the most part. It does have its place, but it is not a cure-all. Further, it is not supposed to be used on its own, but in conjunction with psychotherapy. Most reputable psychiatrists will not prescribe meds if a person is not seeking therapy simultaneously. Medication lessens depression enough for a person to deal with it and overcome it in a healthy manner, it does not fix the reasons the person was depressed in the first place. The stigma surrounding depression (see THREAD, THIS) is one of the reasons the disorder is so debilitating, too. It's hard to get help when people don't take you seriously and say you're emo and an attention *****. OP: Find a therapist you like and get some help. You can't necessarily change your parents, but you can help yourself feel better.

#68, if you're a psych grad student, I'm surprised that the way the OP got the diagnosis didn't ring any alarm bells for you. It's possible this is a fake FML, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's entertaining, but it should also be believable. If the doctor knew what she was doing, she wouldn't have told the OP to "go home and look for sources." She would have helped set the OP up with a mental health professional who could have made a real diagnosis, and who would have prescribed a treatment involving some combination of medication and psychotherapy. What this doctor did is just plain stupid for a couple reasons. One is that there are a handful of mental and medical disorders that have "feeling down all the time" (which means different things for different people) as a symptom, and it could be a mistake to just assume it's depression. Another is that it's usually impossible to pinpoint a real reason why someone is depressed--while there are situational factors that can trigger depression, there are other factors having to do with brain chemistry that still aren't well-understood. Moreover, if it were as simple as going home and "looking for sources," you'd think the OP would have figured out why she's sad all the time a long time ago and found a way to deal with it. As for the parents, well, parents can be insensitive sometimes, but that alone is not enough to trigger anything more than teenage angst. So either this is fake, or the OP has a doctor who knows nothing about mental health. If anyone out there has a therapist who is telling them anything like "go home and look for sources," you're not getting the help you need. Go find a therapist who will give you real treatment.

Emotional abuse from parents can most certainly cause depression, as can physical and sexual abuse.

Yeah, but if the OP's treatment from her parents were bad enough to cause depression, she would have noticed it before now. And just because they don't think she's depressed doesn't mean they're emotionally abusive.

Oh, it definitely did. Doctors aren't supposed to say that, and in fact, as a mental health professional, one of the first things you're supposed to do is make sure the person has a recent physical, to make sure there is no medical cause of the symptoms (hypothyroidism, for example, can cause depressive symptoms.). So, I did realize how ridiculous that sounds, and I was mainly just ignoring that part and assuming it was a competent doctor and the only reason the story wasn't explained well was because of the character limit on FML.

But especially with something like depression... it's HIGHLY unethical to just send someone home to explore it further, without doing a suicide assessment, or talking to the family, or in other ways making sure the person will be okay in the near future. But, again, I just assumed their practitioner was competent.

Sure it is.

Are you serious? Do you even know what depression is? (From MayoClinic) Symptoms of depression include: Loss of interest in normal daily activities Feeling sad or down Feeling hopeless Crying spells for no apparent reason Problems sleeping Trouble focusing or concentrating Difficulty making decisions Unintentional weight gain or loss Irritability Restlessness Being easily annoyed Feeling fatigued or weak Feeling worthless Loss of interest in sex Thoughts of suicide or suicidal behavior Unexplained physical problems, such as back pain or headaches

It's actually one of the two core criteria, according to the DSM-IV TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), put out by the APA. Without either depressed mood or anhedonia (loss of pleasure or happiness), you cannot have depression. It IS possible to have depression without depressed mood (or "feeling down all the time"), but it is very common for people with depression to feel that way. It is absolutely a criteria for depression. (Looking at the DSM right now)

Life experiences change the levels of neurotransmitters. A person's reactions to their parents will probably not CAUSE depression if they are not prone to it, but it could exacerbate the situation or evoke the depressive symptoms. It's one of those vicious cycle things... NT levels affect behavior and cognition, which affects NT levels, which affects behavior... etc.

I suspect it was poor wording choice on the part of the OP. "Source", no, but "trigger for a depressive episode" certainly could be possible. Keep in mind that all but the most crippling depression can run in cycles. It can also have ties to other psycho/biological mechanisms.