Living With Depression: Surviving a Condition That Doesn’t Just Go Away
Key takeaways:
Mental health advocate LaRee Etter says too many people still treat depression as a taboo subject.
She has been hospitalized multiple times for life-threatening symptoms, but says she can go months, even years, without experiencing a relapse.
She has learned depression doesn’t just go away. It is something she lives with every day.
The depression seemed to come from out of nowhere: In November 2000, LaRee Etter noticed she was feeling low, the type of mood dip she hadn’t felt since she’d attempted to end her own life as a teenager more than a decade earlier.
Within weeks, she was hospitalized. She lost her job as a physical therapist. Her relationship of 9 years ended abruptly, and people she considered friends faded away. She relied on government disability payments to live, temporarily sheltered in an adult foster home, and began using alcohol to numb herself.
Twenty-one years later, she’s sober, employed, a homeowner, and a dog mom. She’s run 29 marathons, built strong relationships, and maintained a blog that’s been praised by mental health professionals.
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That doesn’t mean her depression has gone away, though. It’s always there, but she’s managing it.
“I don’t feel I’m fighting. In fact, I dislike using the terms struggling or fighting, even when in the middle of a relapse,” says LaRee, 54, of Duluth, Minnesota. “Day to day, I am living with, rather than suffering from, depression.”
Being depressed is not the same as having depression
It hasn’t been a clear and easy path from her 2000 diagnosis to today. LaRee has had multiple severe relapses that, in her own words, have been “life-threatening, required hospitalization, or both.” As with any chronic medical condition, depression requires constant monitoring and preventative care.
That’s difficult for some people to understand. After all, who hasn’t said, “I’m depressed,” at some point in their lives?
But there’s a huge difference between being depressed, which is a feeling, and having depression, which is an illness, LaRee explains.
“It's no different than if I had a brain tumor and the tumor was affecting that part of my brain that affects my mood. It's just that there's nothing to see on an X-ray,” LaRee says. “It’s a physical, biological illness. It just happens to affect my mood versus other systems in my body.”
Major depressive disorder affects more than 16.1 million American adults annually, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The APA reports that a third of American women will experience a major depressive episode in a given year.
Yet those numbers may be misleading, as more than half the people with mental health concerns don’t seek help for their disorders, the APA says, noting “stigma, prejudice, and discrimination against people with mental illness is still very much a problem.”
LaRee has always been open about her diagnosis, and that has led to people approaching her quietly to tell her about friends and relatives who have depression.
“It was just amazing to me. It was always this whispered conversation,” LaRee says. “I think that really motivated me to be even more outspoken.”
Birth of a blog
In 2008, LaRee began recording her ups and downs on her blog, Depression Marathon. Almost 14 years and more than 1,000 posts later, the blog has a small following — about 450 people — and last year averaged 6,600 visits per month.
“I wanted to confront that stigma and be a voice for people who, you know, didn't feel they had a voice,” she says. “I never anticipated it going this long.”
Her most popular post — with 16,000 views and counting — is “Losing Friends,” which went live in August 2008. Fractured relationships are a reality for those with depression. Some of their friends feel uncomfortable, unsure what to do or say, so they opt to stop communicating.
Her advice: Treat someone with mental illness the same way you’d treat someone with a physical illness: Shovel their snow, mow their lawn, or bring them a casserole — “a very Minnesotan thing to do,” she adds.
When she was hospitalized after her 2000 episode, “I never got a card. I never got a flower. I never got a balloon. I didn't get a phone call,” LaRee recalls. “If I had been in the hospital for any other reason, my room would have been full.”
Years of living with depression, staying sober, and working with a therapist have helped LaRee develop stronger relationships. She’s more open and able to express what she needs. During her two most recent relapses, in 2018 and 2020, “I had friends coming out of the woodwork to come and sit with me, [and] a friend who kept dropping $100 on my countertop because I wasn't working.”
“That’s really pretty amazing,” she says. “It’s changed because I've changed.”
The future is unknown
One hallmark of LaRee’s blog is its honesty: She writes about the sobriety journey she began in 2005; her successes and setbacks; the grit and resilience she’s gained through marathon training that has helped her during relapses; and the way caring for Jet, her black Lab, gives her purpose.
However, she says she’s not sure she will survive another depressive episode.
That’s because, while her “Losing Friends” post ends on an inspirational note, LaRee knows it’s easier to write words like these than to live them:
“To stay alive, I try to remember I have an illness. I have an illness which often sucks the life out of me, changes my character, and distorts my personality; but I don’t have to let it define me. Keep fighting, folks. Don’t let your illness define you.”
Her last relapse, in April 2020, was a bad one: “So, so scary and so low — I’m really quite surprised I survived,” LaRee says now.
On April 2, 2020, she wrote her depression was “ripping me to shreds.” She was thinking about ending her life. She discussed suicide with friends, her doctor, and her social worker. She refused to be hospitalized, so her long-time psychiatrist began calling her every day to check in.
Two days later, LaRee used her blog again to report she felt a little better, in part because of the responses she’d received from readers.
“You told me your stories. You decreased my hopelessness and isolation. You reminded me depression is a vicious liar! You told me I mattered. I am grateful. I am humbled,” she wrote.
She took concrete steps to get help, including reaching out to a doctor who had successfully treated her with Ketamine infusions in the past. She continues to receive an infusion every 8 weeks. November 2021 marked 18 months since her last severe relapse, the longest period of time she’s been depression-free in decades.
She’s constantly aware that each day she’s setting a new record — and she hopes that continues.
“It’s a life-threatening illness,” she says. “I think that now more than ever before.
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