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 Home > International Day For Disabled Persons > Disability & Depression

Disability & Depression: often go hand in hand

Found below is the first hand account of a physically challenged individual who had to battle it out on two fronts. His disability made him depressed. However, the brave man squares up to the problem and even offers some suggestions to deal with it. 
Yes, the "double D". When I was young, nobody told me what I was in for. Nobody told me I would wake up one day and realize would stay that way forever. That dealing with it would be so painful and hard to accept. 

The disabled, the handicapped, the odd one on the block, the one no-one sits next to in the school classroom, the one who must always sit on the side-lines of school activities as they cannot compete in outdoor sport. The one who gets tripped, the one who gets pushed down steps, the one someone is always laughing at for being different. How long must one of us endure this treatment before we get tired of it, sick of it, angry enough to do something about it, before we all suffer from clinical depression because a car that comes seemingly out of nowhere only to knock you down, run over you, hit your wheelchair broadside because they are in a hurry to check out first. The shop owner who, because he doesn't want "your kind" in his stores, does not provide handicapped access. 

Depression, is a word that I been fighting for what seems to be an eternity now, even though it has only been a little over a year. 

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Depression means medication. I don't know which is worse, the depression or the drugs that are supposed to combat it. Prozac has worked for me gloriously for about three months but now even I see a decline in mood and an increase in depression, suicidal depression.

The disabled have no emotions, no thought process, no memory of the torment they have caused millions of people daily, nor do they care. No one prepared me for the "double D".  There is no doubt that we must all be very aware of the problem. It is even more critical if you live alone. So, how do you deal with the ever present underlying depression? 

The worst thing you can do is to stay in bed thinking that sleep will make it go away. Sleep will pass time, but you need to expend energy to overcome depression. Try expending energy in three ways: 

1. Physically, by doing some kind of exercise regime. Walking is good if you can do it. 

2. Emotional energy: You can cry, laugh, love, hate - get involved with helping others as means of expending emotional energy. Perhaps you can think of others. 

3. Spiritual energy: This is the most difficult to define, but some good ways of expending spiritual energy are praying, loving, religious study and teaching others about faith and spirituality. 

If you do these, you will overcome your depression with no drugs to hurt you.