During the holiday season, are you humming “Holly Jolly Christmas” or is “Blue Christmas” the song that keeps running through your head? Maybe it’s “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” with its wistful longing. Are you surprised that you don’t feel as joyous and celebratory as you usually do, or as you feel you should?

You could have the holiday blues. People who aren’t acquainted with depression are surprised when they feel melancholy or blue during the holiday season. (Those who are accustomed to depression are used to feeling that way any time of the year). But these emotions seem so wrong and out of place at this time of the year.

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A couple of months ago I read a few articles about a study that seriously makes me want to scream and throw things. “Antidepressants May Impair Driving Ability, Research Finds” says one headline. My first thought was, “Oh, crud.” But then, having years of experience in looking critically at studies, I made sure I read the fine print. Sure enough, there are a few big holes in the logic behind this study.
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A few months ago I read an article that raised the question of how growing up on antidepressants might affect a child’s psychological development. In Coming of Age on Antidepressants, Dr. Richard A. Friedman tells us that he started considering the issue after talking to a patient, a 31 year old woman who had been on antidepressants since she was 14. Although they had undoubtedly saved her life, she was beginning to wonder what kind of an impact they had had on her psychological development and the development of her personality.
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I realize that when you’re trying to talk to someone with clinical depression, it can be frustrating. It’s kind of a mine field if you have never experienced depression yourself. The situation’s complicated by an issue on the depressed person’s side. It’s very hard for someone with depression to communicate how depression feels.

But there are some things you can say, (and offer) that, while not guaranteed to make the depressed person feel better, could make it easier for them to talk to you and spend time with you.
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Depressed women face a higher risk of giving birth to pre-term babies than women who are not depressed, new research shows. According to the research study, published last week in Human Reproduction journal, women with severe depression are twice as likely to deliver early (at fewer than 37 weeks) as women who are not depressed. Women with less severe depression are 60 percent more likely to give birth prematurely.
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Occasionally, I wish that every single person on earth could experience one day of clinical depression. Not all at once, of course. Geez, would that bring everything to a grinding halt or what? No, I wish everyone could experience it as a rite of passage, like getting your driver’s license. Actually, I also wish this about being disabled. You wouldn’t believe how many people see me walking with my cane (I have Multiple Sclerosis, and sometimes need to walk with a cane) as some sort of impediment, and literally push past me so I don’t slow them down.
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