Hi Confused, Welcome to the site. Thanks for taking the time to introduce yourself. The Depression Center offers personalized, interactive tools that have helped thousands of people challenge and overcome their depression. If you look to the left of the screen under "PROGRAM TOOLS" you'll find our Depression Test, Session Diary, CBT Buddies and our Depression Program. The purpose of our Depression Test is to prepare you with information that you can present to your physician. When you're finished the test, you can either print your Final Report or email it directly to your doctor. Your Session Diary is your Depression Program "Control Center." Your Session Diary contains all of your tools, worksheets and results as you move through each of the 16 Sessions in the Depression Program. Our CBT Buddies and Online Support Group allows you to have some anonymous assistance when dealing with depression. The CBT Buddie and Online Support Group is offered on a 24-hour basis and allows you to communicate with others like you around the world. The core of The Depression Center is our Depression Program which is an interactive, 16-session cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)course. When using cognitive behavioral therapy, each person has unique goals in their treatment. Whatever your motivation, cognitive behavioral therapy is a very effective treatment for depression. You can use the tools whether or not you are taking medication, and whether or not you are currently seeing a therapist or mental health professional. The Depression Program has a number of tools and resources to help each individual overcome their depression and win. We hope you find the help you need within The Depression Center. If you ever have any questions or concerns regarding our site or with depression please click the "CONTACT US" link at the bottom of the page. We're open to any questions or concerns you may have. We look forward to hearing from you again soon, Casey ___________________________________ The Depression Center Support Team

Hi Confused. I'm glad you found this site, too. It's good to have someone to talk to that understands about depression without looking at you like you're weak or nuts... Keep hanging in there for the kiddos! The love and strength of my girls keeps me going...

I'm so pleased to have found this site -- I've been trying to work through the Feeling Good Handbook, but have been finding it tough to stick to by myself. My depression has been going on for some time, but I'll try to keep my intro as brief as I can: First went to a doctor about my low mood in 1999. I was, at that point, married and my daughters were 3 and 5. We had just moved from England to Australia for an exciting career opportunity for my husband -- our life was very good, but he still wasn't happy. My husband is a bitter, unhappy man, and was emotionally abusive towards me because of it. We'd been married for 8 years and had moved from England to Canada, back to England and then to Australia in search of a job/life in which he could be happy. I'm Canadian, and all my family is here in Toronto, so the move to Australia was a huge one for me. I guess that I had really been hanging on to the idea that everything would be ok if we could just find the right space for him, but when Australia still wasn't it I gave up hoping. I pulled myself together enough to leave him a couple of years later and moved home to Toronto with my daughters. Took a senior job with a small consulting firm, where I was promised a very short path to a leadership role. The partners announced 2 months later that they had sold the firm to a larger consulting firm. I'd been through a buy-out situation before, so wasn't really surprised when everyone went into preservation mode though, having just joined the firm, I felt more than a little isolated. I decided to weather it out partly, I guess, because I thought there was real potential in the merged firm, and partly because my salary was good, I'd just bought a house, and I wanted stability for my children. The dog-eat-dog behaviour continued, though, and sales and performance targets were being raised beyond anything remotely reasonable. I tried, I really did, but I was continually late to pick my girls up from after-school care, I was too tired to help them much with their homework, and my patchy attention was beginning to show in their behaviour and their marks. I wasn't sleeping, and tears were barely under the surface most of the time (even at work!). I talked to the partner I reported in to, but he didn't want to know anything