Math + Depression
Do any of you suffer from depression? I do, and I actually hate match. I used to be good at it and I used to love it, but as my depression got worse, I barely know and remember the bare minimum now, due to the fact that depression has been proven to make you..slower. I need one more math class in order to graduate and let a huge weight off my shoulders, I was wondering if any of you suffered/suffer from MI and how you still kept your love for math?
I have Seasonal Affective Disorder and I’m a grad student in math. It makes it difficult to maintain motivation sometimes, but math is just enjoyable to me. The amount of enjoyment depends on how I’m feeling, but I still find myself drawn towards math. Methods I use to keep up these enjoyment are just general strategies to mitigate depression, which I’m not really qualified to talk about.
Just out of curiosity, what do you mean you're not qualified to talk about it?
I’m not someone who has training in mental health. Obviously I have a good idea what works for me, but I don’t want to try to tell OP “this is what will work.” I know giving mental health advice can be harmful sometimes. I’d rather just let OP look up outside professionals if they want help in that area.
I have major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder as well as being on the autism spectrum. I excelled at math in high school and got a scholarship to a major college, but unfortunately after suffering several depressive episodes I ruined everything and dropped out halfway through my math degree because I couldn’t handle the required writing and foreign language classes due to writing anxiety. A year later I tried to go back to a different college and the same thing happened after only a year. I still love math and read up on stuff, but a lot of my memory of classes I took has almost completely faded. I came across an old notebook of mine the other day with some work I did in one of my classes and started crying because I couldn’t understand what was going on in it despite it getting a perfect score 8 years ago. I’ve tried to take free online classes and audit recorded ones but I can’t hold my attention long enough or get in the habit of working on them every day to do much. So unfortunately I don’t have a story where I was able to hold on despite depression, but I still have a distant hope that someday I’ll be able to get back into it.
Not being able to go back to your math notes after 8 years is pretty normal IMO. I was pretty good at math in university but after a few years of doing something else I'd struggle with the basics.
Absolutely, if you don't keep building on it you lose it pretty fast, but likewise if you start trying to build on those subjects again you can pick up what you lost in, at least, less time than it took before
Hang in there famiglia, I'm going through some similar stuff but slowly getting better, hopefully we can both heal and grow.
I admire the perseverance that both of you possess, and I wish you both the best!
Sure, do you have some strategies or something that might help, or just wanted to talk in general? Either way I’m happy too. Though I still suffer from depression and ended up losing my footing on math because of it, I get by now mostly from music (both listening and playing it).
Took me 12 years to finish college -- two masters degrees -- with severe ADHD that I refused to treat until 9 years in. My sisters and brothers spent their inheritance on houses. I gave every dime of mine to the state of California.
There are many paths in college. Sometimes you just need to keep banging your head against the same wall. I re-took calc III three times and ended up with a math minor.
What did end up happening? If you don't mind me asking and how old are you? I'm seeking advice on a similar situation
I’m 29 now. I’m still interested in math, especially combinatorial game theory, most discrete math fields, and anything involving symmetry. At college I completed up to and including honors Calc 3 and Linear Algebra, plus a ton of specified electives such as advanced modal logic and graph theory, and one topology course. I got into a really good one mostly based on a 35 ACT score and 5s on AP math tests—my GPA was not the best due to problems in writing classes. I don’t know why I just told those events backwards haha. Anyways I’ve tried to teach myself group theory and other advanced topics over the years but I just can’t do it without physically being in a class and forcing my attention. A few years ago I came up with a novel generalization of an abstract board game called Y that works in any even-numbered spatial dimension, so even if I do nothing more in math ever again at least I have something I’m proud of, regardless of how esoteric it is. I honestly don’t have too much high hopes for my life — I have no income as I’ve been unable to hold a job over the last decade and have been through about a dozen of them, and am living in a house owned by a friend of my family. I have a court hearing coming up to decide if I’m eligible for SSI benefits for my disabilities and honestly my entire future is banking on it. On the plus side I have a lot of friends and have been living in a wonderful and stable relationship for almost two years now, but I want to contribute back to everyone that has helped me and pull my fair share monetarily and have been frustratingly unable to.
I don’t have depression as such, but I recently got diagnosed with psychosis halfway through my second term at uni; as a result I because quite depressed and had issues with the usual self harm and stuff as well as dealing with the delusions. Usually I find comfort in maths but when graphs start talking to you in lectures it can be very off-putting. For this reason I only partly learned this terms content, so I’ve had to go back right from the start and borderline teach myself; the way I’ve stayed motivated is when I come across something particularly interesting I take time to explore that sprcific rabbit hole to motivate me further through the less interesting parts.
I dont really fancy going into it but it just makes concentration very hard as you can imagine
My psychosis isn't as bad, but buddhism as a philosophy does wonders for me. I find logic works properly but I can't trust emotions or certain sensory inputs.
