Meredith,
Your poor sister! My closest friend is a psychiatrist. He often prescribes antidepressents for the elderly and says it helps them greatly with sadness and even at times, boosts their ability to use their minds! He said he has had good results from using them on the elderly.
Has your mother ever tried them? There are many different kinds and so if one was not what she responded well to, another might be. It might be a way to get her to want to do something about her happiness!
What do you think?
dancer9

I jump out of my skin and see a "picture" of one of these prior incidents, superimposed on whatever I am looking at, kinda like a movie or computer screen. It is only there for an instant. Is that PTSD? END QUOTE

i was diagnosed with PTSD, in the last lot of yrs and that was one of the symptoms. Something similaritie to the actule event brought back a replaying or more acuratlie reliving the even't, smells, sounds and emotions, even if onlie in my head.

ANN327 Have you had this cheeked out or being treated? it won't make it all better but effective treatment can help dramaticallie. Seeing you situasion again is or can be troubling enough for you Then as well having too explan (or not) to people who see you jump becouse of a rattle. Bet it be good not to have to react like that to simple safe everieday events.
good luck

Vicki, I emailed you back.
Hope and pray you are feeling better!
Blessings!

Mij, My story is so similar to yours! I too have suffered from dysthemia all of my life, although undiagnosed until my mid-20's after a severe depression. I too was hospitalized for 3 months, then booted out too early while still very suicidal (but didn't want to be)...I lasted two days before succumbing to the temptation. Thankfully that wasn't the end of my story, and I did go on to find my way through to the other side of that particularly gruesome bout of depression (PS, that was 20 years ago, and now, no matter how tough the going might get, I'm REALLY GLAD to be alive.)

Since then, I do still suffer from mild chronic depression and chronic fatigue. But have been able for the most part to learn how to manage it, which has given me a lot of freedom and meaning - the one thing I've been able to do (or am still in the progress of doing) is not allow that depression to define me, or be all that I'm about.

You've found a good place to come and just be. Many here struggle with chronic depression. So you'll find home for your heart here and some good wisdom on how to get through these tougher days.

Don't let those side effects take you somewhere dangerous - I know it's frustrating when the very people who are supposed to be helping you aren't there to help in the way you most need them to! It just makes getting through this even more brutal. Try to ride those side effects out, acknowledging that the weird feelings (including, possibly, increased suicidal feelings) are as much symptoms of the drugs as they are of the depression.

You are more than this depression. I'll be holding you in my prayers, praying that the right people will be in your life to help you through this particularly rough and dark patch right now. And trust me, Mij, the view from THIS side of that dark patch is worth the struggle through! Stay alive, and go to emergency if the side effects get too intolerable.

Mij, Welcome, I've not seen you post before!
I was so sorry to hear that depression sent you to hosptial!
Are you feeling a bit better after that?
How are you now with your depression and all that you face?
You are not alone in dealing with depression here. I'm so sorry about the hospital and that those steps were needed. I can only hope that it helped you. I will re-read your post and see if I can catch anything I might have missed. When I read that you were hospitalized I was worried about that and might have missed something.

dancer9

From Miji:

Quote:

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My insurance rep pushed the hospital doctor hard to boot me out, so he did, while I was in the middle of trying several new drugs. Bad idea. I am experiencing a lot of weird side effects.

It's hard for me to concentrate enough to express my thoughts here. I did want to say to Orchid that I didn't find your posts inflammatory(?) at all. I have a greater understanding of your language problems because my sister-in-law was born in Taiwan, but was raised in Japan. Her parents spoke Chinese at home (including her mother speaking Mandarin) and they did not speak much English - it took them many years to learn and they certainly weren't fluent. It was upsetting for the whole family when the kids were becoming fluent in Japanese, yet couldn't speak it at home. Then all the kids also learned English at school! All the kids came to the U.S. to go to school. My SIL met my brother at age 20 and her English was not that good. 35 years later, she still has trouble finding certain words, but she is definitely fluent. She has also retained her Japanese, but has lost a lot as there are no Japanese speakers around her.

She told me that she has always felt that she was a person without a native language. Her native language should have been Chinese. Japanese felt like a foreign language to her especially because of her parents. English is also a second language. It must be very odd to feel as if you don't have a native language.

Tired, can't type anymore.

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Miji, who was responding to one of my comments in this super long topic thread. For quick reference, this is what I wrote here in this thread a few wks. ago:

Quote:

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I do feel this way at times on this forum. In the area of depression, it can become quite complex in bicultural families where differences in values (old vs. new), shift in power (children who master English language, can wield some power over parents at times, in dealing with outside world), expectations, assimilation pressures, problems of adequate bilingual language fluency and family misccommunication/gaps..can create some family minefields.

But it is....incredibly true if a family has survived with its family members who have experienced depression, the family bond is much stronger and more loving.

AT least in my family, this is true.

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Thx for understanding Miji, the linguistic problem that happens in bilingual/multingual families particularily when there is not equal fluency/master of 1 language that parents and their children can have a detailed long dialogue.

