How do you cope with your depression?

How do people in third world countries cope while people in better countries struggle with depression etc...?

• Hello I have been wondering for a while how people in poverty-stricken countries can survive and carry on with what they have while people commit suicide in other countries over depression and things like that. Why do I for example find it necessary to 'give up' and not be able to do things while there are people much worse off than me that can cope?!? AAAH. I'm sick of the fatigue and constant emptiness and low mood. I never thought I'd ever even think of death but I really feel very little these days. So come on, explain to me how others like I mentioned above can carry on. Why... :/

• Answer:

  It's because we are living in an unnatural society. Western society subjects us to mental illness. Really, it does. Consider what we deal with now, prolonged adolescence in a world where we cannot possibly feel secure. Other cultures have a plan and go with it. We have too many choices. I also think we are soft as a society and things that seem right are wrong and vice versa. This is reality, not my subjective opinion. Things are really f'd up. Imagine that you were a farmer in the rural midwest and farming was all your family knew, and up and down the family tree, that's what they did. The issues involved the harvest, NOT whether you were attracted to your wife and happy, but you put family first. I wish I could have been born my grandmother. Things were so simple and pretty. My grandparents didn't get along after they raised the kids, so they seperated. She had her life and he had his, but they still respected the unity of the family for the sake of the children and did not take away that which a child needs to grow up healthy and strong and, did not put personal preferences in the way. There is a time to be a child and a time to be an adult. It's the adolescence that is the problem and the longer it lasts, the worse it gets qualitatively. With all that said.... those are my thoughts for now. I am bipolar and have been to rock bottom, more than once. I NEED medication. On the other hand, there are a lot of people out there, popping pills and using other substances to numb their pain, and they do not see that the state of the world they live in is messed up and is what is causing it. Kids can't be kids anymore, childhood sucks, we are force fed sexuality at the tenderest age. Of course, whenever terrible things happen in the world, we ALL have to know about it. A man or woman struggling to stay alive in a third world country would have no idea about it and neither would they have any responsibility to anyone but their own families. It's true what the other guy above said. It is survival for them. Maybe I trailed off a bit, but these are my observations, and there are so many more things I can complain about, but I will give you advice: If you have such dark depression, get a psychiatric assessment right away. There are so many options for antidepressants. Most will work for you. If you are already on medication and you have just started, give it a couple weeks or more. My last depression did not subside until almost two months after I started taking the medication. Try to simplify your life. Do you have friends or family that cause you anxiety or other hurtful emotions? Sometimes you need to retreat from them to be able to get healthy again. Take care of yourself first. I hope you don't mind that I offered advice. I just hoped there would be something you could relate to in what I wrote, something to help the healing. Hang in there.