I haven't started on the buddhist sutras, I focus on the Dhammapada. It's a great practical guide.
Edit: I can trust emotion, but I compare them against the seven deadly sins.
I'm a data scientist and actually have found that when I'm down, I sometimes respond by burying myself in project work, so I'm fortunate in that math sometimes help me cope. That said, a common symptom of depression is an inability to enjoy things that you normally enjoy: your distaste for math might actually be a symptom of your depression.
I don't have diagnosed depression, and if I have it at all it's probably a fairly mild form. However, I may still have a relevant observation. I especially love Math when I do it recreationally, at my own pace, for my own interest. Doing it independently you can get side-tracked down tangents, but I'm pretty good at snapping back on track after only a little distraction. I still love Math when I'm in some kind of constrained scenario like a class where I have to get things done on a schedule, but I only struggle slightly to keep up.
I find that my love of doing Math plummets deeply when I am panicked and so rushed that I know I won't get everything done to perfection, so I just do an 85% job in order to not utterly fail. When I'm that swamped I feel my affection for the work of doing Math fall from love to like, to irritated tolerance, to--in the worst of cases--a bit of resentment. I get a desire to just do something else with my life where I could take care of my health and make a living.
I'm reminded of Descartes' advice for how to do Philosophy. From memory, it went something like, "Get a good night's sleep. When you wake, take a stroll for an hour or so, and enjoy the day. Have a long and peaceful breakfast. Read a little, write a little for an hour or two. Spend the rest of the day with friends, activities, and dinner. After dinner and just before bed, do a little more Philosophy." In total, it sounds like Descartes did about three hours of work a day. Yeah, if we could manage that in a Math program, I'd never feel bad about it. Hell, I'd probably be unable to resist doing less than five hours of Mathy stuff a day.
But that kind of schedule is just impossible in the modern day.
I don't really have a depression diagnosis, but I do have MS and high anxiety levels not to mention regular depressive episodes. I am incredibly passionate about math and ambitious too, I am working as hard as I can to get into research, but it is pure pain when I can NEVER be consistent on work due to my low energy levels and drastic mood swings/mental health issues.
For example, today I planned to do solid 8 hours of linear algebra which shouldn't be a problem for me as I can easilly spend 12 hours doing math when I dont feel like "shit" (I usually never plan that tho cuz thats overworking leading to burnout). But I was distracted in the morning by something and it took me an hour to get started with work and later I watched a video by Simon Clark about what he would change if he went back to uni, which totally sent me down the existential crysis anxiety vortex of doom. I also really want to buy a big A5 dotted notebook for my random recreational math playing aroundfulness, but the only one I could find was 16€ and thus I literally spent 2 hours being completely confliced on if I should buy it or not.
Often I wake up with zero energy, I often experience symltoms of depression like lack of interest in things I love or even resentment, clouded mind, extreme slowness, etc. I've been going to a therapist for 2 years or sth like that already and it did help a bit but meh. Anyways, its just so difficult to keep track of things and it is impossible for me to not fall behind stuff, even though I still manage getting great grades and work my ass off as much as I can. Its difficult watching my peers consistently working less than I do and getting better results due to not being on constant mental rollercoasters. Sometimes I hate everything and everyone and just want to sleep and often even math becomes shitty as I feel like I suck anyways.
Ill never stop learning math, but I will probably never have a peace of mind.
Some of this resonates greatly with me. What is your diet like, and do you exercise? Get decent sleep? Rec drug use? When I started eliminating sugar from my diet, I noticed myself gaining more and more energy upon waking each day. Fewer and less severe stints of depression and anxiety ensued. I know this is cliche advice, but it's cliche for a reason. I still struggle, and we all will, but I've definitely found peace of mind, and I live in it probably 75% more than I did a year ago when these lifestyle changes started occurring. I came to it from a place where the valleys were low and the peaks were short-lived. Diet was undoubtedly a major factor in reaching this point, probably the greatest factor, and that seems to be true for many people. With excercise, more sleep, and disciplined (ie much more rare) substance use, I have seen improvements in my mental health I never could have conceived of. It was a long, daunting process filled with doubt, but it happened. Now I'm working on maintaining a peace of mind all of the time via meditation practice, 10 mins a day, and I do feel now that is not an unreasonable goal. I really just can't believe where I am now after having been in some of the depressive episodes I was in, and I guess I hope this comment can give you some hope that such peace is possible even when it feels impossible for you. Good luck friend.
