If this post is off pour taste then by all means please delete it.
Anyways, I’m curious, after struggling with depression for a year and just being diagnosed officially, I’ve been told that depression is common with “high achievers”. Seeing as quite a few FIRSTer’s do very well academically I’m wondering if this is a common problem. To anybody who is like me, and hid it for a year, don’t. There’s help out there.
I have suffered with it before and I was diagnosed with it once when I was 13-14, I don’t remeber exactly and what helped me was a change in environment and new friends. I still get random spells of depression and I think mine stems from boredom, if you noticed a lot of high achievers need constant mental stimulation or else they get bored or their minds tend to wander. My big issue now is that my classes in school are pretty easy so they get very boring and I tend to wonder what I’m even still doing in high school. My advice to you is try to change stuff up though and maybe it’ll help a bit.
This post is most definitely not of poor taste. Depression spans a wide range, from “feeling blah”, to a serious clinical condition that can be quite deadly. One of the things that makes it particularly deadly is that for some reason people feel uncomfortable discussing it openly, giving depression a social stigma that prevents people from asking for help.
For a mild case, then changing things up, getting exercise and just “getting on with life” can be helpful, but in more serious cases there are actual chemical imbalances in the body that make it just about impossible to overcome on your own.
Fortunately high school students tend to have access to school counsellors who can help them access medical resources when required, but it is hardly just high school students who have to fight depression. College students and adults are also at risk and need to know when and where they can go for help.
By being open about your struggles with depression you are making it easier for others to say, “Hey… maybe I’m struggling with depression, too. Maybe I should get some help.” After all, we wouldn’t sit around saying, “Oh, I’m fighting cancer. Maybe I can cure it by thinking happy thoughts!”. Clinical depression, like cancer and a number of other illnesses, is a serious disease that can be life-threatening if left untreated.
Thank you for sharing this positive message. Were there any resources that you found particularly helpful in fighting depression, or any websites that you have found particularly relevant?
Jason
Most definitely not in poor taste! Depression is very common amongst the high achievers I have known. To be willing to help others when you understand yourself deserves a great deal of admiration.
The problem doesn’t only affect students who are “high achievers”, as many students who are capable of great things may not do as well in school. I would say it is more of an issue that we try to force all young people to learn and mature at exactly the same rate. A system in which everyone is allowed to flourish at their own pace would help, unfortunately that is not the world in which we currently live.
Regardless of the academic environment in which you may find yourself, organizations like FIRST are promoting an environment in which young people can shine. Our rookie year, we had a student who went from the top of the detention list to becoming a key member of the team and is now in college studying engineering. He suffers significantly from depression, as do I. It is important that we always offer those lifelines to anyone who does.
Thank you so much for being willing to help others by talking about it. 
I remember a story my wife told me about a Wilson Magnet Valedictorian a few years ago who had spent his whole life being driven by his parents to be the best. To be the top of his class. When the kid stepped up to make his speech he basically announced that he was burnt out and he had no intention to go to college.
I always thought you need to let a child be a child first. Yeah their future is important but making them a good citizen is just as important, if not more so. Driving them to be just a high achiever is going to oft times just drive them into the ground.
Thanks everyone. With clinical depression, it’s taken me a year to get to this point. I don’t really care to keep lying about it anymore. Was quite the shocker to everybody I know.
There weren’t really any resources, I met some people through robotics on other teams and a couple have been through it. Somehow I doubt I would’ve made it this far without them.
If you do have depression though, take my advice, you’re not alone. Go somewhere, even adults 
(and yes, I know how hard it is to talk about it)
This is a real issue… I’ve only been around FIRSTa couple of years and have already seen young people with too much pressure on them.
Either from taking on too many task on the team, their parents, or them self cause they try to keep up with imagined expectations they think people have of them. Theres one young man I know who really stressed himself over getting better than a 3.8 GPA, be the do everything man for his team, plus hold down a part time job. To the point of having chest pains and breaking down.
Thats crazy… FIRST put too much emphasis on going to a top college and getting a degree in engineering. There seems to be a culture of looking down at young people that don’t want to get an engineering degree or even go to college. Sorry to tell you but there are some that get into FIRST not as a stepping stone to RPI but just cause they like tinkering with things.
From what I’ve seen… too many mentors and parents… treat the kids as adults and not as the kids they are.
Theres another young man I’m working with now that keeps getting told to forget his dreams of ever working for NASA. His mother is happy if he just stays out of trouble and goes to school… he struggles to maintain B’s and stresses himself out over getting a B- on a test I’ve looked at and most likey would have gotten a D on.
