feeling 'stuck in a hard situation'.. is that the same as depression?

[Over-it-all]

Hi everyone,

My mother is stuck in a hard situation and feels like it all too much sometimes and has mentioned suicidal thoughts and not wanting to deal with it anymore. She says she's not depressed as such, and even her doctor hasn't recommended anti-depressants, but he has mentioned psychs. Is that feeling of helplessness and it's all too hard and can't be bothered anymore that kicks in once in a while extremely, depression, or is it just stuck in a bad situation.. Same or different?

A bit more back story...

My mothers situation isn't fun at the moment, involving a recent disability, being off work for a little over a year now on sickness leave while doctors figure out what, if anything can be done. Her leave is being covered by income protection insurance, which goes for 2 years. Her work have come forward to make her redundant with a package, which is a fair bit less than the remaining time of income insurance would amount to, which she's already struggling on with medical bills and general life expenses. The redundancy package, as we currently understand, will cancel the income protection insurance.. along with all the stresses of possibly centrelink disability payments in her future and maybe gov. housing so she can afford to get by, and considering bankruptcy since she's struggling to cover her small amounts of debts..

life's tough, we all understand that, but is being in a bad situation just that, stuck in a bad situation? is it a bit of that, but also depression..or is that just straight out depression??

any ideas or suggestions or ideas on things to do, ways to help, etc..

I've suffered depression and know how it can be, but everyone has those bad days when it seems too much, dont they, without it necessarily being depression?

anyway, thanks guys..

[Neil_1]

Hi Over-it-all;

Welcome to Beyond Blue and well done to you on providing this pretty detailed post about your mother, yourself and some interesting questions that you've posed as well.

A suggestion to you with regarding your mother - now it all depends on what part of Australia you live in (and no, you don't need to reveal if you don't wish too);  but there is a new initiative that the Government is rolling out called the NDIS, National Disability Insurance Scheme, which will be going a long way towards helping people with disabilities to be better off than they currently are.  I worked for a brief period of time in conjunction with this during last year when it first rolled out it's initial 5 sites throughout Australia.  It might be worthwhile doing a google search on them to find out a bit more information and whether it is actually happening in or near where you live.

Life is tough and we all face bad situations.  People without a mental illness will pretty much face these bad situations and I guess will be affected by it for a short while - might be minutes, might be hours or possibly a day or two.  People with a mental illness will be affected by perhaps the same situation for weeks, months or years.  Depression grabs hold of these bad situations and projects them to the forefront of your mind/of your thinking and makes you dwell on them;  seeking out ways to look at the negatives and to make it a burden for you.

So yes, everyone does experience bad days - but for depression sufferers, they experience these feeling for huge amounts of extended times;  and it's never just the one situation that they are struggling with in their mind - it can be multiple.

In your opening para you mentioned something like do bad feelings kick in once in a while, is that depression or not.  I guess that depends on how you define, "once in a while".  But I'm definitely not going to be saying that your mother has depression as she's already sought out professional advice and guidance.  It did seem a little odd though for the doc to suggest psych counselling to your mother - that's no doubt to do with her talk of suicidal tendancies - and believe me, if anyone starts to talk about those ideas, they need to be taken seriously immediately.

I hope you're able to get back to us with some updates for how the situation is going and I also hope I've provided something of benefit to you with my post.

Kind regards

Neil