I eat as healthy as I can, which means almost no sugar, but on rare occasions I allow myself to have some sweets, I eat as much vegetable full meals as possible with as little bad carbs as possible. But the thing is that I am a student and to get anything done I have to go to the library, which means that I have to eat out every day, but the student food is not the healthiest around. I do my best to pick out the healthiest options as much as possible, but it is hard. Also, I cannot go to the library at weekends as it is closed, so I have nowhere to go during the weekends and thus usually get almost nothing done, even though I try so hard to work during the weekends too. Now the weekends are the routine depressive valleys, as library still somewhat has that robotic work atmosphere and even though I am not always super productive, like yesterday, I still get more done there and have a better time there than at home. Moreover, I live in a village that is cca 5km out of town, which means that I have 6min drive to the nearest public transit station which can then take me to the uni town of Ljubljana, where I then walk about 25 min to get to the math department. So I have a 2 hour commute every day too, which is not that big of a problem on its own, but I have to somehow get to home from the station and tgus my parents have to pick me up, but they are getting older and are tired, so I cannot stay in the library too long, 7pm max, which god damn early. Back to health, I have truble sleeping well and it seems like it is impossible for me to fix it. I have been trying to establish a good exercise routine for 2 years now with no luck. E.g. I started running for a while and for like 2 weeks or so it went well but then something happened(probably a terrible fight with parents that I had very often, but less often now) and it threw me totally off again. Same went with gym, same went with meditation, etc. The only exercise I am left with at the moment is walking as much as I can, every day I walk after lunch for about 30 min and also the walking I as commute is something too. Sometimes I go on longer walks, but those are rare. The thing is that I am also a perfectionist and ambitious, so it is almost impossible for me to put uni on the side for a while, not to mention that I am also behind stuff a lot and am constantly trying to catch up.
I worked really really hard to get my shit together, but it didn't work. Ill keep trying, but I am really tired of that right now and meh. The BIG problem was that MS is a really confusing and was really difficult for my parents to accept it, but the massive issue MS patients have is the medication. Meds for MS are incredably dangerous and even fatal in some cases and there are a ton of "success stories" about several alternative medicine options, which are mostly bullshit and don't work. Now you can imagine me fighting to death with my mum every 2 days for months about this, yeah it destoryed my psyche, to the point that I had to quit uni for a year and I am repeating it now, but I switched from physics to math, so its not completely useless.
What I am trying to establish here is that I don't feel like I have enough energy and control to do shit and I tried EVERYTHING you did and it all went to shit, but Ill somehow still move on with my shitty life and try to fix things somehow, but damn am I sick of everything. I still fight my mum every once in a while and I cannot get rid of that. Note that I also cannot move out, because it is too expensive and taking student debts here is impossible because we have free education, which means that I would somehow have to pay for a room, but how, part time job? Fuck no, I have math to learn, there is NO way I can spend even less time studying, and a lot less time at that. Im not trying to just pass uni, I have As because I love math and physics to death and am doing my all to get into research because it is my dream and I will sacrifice a lot to get there, plus who knows when I will suddenly loose sight or hearing or something, which means that there is no fucking around to be had.
Ahh, sorry for this bloody rant, I went on tangents here. I had a terrible fight with mum yesterday again and as you know I had a really terrible day already. It just felt good to vent a little. Not everything is super bad though, I have some really incredible friends, one of which is like a brother to me, I am also pretty good at math, have good grades so far and I still love doing it, not to mention that my general physical health is pretty okay. The mental health is the big thing I have to somehow fix, but it seems impossible. I will have a month for vacation in summer though, so Ill try to establish a habit of running again, but for now Ill do my best to get good sleep, eat healthy, do my work, read and walk a lot and maybe some pushups every once in a while.
Man, I'm really sorry. You are going through a very difficult time, and I wish I could help. It's great that you can see the value of having friends, and are not oblivious to the things that are going right in your life. I'm glad you are writing your thoughts out at as well, ie venting, regardless of the medium. Were you not inclined to do that, you would almost certainly be suffering more.
The mental health thing is the hardest thing to "fix" of possibly any system you will ever task yourself with trying to fix, because "you" are such a significant component of that system. But, it is most likely fixable. So don't be discouraged by its seeming impossibleness. Rather, keep trying, harder and harder, to fix everything you can - the diet, the excercise, meditation - as fixing these things is almost surely a prerequisite to fixing your overall mental health. I know it's easy to think that certain things don't work for you after trying them and falling back off after a couple weeks, ie giving into cravings for easy food and falling out of a workout routine... but the scale of these solutions is not weeks, it is months. It certainly took months of discipline in these areas for me when I started to see the changes I was pursuing.
You're in school as well, and a long path lies ahead. And I admire your vision of wanting to pursue maths research. But school can be really, really hard, particularly if that is your goal and you know you'll have to continue doing it for a long time following undergrad (likely) before you can start reaping the rewards, first and foremost being compensation and the ability to live independently. Until then, you have to remain in essentially the most difficult situation for actually making changes to your mental health - ie no time or money and few resources for outside help. So, if things get worse, dont be afraid to take time off. You mention wanting to get through it in as little time as possible, but it's just not worth it if you're suffering too much. I'm not saying you should take time off, but that you could if you just can't muster the energy and find the time to seriously focus on your mental health. But yeah, keep on keepin' on, trying to eat and live healthy. And if there is one thing I would say to absolutely try building your discipline with first, to practice daily for a week then a month then 3 and 6 and 12 months and for a lifetime, it's meditation.
