Mood disorders in sports and outside of them

Good job, TPD.

Very interesting post. I work in mental health right now, and it is an incredibly interesting field with so much that is still unknown it’s incredible.

Mood disorders are just incredible. I know I’ve been depressed before, I’ve known it, known why I was, known that I shouldn’t be, but even knowing that, you just can’t make it go away. luckily instance was extremely mild (relatively speaking) and went away, but just that flash was enough to teach me to never ever doubt the pain of someone with diagnosable depression or mood disorders.

Personality disorders…that’s a whole other can of worms. wow.

I’m such an idiot…. I didn’t realize there was a difference between “mood” and “personality” (both have to do with behavior – but I can see why they could be differentiated as two totally different terms).

Yikes….

Actually there is a very large difference between mood disorders and personality disorders. My mother has both. Her entire diagnosis is that she has bi-polar depression, a borderline personality disorder, a social anxiety disorder, as well as post traumatic syndrome from childhood abuses.

There are times when she can be on either end of the depression pole being extremely manic or extremely depressed. For those that do not know the difference, the mania part makes her extremely happy, giddy to the point of being humorous all the time and omnipotent. She has reckless behavior and will spend tons of money she doesn’t have and in earlier years had affairs and did drugs. Her depression can last months and often she never leaves the bedroom, for weeks at a time sometimes. She sleeps constantly, is paranoid regarding what other people think and say, will start crying uncontrollably at the drop of the wrong word or through stimulation from a song, television show or even an ad.

The personality disorder is completely different because what occurs then is the instant changes she goes through. She can go from sad, to laughing, to angry to the point of throwing things, to confused to suicidal in a matter of 10 to 15 minutes. It is like seeing 3 or 4 different people in front of you at once. It is as confusing a thing to see come out of a person you thought you knew as you can possibly imagine.

The social anxiety disorder is self explanatory. She doesn’t go out. She never meets new people. She shuns going to even her doctors appointments because she gets claustrophobic and paranoid in groups of people. She reads things into facts and words where there is nothing there. She has no friends and forces even some of her closet family members away.

I won’t get into her causes of the post traumatic syndrome. I’ll just leave it that she was a ward of the state in the 1940’s. Foster care can be pretty atrocious nowadays. Imagine what happened to cute little girls in the foster system back then.

These are all separate illnesses. The existence of all four have made finding proper medication and therapy for her nearly impossible over the years. She’s been committed several times.

And what you say about the understanding and placing of yourself into people like my mother(and me)’s shoes is that people don’t understand that this is not something you want happening to you. You can’t snap out of it. You know the decision you are making is wrong or bad but it is being driven by a need to extinguish a need being driven by emotions that are themselves being driven by physiological imbalances within your neurological makeup. Emotions drive people like my mother and I. Being able to make decisions while removing emotions from the equation is extremely difficult for people without mood and/or personality disorders or diseases. For someone who is suffering from such a disorder and/or disease, untreated without proper therapy and medication, it is virtually impossible, especially if the severity of the illness is acute.

So, just to reiterate what TPD so eloquently discussed earlier, your station in life, your profession, your ethnicity, your gender, and your religion will not rescue you from this type of illness. Famous, successful, rich. Being any of these things doesn’t help. These illnesses can cripple anyone. Someone suffering from this doesn’t choose to be depressed, they don’t want to feel the way they do, they don’t want to ultimately make the decisions they do.

And you, being someone who can’t understand what they are feeling or what makes up that person, doesn’t want to put yourself in their shoes. Believe me. This is not something you would wish upon an enemy, nevermind have happen to you or someone you know or love.

So have patience and a bit of sympathy and if you can’t have that then just walk away from it. Because as I have learned the hard way, good supportive environments are important and recuperative to people with mental illness. And if you are not going to be part of the support and you’re going to have negative input into the situation, then you are part of the problem. Rather than hindering that person, help them by removing yourself until you can be supportive. It will do that person and probably yourself as well, a world of good.

I wish Delonte and anyone else who suffers such things luck, love, support and understanding. It may seem like such a little thing but if people everywhere offered just these four things to anyone that is sick, not just someone with mental illness or a disabling disease or a handicap, but anyone, I think people would get healthier that much quicker.