Son with MDD and finding it difficult to help him

[Smonstee]

• I am the mother of a 19yo son with major depressive illness
• He is under the care of a psychologist and psychiatrist (on medication) but nothing seems to be working. He is due to start TMS soon but has no hope that it will work.
  He has quit Uni and today he wants to quit his casual job, saying the pain of living is too hard.
  He says he has no plans to self-harm but talks about wishing he were dead. All the time. It's hard to hear it.
• There's nothing I can do to help. He is withdrawing further and further into himself. No matter how we tackle it, nothing works.
• I don't know what do next to help him, I dont want him to quit his job but can see that we have no choice.

  Does anyone have any advice? 

[therising]

Hi Smonstee

My heart goes out to you and your son, it truly does. I believe the hardest time in a loving mother's life is when her child or children are suffering. As a mum to a 21yo gal and 18yo guy and as someone who faced the onset of depression in my late teens, I've witnessed this age (from different angles) as being one of the toughest stages in life for a young person. How to do life at that age is hard enough let alone trying to do it all while in a depression.

I can't help but wonder about your son's nature. I think sometimes the nature of a person can be somewhat overlooked when addressing mental health issues. For example, a naturally sensitive person may suffer more because they can sense more. With sensitivity largely relating to the ability to sense, having this ability can feel like a kind of hell on earth at times. And while sensitivity may have always been a trait in a child, reaching a major turning point in their life may come with a heck of a lot more to be sensing or feeling, compared with when they were younger. In other words, the volume of what they're sensing is greater.

If your son does happen to be a major feeler (someone who can easily sense what they're feeling), I suppose the question is 'Exactly what is he feeling?'. Could he be feeling uni as 'The right choice at the time but now not the best choice'? Could he be feeling 'A depressing job'? At 53, I haven't worked in retail since I was 20. I found it's simply not good for my mental health, based on the number of depressing and enraging customers I can feel. Since then, I've worked in the care sector, largely aged care or caring for people with intellectual challenges. I think one of the hardest things to experience as a deeply feeling person is when you can feel everything that's wrong and can't feel anything that's right. It's like a void or a limbo kind of thing, where you're in between what's wrong and what's right. There's kind of like a 'nothingness' or an emptiness, where there's nothing positive to feel. I hope that makes sense. It can be such an incredibly depressing feeling and place to be.

Who would you say your son naturally is? While psychology and the DSM-V (Diagnostic Statistical Manual-Edition 5) would have him tick most or all the boxes when it comes to being a certain type or as having a certain disorder, is he naturally a deeply feeling person and/or someone who relies heavily on guidance, for example (people to light the way ahead for him at times and help him make better sense of things)? When I consider my own son, he's naturally a truly amazing human being who stuns me at times with his incredible nature, he's also someone who struggles greatly under certain circumstances, especially when certain abilities he has are out of balance or not being managed strategically. While not being entirely happy with my natural diagnosis in regard to who he is 😁, he insisted we seek an official one last year. The official one - level 1 (high functioning) autism. His conclusion, 'Makes a lot of sense', regarding some of his struggles. Whether natural or clinical, underlying reasons for a young person's struggle can help make sense of why the struggle can become so depressing, stressful or upsetting for some. Is it possible your son's specialists are treating the depression while possibly not recognising underlying reasons for his depressing struggle?