You said that your sister-in-law feels not completely rooted to have intimate fluency with 1 native/mother tongue. I would define "intimate" language fluency, is even if a person has lost alot of their fluency, at 1 point earlier in their life, the person used to DREAM in that native language. I used to dream in only Chinese. I did not learn English until I was in kindergarten, though I was born in Canada. The ESL learning shock makes me more sensitive to all immigrants who must master English in North Amerca. My younger siblings learned both Chinese and English simultaneously before kindergarten..before their Chinese deteriorated severely once their schooling started.

Another informal indicator of native/intimate mother tongue fluency, is certain phrases, sentences, words and concepts are AUTOMATICALLY spoken by a person...WITHOUT the person having to think, translate from 1 language into another language before speaking. You speak automatically upon reflex...like sneezing or coughing.

I still do have command of some Chinese, where automatically I can speak some phrases or stumble across in horrible grammatically incorrect Chinese by thinking automatically in Chinese.... without translating in brain from English to Chinese.

Often really at that moment of speaking Chinese, I don't give a shit how grammatically incorrect I sound. I want to indicate to the other person to reach out ...to them in Chinese speech. Just any Chinese, to signal particularily to Chinese speaking recent immigrant person, that I AM also Chinese, that my parents are Chinese-speaking, that ...I understand them...inherently (and unspoken problems they might have as an immigrant) ...no matter how bad/bastardized my Chinese language has deteoriated. That signal is quite important to communicate to the other person upon initial meetings.

Part of learning a 2nd, 3rd language or retaining mother tongue, is to use it and not to be too self-conscious/afraid to speak the language just because you might sound slightly klutzy.

My parents accept 110% many decades ago that their children will assimilate so much they would lose mother tongue alot. So they are more than willing to hear lousy/broken Chinese from their own children ....and others outside the family. They did not force us to attend Chinese language school. After all, some of those schools don't ahve good teachers (alot of volunteers). I think they didn't want us to HATE our own mother tongue so they didn't want to subject us to not-so-good teaching methods of Chinese language classes. I was raised in small Ontario city where there were very few Asians-- compared to Toronto or Vancouver.

For your sister-in-law, I suspect she at least knows enough Chinese that is probably broken and basic. But she must grow to appreciate just this amount is better than nothing. She already has in her HEART, certain Chinese slang, idioms that a non-CHinese person would not have unless they are raised from babyhood in Chinese. Your SIL is like me...but I suspect her Chinese is better than mine because her parents forbade them to speak Japanese at home, when family was living in Japan.

The connection between language and depression, is quite simple or complex, depending on problem(s). As I said, for my mother, she can never really convey complex concepts in Chinese to her adult children. She needs my father to act as a translator. It's tougher resolve relationship issues with mother when there's an inadequate common shared language base. I'm sure if many people can even imagine how ensnarled and confusing a heated family argument can become if there are problems of language fluencies.

For this forum, let me give you how a lanugage fluency problem can escalate in serious family matters:
My parents rented an apartment to a recent immigrant CHinese family. Both parents worked (low income in factory & restaurant jobs) with 2 teenage children. The father is actually well-educated in China : he was full-time teacher at a technical college. Children immigrated to Canada when they were in puberty years. Daughter managed to pull herself through to eventually master English well and do well in school. Her brother, had more problems academically. He got involved in petty crime..where the police showed up at the door. I heard the mother crying upstairs... (I and some siblings were acting for our absentee landlord parents. We lived downstairs.) I am certain the parents had no clue that their son was involved in some crime nor were they alert to signals that would lead to this behaviour.. Neither parent mastered English much. They worked 12 hr. long jobs.

My family is more fortunate...my father is fluently bilingual in Chinese and English. He TAUGHT himslef English in his mid-30's. Mind-boggling when he was sole breadwinner as restaurant cook and had 6 young children. This is how valuable a parent-translator-cultural bridge is within 1 family.

HOw are/have your family members in viewed your depression? Is there anyone over the years, who has understood minimally what you are undergoing? I hope you have 1-2 good face-to-face friends who know you real well.

Other than your depression, some of us would be interested in knowing what your passions in life have been. What have excited you most and defines you best?

Don't know how the rest of you feel about what I'm about to post, but here goes. I really believe there are more mentally ill people hidding behind wellness facades than there are people actually identified as mentally ill. Those outside "private care" institutions, "county and state nursing homes" are sicker than those inside. They just play better cover up games. They're more cunning, manipulative, more crafty and better liers! Even some caregivers are less well than those they're "supposedly" keeping watch over. A lot of mental illness results from having been victimized by abuse!
So could it be, you're not mentally ill but emotionally hurt?

Could be, Bonnie. Interesting question. I know about three people who should be medicated and put away but are walking the streets to cause problems.

I met a woman patient in the psych ward several years ago - her profession? She was a psychiatric nurse who kept stealing drugs from the ward pharmacy, one or two at a time, saving them up until she had enough and then take just enough to get her admitted into hospital. She told me that it was a great way to get paid time off work...I asked her if she was afraid that she'd die, and she just laughed it off and said that after all her years in the profession, she knew just how many to take without doing actual damage.

It was hard to listen to, knowing how many people out there want help but can't get it because there aren't enough beds due to health care cutbacks!