Many people have known someone with depression or they have battled it themselves. Today the number of people with depression is extremely high, especially in teenagers. I have known many who have had to battle this horrific disease everyday. My best friend has depression and I had no idea for the longest time until she briefly mentioned it one day. She acted normal and like most she hid from the world, hiding how she truly felt. My sister has had a very hard time dealing with this disease also, we go through a cycle every year where it is just too much for her, but thankfully she can now tell when it is too much and ask for help. Many people with depression cannot accept it, they either deny it or do not trust anyone to help. Just now in English we are writing about happiness and how you can be happy. When I was thinking about writing this essay and putting in my personal opinion all I could think about was all those people who cannot be happy through no fault of their own. This thought had me research depression and how depressed people have no control over how they feel. This led me to researching neurochemicals and things started making sense to me, how if my sister does not take her medication she crashes hard because of the neurochemical deficiency.

So while I wrote my essay I felt compelled to include this research since those specific chemicals rule your happiness. I did not want to write about all the things that will make you happy according to all these studies while I knew if someone who was depressed tried these they would not get the satisfaction these studies said will come. I did not want those people to think there was something wrong with them since they could not be happy. I want these people to know that there is nothing wrong with them it is the same with someone who has a chronic illness, medicine helps keep their chronic illness in check and it does the same for depression. Also people who have depression need to first and foremost work on themselves. That was one of the key points in my essay, that you cannot help others without helping yourself first. I was talking about this with my best friend, who was writing the same essay, and she had the same point of view in her experience with depression. Many people with depression also do not want to talk about it, most of them are ashamed of it. In my opinion most of the people who brag about it or tell everyone do not really have depression, they just want the attention. That is one way you can usually tell if it is real, if they are talking about it or not.