5:46 PM
Ovidia
By Jeanie Davis
WebMD Health
Depression can be a vague word, too often used to describe a whole range of emotions. There are many causes, for both men and women. For women, however, the causes are often gender-specific, whether it be the rigors of being a woman in the new millennium, biology, or a haunting past.
Although depression is not always easy to define, when you're in it, you know it -- even if you don't know what to call it. For Alice, depression started nearly 20 years ago, when she was a senior at Yale University and a part-time waitress. Sure, she came from a dysfunctional family (one parent was an "abusive raging alcoholic"), but she was "the happy middle child, caretaker of the others," she tells WebMD. "At Yale, I had a great life."
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"I couldn't breathe," Alice explains. "I was dizzy. For some unknown reason, I wanted to kill myself. I didn't know what to do."
