My depression was triggered by many serious events in my life starting two years ago, and one major contributor was the onset of arthritis which significantly changed my lifestyle.

Now that I am suffering from severe clinical depression (I've been unable to work for 3 or 4 months now) I do constantly "appreciate" the connection. The arthritis makes it hard to get out of bed, hard to move, hard to leave the house, fearful of "committing" to a job, fearful of "committing" to a relationship, and greatly affects my hopelessness for a possibly happy future. The depression of course does the exact same things, and I'm sure the stress from depression aggravates my arthritis. Often the arthritis keeps me awake at night which makes me tired, frustrated, and even more depressed.

They definitely feed off of one another. Currently the arthritis has been very bad, pretty bad pain in both legs, makes it hard to get anything at all done around the house.

-- The world is what we make of it --
-- Dave
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