I used to beat myself up for everything, even when I’d do a good job. Because, you know, I could always do better.

I also used to say “I’m sorry” when a) I wasn’t sorry and b) at the weirdest times, like when someone would bump into me or when I’d want to express a difference of opinion. (Blogger and author Therese Borchard can relate. She gave exposure therapy a try for eliminating her apologizing addiction.)

And any time I’d make a mistake, big or small, I’d feel like I just committed a mortal sin. All mistakes were magnified and the guilt and shame made me want to crawl under a rock. Making mistakes became a gnawing cycle that also chipped away at my already unstable self-esteem.

Saying no to someone was painful, and there were many times that I just wanted to be alone.

It’s been heating up now for the past few weeks as a charge led mainly by professionals. And it has caught the eye of the mainstream media. I’m talking about the revision process for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5), the reference manual mental health professionals and researchers use to treat patients and design reliable research studies examining mental illness.

The latest upset? The fact that the new DSM-5 suggests that depression could co-occur with grief. Critics see the changes as suggesting the DSM is trying to “medicalize” normal grieving. Anyone who experiences grief after a tragic or significant loss will now be at risk for receiving — heaven forbid — mental health treatment and a diagnosis.

We’ve covered this ground here on more than one occasion, but it appears time to talk about whether depression can occur at the same time as grief or not. My first reaction was — grief is grief, depression is depression, and the two never really co-occur. But a few years ago, I read a piece here on World of Psychology by Dr. Ron Pies which completely changed my perspective.

“Guilt is a part of the battlefield that often goes unrecognized,” writes Nancy Sherman, a professor at Georgetown University, in her book The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds and Souls of Our Soldiers. But along with profound guilt comes a variety of emotions and moral issues that tug at soldiers, creating an inner war.

Sherman, who also served as the Inaugural Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the Naval Academy, delves into the emotional toll war takes on soldiers. Her book is based on her interviews with 40 soldiers. Most of the soldiers fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, while some fought in Vietnam and the World Wars.

She poignantly looks at their stories from the lens of philosophy and psychoanalysis, using these frameworks to better understand and analyze their words.

“Depression is an illness that requires a good deal of self-care,” writes psychologist Deborah Serani, PsyD, in her excellent book Living with Depression: Why Biology and Biography Matter along the Path to Hope and Healing.

But this might seem easier said than done, because when you have depression, the idea of taking care of anything feels like adding another boulder to your already heavy load. Serani understands firsthand the pain and exhaustion of depression. In addition to helping clients manage their depression, Serani works to manage her own, and shares her experiences in Living with Depression.

If you’re feeling better, you might ditch certain self-care habits, too. Maybe you skip a few therapy sessions, miss your medication or shirk other treatment tools. According to Serani, as some people improve, they get relaxed about their treatment plan, and before they know it are blinded to the warning signs and suffer a relapse.

Because skimping on self-care is a slippery slope to relapse, Serani provides readers with effective tips in her book. As a whole, the best things you can do to stave off relapse are to stick to your treatment plan and create a healthy environment. I’ve summarized her valuable suggestions below.

Does depression have an upside? Is there some sort of evolutionary advantage for a person to become depressed, for instance, to re-evaluate their lives or perhaps a choice they made that led to their current depression?

Most people who are depressed certainly wouldn’t think so. (I don’t either.)

But it doesn’t stop evolutionary psychologists and other researchers from positing that there may indeed be some sort of evolutionary reason for it.

Richard Friedman, MD, writing in the New York Times today, explores the issue.

About 30 to 40 percent of people will experience significant distress after learning that they have cancer, according to James C. Coyne, Ph.D, director of the Behavioral Oncology Program at the Abramson Cancer Center and professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. But it tends to resolve after three or four months, he said.

Clinical depression, however, affects about 16 percent of cancer patients, according to a 2011 study published in The Lancet Oncology. Researchers analyzed 94 studies with more than 14,000 patients. Depression was especially common — with 30 to 40 percent of patients affected — when other mood disorders were present.

Depression also appears to affect people with certain cancers to a greater degree, such as oropharyngeal (22–57 percent), pancreatic (33–50 percent), breast (2–46 percent) and lung cancers (11–44 percent), according to Derek Hopko, Ph.D, associate professor at The University of Tennessee and co-author of A Cancer Patient’s Guide to Overcoming Depression and Anxiety: Getting Through Treatment and Getting Back to Your Life.

