By his junior year, Charlie began to experience many of the symptoms of depression all at once, and I began to see him more regularly. Gradually, he met the full criteria for a major depression. He began to ask questions about whether life was worth living. He had marked difficulty sleeping. He withdrew from friends.

What was it like for him? Charlie kept a journal and shared some of it with me … at the worst time, he wrote, "My eyes grazed across the room, blurred with tears, frustration, and suppressed panic. My eyes are blurred, the material world is blurred, and the only sight with any integrity is the inward sight. My ruminations, creations, speeches, fantasies, rages and sorrows are more real than the daily humming of routine, interspersed with moments of epiphany, regret, and pain. But I cry from my thoughts and cringe more often from my inward sight than physical torment. My fingers are slow and heavy now. I am wheezing in my pathetic attempt at crying. I feel robbed of my ability to really have tears. I can only hyperventilate and cough and squeeze tears from my eyes, and suffocate because my nose feels full of cotton."

In short, while Charlie looked not very different than he always had to his classmates, he suffered a silent agony. His parents, both thoughtful teachers, strongly supported therapy and medication. He and I began to work even more actively together. We met weekly and focused on how he could change things in his life. I tried him on an SSRI and then another. As is often the case, it took many months, as well as a consultation with a senior child pharmacologist, before we found a combination of sleeping medications and antidepressants that worked for him. (186)

 

This passage was taken from When a Parent is Depressed, a book written for families facing depression. When a Parent is Depressed is published by Little, Brown, and Company and can be purchased at your local bookstore, through the publisher’s website (www.twbookmark.com), or at any major online book retailer.