Im sorry for not replying sooner, but had a rough week/end and was procrastinating on every single thing. I wanna start sth yeah, meditation seems tempting even though I started it 3 times already and it never went anywhere, but might as well keep trying. Ill also try starting running again some time. Somehow I have to change my life a bit, have to get out of this cycle of doom, I want to learn math so bad that I constantly read about random shit, planing on doing this and that, planing on buying this or that book(i love books), watching lectures about interesting math topics that are beyond my abilities right now are are in reach but have no time to rigorously study them, etc etc. I love learning about math so much, that one of me deepest fears is that I will fall into a routine without doing math, i.e. regular job kinda life where I forget math as a thing of the past is the scarriest thing ever to me. So I just want to make things stable enough that I can study in peace and just have a normal ass life :'(.
I guess its also that I did so much already that didnt get me far that Im scared to try harder or try again. I admit that I have developed a big chunk of learned helplessness that also prevents me to do anything, so meditation could really help here if I succeed at doing it. In other words, I admit that I am afraid of taking time to work on habits and health again, I stress again, cuz I already took half a year off last year to fix shit and I could do that because I switched from physics to math. I won't repeat this year, not a chance, but even then I should have some time thag I am afraid to take.
It just takes incredible amounts of energy to muster positive thoughts that are relevant, the only times Im actually okay is when Im distracted or deep in work, which means that I often find myself smiling or laughing and Im soo surprised that I am actually doing that. I realized that life is all about finding a balance between living in the moment and seeing into the future, but for me whenever I take the sneakiest little peak in the future, a massive boulder just runs over me and destroys me, so I constantly watch YouTube to the point there is nothing more to watch, try reading books, which often takes too much energy, watch/rewatch good shows and anime I like, but Ill never waste time on mediocre tv bullshit.
Im just rambling here, but the "It aint much but its honest work" meme struck a really powerful emotional chord with me, it resonated with my nihilistic philosophy to life where I KNOW nothing matters and that Im a little ant, but so what, Im trying gard living my life and not everything has to be happy, things need to be beautiful though and that is the most precious thing I cherish, so I always bounce back from every single situation with need motivations and aspirations. At least I have that and nobody will ever take that from me, ever.
I thank you for massive support that I rarely get, I am trully thankful here, especially because you get it. Now Ill go back to suffering some more until I get a better idea. You are a good person, keep having a beautiful life.
I used to be good at it and I used to love it, but as my depression got worse, I barely know and remember the bare minimum now, due to the fact that depression has been proven to make you..slower.
That is something I can relate to. I also remember having that feeling-way of thinking where I knew if I understood something or not, and either things made sense to me or I knew how to dig deeper (I should mention it was not just with math where I had this). I no longer have that and with it a big part of my identity vanished as well. It made things even worse and it took me some time to come to terms with it and ever since I've been trying to rediscover this way of thinking, perceiving and understanding the world. Not much luck so far haha, but if anyone has any tips I would be extremly grateful.
I suffered from depression and felt the same as you for a while. I even failed calculus 2, linear algebra, and object oriented programming because of it, but still I pressed on since I had nothing else going for me.
Then I changed my viewpoint and began to look at math as a game. Each problem used different strict well defined rules and could therefore be solved like a puzzle.
Sure depression slowed me down, but that just meant I spent more time on each puzzle. As the complexity grew, and the problems became papers, so too did the amount of space it occupied in my mind.
Math itself became a coping mechanism for my depression, and I fell in love with it as a result
Also, make sure you're getting the proper nutrition. Insufficient/improper nutrients can completely wreck your brain chemistry.
While math helped me cope, adjusting my lifestyle made me happy. In college, it's far too easy to neglect yourself. Spend some time on helping you out each day, and you'll be amazed how everything else fits into place.
Consider supplements and antidepressants in the meantime while you make those adjustments.
I first went to university a year and a half ago to read maths, but a succession of debilitating physical and mental illnesses, going completely untreated for vast stretches of time, have meant that I've not been able to do any maths in all of that time basically. Even now I'm finally getting treatment, I can't face it (or anything else academic), even leaving aside how I'd have to catch up to where I was what with my knowledge having faded away in that time.
I don't know how I'm going to be able to get back into it. I'm hoping that my therapist will be able to help me in that regard, but I don't know. I can't help you, OP, but I empathise with you.
Out of all of my good math friends (most of whom are currently faculty, or at least PhDs), I don't know a single one who hasn't dealt with mental illness of one kind or another. I'm sure there are math folks out there who just have a natural sense of well-being and can always stay on top of their work, but I sure haven't met one. Or, at least, the people I thought were that way turned out to be really struggling once I got to know them.
