Dysthymic Disorder

Dysthymic Disorder

My Grandfather was treated with electric chocks. He was pensive and often sad. They could not help him with any thing better at that time.

Then my mother ended up in a home for people with psychological disorders.

When I was only 7 years old, my teacher phoned my mother and said: “There is something strange with her behaviour. I think she has some kind of mental disorder.” She said that I had these very obvious mood swings.

But I lived my life recognized as 'she who is moody sometimes'. I knew I was different but could not understand or wanted to figure out what to do. Cheer up! They said to me. Come on! Don´t be that way! Stop complaining so much! Why are you such a party spoiler? The sad thing is that they were right. I WAS like this. But not by choice – I was having this disease Dysthymia.

When I was over 50 years old, I finally got the knowledge about my disorder: I was diagnosed with Dysthymic Disorder. When I started to learn about this sickness, I realized that much of my "strange" behaviour came from this.

Here are some of the symptoms:

The main symptom of Dysthymia is low, dark, or sad mood nearly every day for at least 2 years. th:
Either overeating or lack of appetite.
Sleeping to much or having difficulty sleeping.
Fatigue, lack of energy.
Poor self-esteem.
Difficulty with concentration or decision making.
Feeling hopeless.
Sensitive to noises (ex children who cry)
Hard to feel happy at all
I will add a link to a site that list 57 symptoms!

Now I have learned that Dysthymic Disorder can develop because of mental traumas in your life.
It can be that you are married to a man who does not communicate with you normally. (I was for nearly 30 years) It can come from separation from your parents at an early age. (I was in foster care) There are many ways to recognize Dysthymia but one thing is clear though - the disorder can differ from person to person.

The psychiatrists can figure out if you have Dysthymia through questions and answers. They know what to ask and look for. I was filling in many forms with questions I could not understand why they were important. But I was obedient and answered them honestly. One very important question is if you have been thinking of suicide or not. They need to know that. The doctor told me that the diagnose in my case was very clear. Dysthymic disorder had affected so many years of my life. They told me also that very often there is a inheritance of Dysthymia in a family. So there I remembered my grandfather and mother and how they struggled with turning over problems in their minds. The picture was clear now.

Dysthymic disorder is chronic. It never goes away although it can be better or worse as the years go by. Before the expression Dysthymic disorder was invented, people often called it gloominess. And so it is. Some days you have difficulty even in feeling happy about anything. It is a constant sadness that affects you hard. If or rather when you have a depression on top of this, the diagnose is "Double depression" because you have two depressions now. When my Darling husband died, that happened to me!

Dysthymic disorder should not be mistaken for Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD.

Symptoms can be:
depression with a fall or winter onset
lack of energy
increased appetite with weight gain
carbohydrate cravings
increased sleep
excessive daytime sleepiness
social withdrawal
slow lethargic movement

This disorder can strike about 17% of people living in the upper latitudes suffer periodic bouts of the winter blues. One treatment for this SAD is Light Therapy.

Now to the good part of it all:

There is help to get if you are diagnosed with Dysthymic disorder. Do not hesitate to talk to your doctor and ask for anti depressive medicine. There are many kinds and they all affect your brains and synapses in different ways. Sometimes you have to try out more than one kind. To see if the medication is the right one, you have to wait many weeks, sometimes months. But hold on – keep trying – because it is wonderful to finally find the right one. There are so many variations of anti depressive medicine and when you get yours working, you will feel this wonderful calmness in your thinking.

This medicine you have to take for many many years. May be for the rest of your life. But is that now worth it? Imagine to live a life not crying so much any more. To smile and say: I am fine! When people ask how you are doing.