What are some of the most depressing places to live in the United States in 2011?

There’s one easy way to gauge the mood of the country — what are people searching for on Google? Google Trends to the rescue. We can type in a query to see how many people from different geographic regions searched for the word “depression” in Google.

However, since there are many reasons a person might type in the word “depression” into Google (the economy, searching for depression glass, etc.), we compiled our own list with over a dozen more specific, commonly-searched for depression terms, including things like “depression symptoms”, “depression test” and “depression treatment” to arrive at this list for 2011.

Sadly, if you’re a resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or Seattle, WA (population-adjusted leader), more people from your city type in these terms more often than in any other city in America. This suggests that Philadelphia and Seattle residents take the honor for the Most Depressing Place to Live in the U.S. in 2011. Pennsylvania and Iowa (population-adjusted leader) lead the most depressing states.

Click through to see the entire city and state list.

Theoretically, Christmas is a joyous occasion, but let’s face it — it can stress us out. Lots of presents to buy, too much food and alcohol consumed, and exercise ignored. For some it represents seeing people who have been avoided all year. Not surprisingly, calls for help to helplines and charities go through the roof during the holiday period.

This can lead to us feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope. It can prevent us from experiencing the extraordinary benefits of a holiday. We can be consumed by what isn’t rather than what is.

Imagine if it weren’t like that. Imagine if you returned to work in January full of zest and purpose. Here are a few proven, helpful strategies to do just that.

In a small clinical study published a few weeks ago, researchers didn’t find much difference between the three treatment groups of depressed subjects they studied — a group that received antidepressant medications, a group that received a specific type of not-commonly-practiced psychodynamic psychotherapy, and a group that received a sugar pill.

But there were some serious issues with this study from the onset, issues that call into question not only the generalizability of the results, but also their validity. It’s a shame that Reuters, who picked up on the study just yesterday, glossed over the methodology problems of the study, and instead just repeated the results as a shiny new established fact.

And easily lost in the discussion is the best result of them all — 16 weeks was all that was needed for most people in the study (who completed it) to find improvement in the symptoms of their depression, no matter what the treatment.

Let’s see what went wrong, and what the study actually tells us…

What do you do when you’re stuck in a rut?

Even though I’ve written about this in several previous posts, I fail to remember the pointers when I’m there myself. My present mood dip isn’t a mammoth relapse, thank God. But it is enough of a wake-up call to go back to the building blocks of my recovery program and see if something is missing, or — even if I’m doing everything right — find a few more tools that can help me get to a better place.

I list them here as much for myself as for you. Here are 9 tips that may help you get yourself out of the rut, before you dig in deeper.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline staffs the national suicide hotline (1-800-273-TALK) and now has teamed up with Facebook, the world’s largest social network, to offer online crisis services to certain Facebook members.

I say “certain” Facebook members, because you can’t just log onto Facebook and seek out this free service. You first have to actually publicly post a comment somewhere — like on your wall — that you’re suicidal. Then you have to wait for a concerned friend or family member to read your post, click on the “Report” link, and report it to Facebook. Then, a Facebook staffer looks at the report and, if it meets its suicide criteria, will send the original Facebook user an email.

In this email from Facebook, the user will find a reminder about the national suicide hotline. But this special email also contains something you won’t find on the Facebook website, nor the website of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — a link to chat immediately online with a volunteer crisis counselor.

Facebook is providing the financial support for this new service, so not surprisingly it wants to limit its use. That’s a shame, because with the resources of a company like Facebook, they should make this sort of suicidal crisis chat service available to any of their users — without them first having to publicly come out and post about their suicidal intent.

This a great new resource and we commend both Facebook and the Lifeline for providing it as an option to their users. But the new service has a dark side as well…

You might be surprised to learn that seasonal affective disorder (SAD) doesn’t affect just adults. It affects kids and teens, too.

SAD is more than a case of the winter blues. It’s a seasonal form of clinical depression.

According to author and SAD specialist Norman E. Rosenthal, M.D., in his book Winter Blues: Everything You Need to Know to Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD affects about 3 percent of kids ages 9 to 17.

Below you’ll learn what SAD looks like in kids and teens along with how parents can help.