We need to talk more about this as a discipline, because it seriously affects our well-being, and the silence harms faculty and students. Math is hard. I don't care who you are: it's hard. You have to work really hard and be seriously lucky to "make it" (where "making it" is of course defined as getting a tenure-track job at an R1). It's ego-shattering at every turn, and there's a lot of bitter assholes around who seem to enjoy keeping it that way, probably in part because of their untreated mental health issues.
But we all do it because we love math. I wish we gave ourselves more opportunities to just enjoy that and raise each other up.
I have major depressive disorder, quite honestly i havent been motivated to my topology worksheets. But regardless i love math dearly
I had a major depressive state, no medication had effect on me. But maths saved me, when i do maths my depression go away and when i stop it comes back. It's sometimes hard to get some motivation and it create a loophole : no math implies bad mood, bad mood implies no motivation, no motivation leads to no math etc... I love math and it saved me from depression, maths is my anti depressant.
Hi I got depressed last August for the first time. I’m a biology major and I took on a math minor because I wanted to use the two fields to complement and improve each other.
Last semester I failed out of Algorithms & Data Structures and this semester I failed out of Abstract Algebra. Those are the first two times I’ve failed a class, or even come close. I may also be failing out of Multivariable Calculus right now—second class this semester.
It sucks. I feel like I used to do well in math classes because I could maintain constant effort throughout the semester, remember things, get help as soon as I needed it, etc. But that’s not how depression works. Now I just feel incredibly stupid whenever I think about math—in class, doing homework, whatever. I can’t even do integrals anymore and I’m in Calc III. I don’t remember anything from earlier this semester and I can’t force myself to put effort into any of this.
So yeah, I don’t think math and depression mix very well. I feel like my brain doesn’t work, and especially like no one cares. I’m drowning invisibly in partial derivatives. :(
PM if you want to talk. Good luck with everything.
It's a frustrating feeling to have access to a certain level of intelligence and focus at some times only to have it drop significantly at other times.
The best way I've found to look at it is that weakness can make you stronger. Some elite athletes will travel to high elevations with a thinner atmosphere to train, so that when they compete closer to sea level, they have an extra advantage. When you're slowed down, sometimes tasks are impossible, but more often they're just way more difficult. So depending on what you do in that state, if you persist through the brain fog and anhedonia, when your depression lifts, you might not really be so far behind others who have not struggled in that way. You might even have an advantage. I have no way to prove any of that (except the athlete thing, which is well-documented) but it's what I suspect to be true. At the very least, you'll have a different perspective and better learning strategies.
Grad student here. Been depressed for ages, and have had significant anxiety for a couple of years now that set in a little bit after a (closest) friend's suicide. It's been really hard to focus at times, and sometimes seems impossible to get anything done. Sometimes I cannot focus on lectures or reading because of constant intrusive thoughts which would probably turn into full-blown panic attacks if I wasn't mortified at the thought of causing a public scene. Other times I can't focus on my work at home and the only respite seems to come from just shutting off my brain by going to sleep, although I frequently have nightmares and shout in my sleep (my roommate was freaked out the first time, he thought we were being robbed or something, but he has since gotten used to it). So yeah it's really tough at times, and it's very frustrating when my results on homework and exams are relatively poor and everyone probably thinks I'm a moron, but I know I'm being held back. I'll keep trying I guess, but who knows, I might not be able to finish the program.
I’m not diagnosed with it, but I do have a lot of anxiety and stress that leads me to feeling depressed about it. I’m ending my 4th year of a math PhD and I have no real results or anything. Just a lot of failed attempts (though those can be good too in some sense), it real kills my motivation. I’m not going into academia though, which relieves some stress, but I still need to finish the degree. It’s not a fun time. I actually found I’m not that into (pure) math as much as I thought.
Others have given great responses, but here's another (the more the merrier, right?):
During my undergrad in Math, I got some serious burnout. It was definitely made worse by various personal issues and the general grind of school, but I went from loving math to it making me almost sick over the course of four years. Some things that I've found (both during that time and in hindsight) is that (a) school does not provide a good atmosphere for sustainable enthusiasm for a subject and (b) I changed over that time, and my ideas of my career path took time to catch up.
First, a lot of people will tell you that school isn't for anyone. I'd go even further to say that school isn't for most people, including many of those who excel in it. I became disillusioned to the idea that school isn't just an arbitrary grind, and it made it tough to not actively dislike it. When you find yourself stressing out and pouring yourself into a class, just for the class to end at the end of the semester and for you to have "nothing" to show for it, you can start to feel resentment towards school, a class, or a professor. Obviously this isn't an accurate representation of what's actually happening, but it can certainly start to feel like college is just a hamster wheel wasting your increasingly more valuable time.