I don’t have the answers other than learn to relax… and if you think you might be depressed, or know of someone you think is suffering from major depression, speak to someone about it… their parents, someone at the school, but don’t just ignore it.
Back in '91 when I was a vol. firefighter I ran a call on a 18 y/o man… he’d been depressed for sometime, a honor student, super smart from what everyone said. At his funeral I heard a couple of his class mates and teachers say they knew there was something bothering him but they thought it was just a faze and he’d snap out of it. He had his heart set on going to Harvard… his suicide note was on the back of the rejection letter from Harvard.
Depression is not something to be taken likey or thought of as only a faze!
-p 
You know we are here for you. 
Yep, I’m more than willing to talk to people. I’m on IM a lot and its fun having friends from FIRST all over the country.
It especially helps to talk to someone not on your team or school that you can still relate to. I know it’s really benificial for me to have people to talk to so I don’t do something stupid when I’m in a bad mood.
I suppose it can be hard to tell sometimes but I guess all you can do is be a good friend to the person and make sure they get some help.
thanks, Vivek
I can relate to this thread, with the pressure in school and the fact that almost every girl (and alot of guys) think that anyone in the robotics team is “wierd” and “dorks” i have been picked on alot, single for a long time, and the pressure of some of my classes take a big toll on me. I usually have A’s and B’s in every class and a C in french or a class that is terribly difficult, but my parents always say that i should do better even though i study like crazy and work hard. I no longer take french and am doing ok but im in an honors world history class and i have a high C in the class because i didnt do well on a test. do the parents say “you did great except on this test. but you can still easily get it back up to a B”? no… they say “YOU NEED TO STUDY FOR THAT CLASS!” even though they see me studying the book every day. they have made it so i have no social life and so i am picked on constantly (mainly in aviation… where im in a class with a bunch of idiots that couldnt tell a plane from a helicopter) but i need the credit in that class to graduate. so i lead a pretty grim life and im always feeling down. I try to hide it but it just never works, people always notice. The only good part to school is that i am doing a dual completer, im involved with FIRST, and im in the academy of tech (or some other national program) and so im in pretty good shape for college. the person that keeps me from being totally sad is the girl that sits next to me in algebra two. she has a heart of gold and is really sweet. we talk alot and shes even trying to get me a nice social life by setting me up with one of her friends but i doubt it will work well because i generally am wierd and freak people out when im nervous and so most people dont like hanging around me but its better to have false hope than no hope at all that i might end up with a girlfriend or a group of really awesome friends.
sorry for writing so much and being so in depth on my life. i just needed to say this so that at least one person knows how i feel just about every day.
Nobody realizes the difficulty
Everything you live for ripped apart, only others can see it. But not yourself, ever.
Having your mind split up into so many entities, each one fighting for control, the real and one true entity, is pushed so far back screaming out for power. It will never get there.
The emptiness, it doesn’t matter anymore. The care is gone, the hope is gone.
Nobody understands
I know that feeling. today i felt the emptyness and didnt know what to do all day. going a full day with such emptyness is terrible. i tried to solve it by having a friend over but everyone was busy. i just sat there, bored and alone.
Yeah, I get that feeling too sometimes. My own sister has practically disowned me because I am a “nerd” and spend too much time doing nerdy things like math team and robotics. It’s tough when your own sister hates that you’re involved with robotics, even though you really enjoy it.
That, and the fact that I have been insane pain since May can get me in pretty bad mood sometimes. Hopefully the MRI on my legs I had last Wednesday will pin-point just exactly what’s wrong and let the doctors fix it.
Excuse this post if it seems whiney, but it feels a little bit better to see that there are people who are struggling even more than me, and they have the courage to talk about it. Kudos to you.
-Anna
Interesting that this will be my first post in CD, but anywho.
I suppose I am a ‘high achiever’, I’m a bit of a perfectionist so I got that title by trying to live up to my own expectations of myself which apparently are placed a lot higher than anybody elses. I was diagnosed with clinical depression a couple of years ago, although unfortunately my parents didn’t accept this, choosing instead to believe that my docotor caught me on a ‘bad day’. I haven’t been back to the doctor to get it checked since, but I believe I still have it as I have been left to deal with it on my own.
One of the reasons I decided to join our FIRST team when my school joined the competition this year was in keeping with thefro526’s comment about needing mental stimulation. Diving in the deep end with programming has helped to keep me more positive because it’s completely different from anything I’ve tried before (being an art student, haha =P) and has managed to make me feel like I’m making progress with something as I go through the stages of learning the language of C++. It’s a kind of tangible progression I suppose, more so than with my core subjects.
The team environment that comes with a robotics team has also helped a lot too, because of the support which you get from you fellow members.
