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One Woman's Story of Depression

Margaret McKay* is almost 85. She first experienced depression at age 45, after her husband of 24 years announced he was leaving her. At the time, McKay was also thyroid deficient (her thyroid had been removed) and going through menopause.

"That was my first real depression; it was a year long," she says. "I did not see a psychiatrist except for about three months. My husband was a psychiatrist and he said my ego was just threatened."

Years later, in her early 70s, McKay was visiting a friend in Florida when she became ill. She had been living in Connecticut near her younger daughter, but the combination of her illness and the cold New England winters made her unwilling to remain there. Another depression overtook her.

She moved south to Virginia, where she saw a doctor who started her on Paxil. The side effects sent her to the hospital more than once, however, so that medication was discontinued "and we had been trying to find something that worked ever since," she says.

In the spring of 2003, McKay once again found herself very depressed. "I'd always kept the ends of pills. I never threw them out. I told my granddaughter once that I was keeping them because I didn't want to linger around and be bedfast, as we all fear. I was very depressed and thinking that I didn't want to live to be 100 ... I was very depressed. I had written a note to the girls saying that they were not to feel any guilt. My younger daughter happened to call me the night I was writing this note, and I reached out to her and told her how I felt. She flew down the next day and took me to her house.

"I got better and had the support of family," she says. "Sometime in January (2004) I began to feel 'normal,' after the doctor put me on lithium. Someone along the way had taken me off thyroid medication and she put me back on that. I felt normal, not anxious. I can get joy out of even small household tasks, out of just living."

The idea that older people can't get depressed is an old one, relates McKay.

"You do hear still that some doctors say, 'You're not depressed, you're just getting old.' I can't say for sure, but I don't think that's generally true anymore," she says. "I've been in the medical profession all my life and some older doctors might think that, but I think doctors are more aware now."

However, people young and old -- including McKay -- still feel the stigma of depression. "I hear people say, 'I don't need a psychiatrist,' as if it's something that's not quite approved. I more easily still say that I'm on medication for high blood pressure than I'm on medication for depression. As much as my thoughts are changing, I think that still lingers."

*Not her real name

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