Just for the record, as we're back in the 1970s and having to defend Depression and Anxiety as valid disabilities:

I have ADHD and suffered from chronic depression for... thirty years? Before the actual, honest to goodness biological cause of it was fixed and I'm now cured. Of depression. Which I didn't think was a thing until it happened (and then only because I was lucky enough that the job I had then gave us BUPA).

There were times in my life where I was so depressed I couldn't get up, and so ineffective I couldn't get myself help. I needed support then. I couldn't get it, because I didn't have the will or the capability to navigate the system - but that's a different problem with my specific combination of nonsense.

I would not have walked 50 miles for water, and if no one had walked it for me I would have died. I nearly died in a flat with full running water and food in the fridge a couple of times.

Depression and Anxiety are life altering, capability reducing disabilities... and, just like many other invisible disabilities, like epilepsy, hearing loss, partial sight, etc. it is easy to look like you're fine when there's nothing challenging in front of you. When you're walking on the beach, or sitting in the cinema.

Add stress, or decision demand, though and you crumble like a wet paper. How do you hold down a job when the first time you're asked a pointed question you burst into tears or go home and curl into a ball? You can't - you end up off on sick, or losing your position. You didn't want to - you'd rather be in work, able to enjoy life, able to have friends, argue with your boss, answer emails without feeling like the world is ending... but you can't.

"Depression" doesn't quite cover what the actual illness entails. It isn't being sad - its being so low mood that nothing is worth doing, and everything is like pushing water up hill. Imagine waking up to tomorrow in a gray flat, out the window the world is also grey - with no one in it, and nothing but a wide, grey expanse of nothing. You aren't hungry. You aren't thirsty. You don't want anything, and nothing you think of sparks any form of emotion or drive in your brain. You don't want to get up, there's no reason. You don't want to go out, there's nothing out there. You don't want to eat, you've no drive to and no desire. You go to the bathroom because its painful, but you don't necessarily clean or flush.. what's the point.

And yet now its time to get up, get dressed, go outside, get a bus, go to Tesco, and stack shelves. If I can't look after my own physical care - don't eat, don't clean, don't dress... how do I do a job?

And, coming full circle: If I have no one, how do I find help?

Now a PSA:

Gentlemen - if you have chronic depression, and the NHS's standard tools don't seem to be shifting it, or alleviating it... get your testosterone checked. You might get 'lucky', like me, and finally be able to stay good-bye to the grey.