Second (and this relates to the first point) is that my interests and idea for my career changed over the course of my time in school. I originally went into things wanting to go into pure math research, so I had followed that track pretty closely. It wasn't until my fourth year did I take a less pure class (Numerical Analysis, to be specific), and I found I really enjoyed it. After taking that class, I had to seriously consider my motivation for doing what I was doing and deciding if I should invest more time in it, or pivot towards something that really sparked my interests. I opted to follow my gut and pivot towards CS, and that was the best decision I made in order to regain my enthusiasm for learning and math. I found that I was naturally good at it and, more importantly, that I naturally enjoyed it. I didn't need to force myself to study or work on projects, cause I actually wanted to.
In any case, you should really consider where you stand in terms of your interests. You might find that a slight adjustment to your plans can reinvigorate your enthusiasm for math and help you to finish your degree (I still managed to get my degree in pure math, I just had to stay an extra year to accommodate the classes I was taking that weren't related to my major). The worst thing you can do it force yourself to do something you don't like, cause then you'll be left with experience and a degree that you fundamentally don't like, and you'll be in the same dilemma after you graduate and you figure out what you wanna do with your life.
Reading peoples' experiences with depression, math, and the culture in math departments in general, I can't help but wonder how much of the difficulties we experience is simply due to the crab mentality. Some of y'all related getting shitty, inconsistent feedback from graders, and others related feeling horrible because you get the impression nobody cares. I can relate, and you have my empathy.
As a math undergrad, it's been my impression that the culture in math departments can be downright toxic in general. It's made such by people who simply can't comprehend how debilitating mental health issues can be. How many people have failed to perform simply because things like depression and anxiety hamstring the fuck out of their mental faculties?
It's enraging, to be honest. It's unfortunate that human beings tend to do things simply because of "This is the way it was for me, so fuck you." I saw it in the military, and I see it here, too. It's also unfortunate, because math is incredibly interesting and quite lovely. But at this rate, I don't feel it's for me. My experience as a math undergrad has pushed me to study something else as a graduate student, despite having decided initially I wanted to do math for undergrad and graduate studies. It's a bittersweet experience - I am super glad to finally be finishing my undergrad this semester, but I'll always wonder what might have been, had studying math not been such a horrible experience for me. It's kinda like breaking up with someone you really like, because they have made you feel like utter shit on a regular basis, despite the fact you had some really great times together.
I implore those of you going into academia: remember your struggles, and the struggles of your peers. You'll be replacing a lot of the folks who are part of the problem. Please do everything you can to make things better than they were for you - for us.
Suffer heavily from depression, which forced me to take a year out of my undergrad maths degree to undergo fairly heavy duty medication and therapy.
3 years later: I still love maths, degree finished, and a good job as a data engineer for a cyber security company that I thoroughly enjoy.
Stick with it buddy, because it really does get better. Don't be afraid of getting professional help. It really turned my life around, and I would recommend it to anybody who's also struggling.
I'm studying CS (sort of related to math) and I'm suffering from depression. Something that really helps is going for walks when its sunny outside to lift your spirits, but also to just force yourself to work for 5 minutes. If you don't feel like continuing after that, then don't. I find that if I force myself to just work for that minute amount of time, I get into it and I end up working much longer than normal.
School work and similar is difficult to think about when it's hanging over your head, but once you make a small amount of progress and you get that rush from new understanding, you can take that positivity and build on it more as you go.
I hope you're able to overcome this. There are also resources and communities on Reddit dedicated to this kind of thing if you're interested. r/depression
Hell yeah I do. I'm in graduate school and depression is a plague on my life. Makes life difficult.
The only thing I can do is to realize there are always actions I can take at any given moment which would help fight against depression. Depression does one thing best to keep you down: it cons you into thinking you cannot help it. It's very effective at tricking you into not fighting it.
But you can. Even if it's getting up from your chair and doing stretches, or getting a glass of water, or going on a walk. Don't let the depression tell you taking care of yourself in these ways won't help, they will. Each time you fight depression and win, it makes it a little bit easier to fight it next time.
So I was an undergrad math major, and as much as I loved the subject, I found that it definitely was leading me down a path towards depression. Like many here I imagine, I was a pretty good student, went to a pretty good school, and generally made all As.
That is, until I didn't. It was a graduate course on integration theory which I took as a junior. I got a B+, despite putting at least 20 hours a week into the problem sets for that course alone. To this day, I maintain it was some of the finest work I did as an undergraduate, but the grader that semester would leave only hateful, almost spiteful comments. I remember losing points on the first problem set for assuming some background that the grader thought I shouldn't assume, so on the second one I supplied footnotes explaining some background ideas in detail; I just got comments saying that was completely unnecessary, etc.
Overall, I came away from that class with a general feeling of, "what the fuck am I doing with my life?" I realized I was just working overtime to please some other depressed person sitting in the basement of the math building reading proofs on a Friday night. The professor's lectures were unintelligible, his handwriting was illegible, and I just... realized this wasn't the life for me.