This post is rather long and without much of a point, but I suppose that I’m saying that I do believe depression in more common amoungst high achievers, that I’ve had some first hand experience, and that FIRST and the environment that comes with it has certainly helped me a lot when my family wasn’t nessicarily willing too.
A little over a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with clinical depression. I am not embarrassed to talk about it, per se, but it is not something that I walk around proclaiming to everyone I meet.
I find it interesting that a few have posted here about how FIRST has played a role in students’ depression as a bad thing. I see how being too involved could be a problem, but I disagree that FIRST is wrong encouraging students to pursue a better education. I have never heard anyone in FIRST specifically state that you need a perfect GPA and to go to a fantastic engineering school to be successful or happy.
For me, FIRST is the reason I was ever diagnosed. I realized what was going on in my life as a result of joining FIRST, and am forever grateful that I did. It was the realization that I had no idea what I wanted to do on a daily basis, let alone my life, that drove me over the edge, and made me want a change. It was one of those things where you have to hit rock bottom before you can begin to change things, and boy did I hit it. But I cannot think of a better program to have done that for me. FIRST brought to me people who were so kind, and willing to help, and listen. It gave me the desire to tell someone about what I was going through. It gave me a family to lean on when my own rejected my diagnosis.
FIRST is the only reason I fought off this disease, and continue to fight it. The only reason I stayed in school and actually graduated. The only reason that I am now in college. It took FIRST to teach me that this was a disease that I needed to face, instead of just say “snap out of it”. It is something that I struggle with today, but am able to manage because of FIRST.
FIRST saved my life, and that is something that I am NOT afraid to talk about.
For those of you out there who are also struggling with this, but feel like you don’t have anyone to talk to, this is what I can tell you. The people around you, specifically a coach or mentor on your FIRST team, I am more than positive will be much more helpful than you might think. Send them an email, or ask to have coffee with them or something one evening, just to talk. You could end up making a lifelong friend, changing your life, or at least enjoy an evening of conversation. The first time is the hardest, but once they know you want to talk… you will be surprised at how understanding people are. Don’t keep it in, the only person you are hurting is yourself, and YOU are what’s most important.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/06/depressed-astronaut.html
That story may interest some of you. Just sharing the information.
I think this problem has been known and acknowledged for a long time, even in fiction. Sherlock Holmes was depicted as an addict when he wasn’t working on a case (not a recommended way to deal with depression!!) I don’t believe this behavior is mentioned in children’s editions of the stories, so a lot of people may not realize that Holmes had his dark side. Artistically or creatively inclined people, in particular, are stereotypically high/low people. Every time such people finish a project, they tend to drop into an emotional slump until they get started on the next project. I don’t believe that all high achievers or artists are necessarily this way, but knowing that there seems to be this tendency may help sufferers get a better perspective on their problem.
On the other hand, I don’t want anyone to do what a T.A. did my first quarter in college. When the college issued a bulletin warning people to be on the lookout for depressed and suicidal people around test time, she laughed it off and treated it all as a big joke, right in front of our discussion section. I don’t know if she was just a flippant, insensitive person, or if deep down she was hurting so much that she couldn’t deal with this issue appropriately.
I can’t say that I’m all better now, but it’s improved a lot. I fought enough to get to the Atlanta championships in a month. So, don’t give up!
P.S. If you don’t like the idea of anti-depressants and other drugs, try a Naturopath. They’re really good and use high doses of vitamins rather than drugs.
Just know that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve been where you are, and emerged better for it. This is one of the unfortunate hurdles that the “high achievers” among us have to get past.
And FIRST worked as well as anything else I tried to beat the blues…
The unfortunate side effect, of course, is a lifelong addiction to FIRST.
basicxman, thank you for raising this important topic! I believe this topic is very overlooked in the FIRST community, so this is, IMO, no way in poor taste.
My situation was a bit complicated when I was in high school, as there was no outside pressure forcing me to make good grades. I was obsessed with being a perfect student, and if there were someone above me in a class, then I would have regarded myself as a complete failure with no place in society (I seriously had this strange train of thought). This same obsession even followed me into my first two years on my school’s FIRST team where I obsessed over trying to be a perfect member, and if I found myself to be in a situation where I had nothing to do (like if there was nothing on the robot that I knew how to fix or improve) then I would have regarded myself as a completely worthless member of the team.
Eventually I sought help, and my symptoms were dramatically reduced. I still have these obsessive fits every now and then, but I have learned to control myself.
I highly recommend talking to someone you personally trust about any problems you have, since one of the best steps to take is sharing your feelings. Do not ever keep your problems to yourself, as they will build up and may eventually cause something very unfortunate to happen.