I know it seems crazy to do a 180 over a single class, but it was a trend I'd observed in general. The more graduate courses I took, the less happy everyone seemed, from the faculty to the students -- especially the poor graduate students. Now I was starting to experience it myself, and I didn't want that. I'll never forget a graduate student in one of the classes talking to me, telling me how he was impressed that I was taking the course at a young age and hopefully I could go to a "real" grad school like Harvard unlike him.
I'm a programmer now and my life is 100x better than it would've been had I stayed on that path. I still hold math itself very dear to my heart.
I'm diagnosed with bipolar disorder and just graduated undergrad with a math major and a physics minor. As other people have mentioned, the main issue was getting the motivation to do the work (during the depression bits, not so much the mania of course). The other thing I had to manage was scheduling between psych appointments and group therapy and the school itself. I was originally a double major, but switched to a minor in physics because I kept having problems: I had to medically withdraw from two semesters, and my grades started dropping after I was diagnosed. But now that I've graduated, there's a lot less stress surrounding the topics, so I have a lot of fun studying math and physics on my own time. And it's been really nice just having fun with all of the topics I'm interested in
I have major depressive disorder but I don't hate math itself. I'm majoring in physics and aiming for theoretical physics which has a ton of math. Sometimes it's just too hard to start doing the math but when I do, the love for math and physics comes back to me.
Although I know this, it's still too hard sometimes to push myself and start some math work.
If you haven't already, I don't want to sound rude or condescending, I suggest go for the math that is on your level of understanding. I remember in high-school, I kinda hate math because I just can't get it. Before getting into physics, I know I had to do something so I started all over again from the most basic arithmetic and algebra. Now, I'm pretty confident with my math skills as an undergrad in physics and I don't find math to be as irritating anymore.
Not only am I suffering from depression, but I'm completely alone. I mean, I know depression makes you feel alone but objectively there isn't anyone around me for emotional support. The problem is that I never had a chance to attend an actual school with a dedicated program. I have no friends, I don't take math classes, and whatever mathematical culture transpires within university walls, I only get to experience it secondhand through the internet. I pretend to find community and be a part of it by studying on my own and learning all the big names and internalizing all the common inside math jokes and lurking on math forums, which is what I've been doing since high school. But really none of that will replace the feeling of being a complete outcast. In fact, the more I actively strive to be a part of something, the more pathetic and hopeless I feel. It's almost impossible to make any real progress like this. My mental health has just been getting worse each day, even with therapy and medication.
I'm an undergraduate, and yeah, I've had depression too. I actually found that when it came down to it, math let me relax and not worry about how people were looking at me, if I was actually a freak or any of the other paranoid conspiracies that lurked in the back of my brain. It felt consistent, somewhere nobody could lie to me, not even myself. But writing was the hard one. My fiction really suffered, to the point of becoming barely salvageable and I hated every moment at the keyboard. The only reason I still do it is because I had some great friends who kept me going, reminded me that I loved telling stories for a reason. So remember why you loved math in the first place. Was it the intrinsic beauty? Or was it something else? Depression messes with your head, makes the world seem awful. Remember why you loved it, and eventually it will get better. It always does.
Although i don’t suffer from depression thus I don’t know how hard it is, but I think it is still wise to seek help from professionals. One of the symptoms of depression is “loss of interest in the things you used to enjoy.” So I think that you shouldn’t try to love math while you are depressed, but better your mental condition first and then the spark will hopefully come back.
I’ve had depression and depersonalisation disorder on and off. I find that during my low moods I have to actively force myself to do math, and I don’t enjoy it as much. But I do still like doing it, and also I like the fact that I’ll have learnt a lot once I’m out of depression.
I find that getting into a routine helps. For me it’s 2 hours of study a day, no matter how I feel. I find it actually helps keep me stable cause of the routine aspect.
Hey stranger, I send you a big bithug!!
I'm in mathematical physics and depressed, I'm taking some mild anti-depressants but they seem to not be enough. It sucks to say this, but it feels good to know I'm not alone in feeling slow. I many times feel like I'm the only person whose not an expert in the room, and it's gotten to the point I'm thinking of quitting science at least once a week.
Right now I don't really have any love left for doing math. I love understanding math, and reading math, but I hate having the spotlight to produce a result. I feel so judged, like people expecting me to perform.
What I'm trying to do is take it day by day, and focusing on the fact that math is just my job, not my life. Whenever I manage to be this rational is when I feel the happiest.
Yeah, sort of, but it's vaguely under control? It's a big struggle because there's like ten things I have to do in order to keep it from reoccurring. One of the big things is exercise. If I don't get enough, I get progressively more jittery over the course of a few days, until suddenly I stop being jittery and start being depressed. This lasts indefinitely until I start being active again. Back when I didn't know this was an issue, I'd get depressed every summer (pretty much without exception) for 2-3 months because during the school year I made a point of doing sports but during summer I'd slack off. It's scary, too, because I can see it coming, but it still hits me hard.
Exercise! I have depression episodes and there are a couple of lifestyle hacks that can make a major difference. Make a routine of going to the gym and exercising. Also try to eat better. It helps a lot. I noticed that math would cause me to drop things like this when the semester would get rough. I'd neglect excercise and diet as not that important but then that would have the effect of making me feel less capable, more stressed and less able to focus. Its difficult to find the time and it never seems as important as studying but it makes such a huge difference that I wish I had figured it out sooner.
I was attempting a bachelor's in applied math. Twice I had to take a break due to psych ward visits. I currently have settled for an associate's degree, but I still have hope I will get that bachelor's in math.
Depression has been a constant companion in my life. Sometimes math has helped me feel better and sometimes math makes me feel worse. I think it has to do with the proverbial wall people hit when math stops being easy and becomes work. I think part of it stems from a childhood issue that I'm slowly working on in therapy.
The best I can do right now is take care of my mental health, because without that nothing in my life will be well. I take my medication, go to therapy, monitor my mood, self care. If math isn't a part of this, then I need to wait a bit until I can handle it better. Just take things one step at a time.
Holy shit you're describing my exact experience. Also my depression caused me to leave school, but. I thought I was alone.
I left school too, recently came back but haven't showed up in 4 weeks now :(
Of you can manage it, go back when you're ready. My parents pushed pushed pushed me to "keep my head down and bare on" and that's what drove me to hospitalization. The scariest part for me right now is having to deal with the registrar to transfer. Not the school part :(
If you are not yet exercising - start doing it. It is very effective.
Exercise as a treatment for depression: A meta-analysis adjusting for publication bias.
And discussion on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19551463
Pardon me for asking, but do they happen to mention which types of exercise are effective, or is it all types? Like, does cardio have a bigger effect than strength training, or something?
So I am going to be a bit blunt to safe you some time.
Depression is going to make you hate what you love. That's just the nature of the beast.
With help you can kick it's ass. You can do it! (So if you don't already have that get therapy)
I don't know how bad it is for you at which stage you are but consult with your therapist about it. Often a "project" like this can help a patient get back on his/her feet.
I’m in high school and recently went through a depressed period that definitely seemed to affect my math. I used to be the class’s archetypal math person but now I feel like a cloud has settled over my mind, which definitely obstructs my ability to do math. I’m still trying to get better at it again; I hate how it’s affected my ability to do math and other thinking stuff in general, but it sounds similar to what you described. Best wishes in math and other stuff!
I've got some gnarly long term chronic depression and fatigue as well. It sucks, sorry to hear that man. I had my undergrad in an applied math degree, ended up dropping out in my last year because I just... couldn't do it anymore. Funny thing though, came back to it a decade later and it was part of how I got myself out of a pretty nasty slump. In this case, it was machine learning and artificial intelligence. It sounds silly I guess, but thinking about all the incredibly weighty problems that could in theory be solved (depression itself? Pollution? Fact checking and truth in political discourse? Full brain simulation?) or even practical problems that can be solved right now, today (how can we understand the statistical core of what it means to design an experiment to test a hypothesis? What CAN we test given tools and data currently available?) it... I don't know man. It helped me put down a lot of stuff that was keeping me up at night, and it's given me a lot of hope for the future. The math itself is kind of abstract, and might seem about as practical and useful as playing Sudoku or something, but then you see some crazy, crazy stuff that you can do with it when you start reading the right white papers. Slowly you start to understand them. Slowly you start to have some ideas of your own even.
Now I have a reason to get out of bed in the morning, and hope that my own life and the state of the world might all actually be better in ten years than it is today, especially if I put in my work now. The Okinawan's have a name for that concept... your 'Ikigai'. Everyone needs one, but with depression? Long term, your life literally depends on it. I don't know if I'd still be alive if I hadn't found this path... maybe? But I don't think I'd have made it to the ripe old age of 80 or whatever, if you know what I mean.
Math might not be yours though, who knows? Get short term support to finish your final class... whatever it takes. Medical/perscription support, counseling support, family/community support, peer/tutor support, whatever you need to do grind out this last class. It's worth it if you're this close, and even with depression, you can push your way through more than you might think. But thinking long term... if math is something you ultimately keep in your life, if it's not a means in and of itself, then it needs to be tied to a wider purpose. What's the math for? What problem do you need to solve? Neurobiology and statistical learning theory is mine. I wish you luck on your hunt to find yours.
I used to have a similar problem - I still kinda do - but in a different way. I got depressive a few months ago and for a while, I stopped liking things I used to love, and I screwed up my grades more and more. Then my class "finished" the theme vectors and we started doing probabilities, which is something I really like and I'm really good at. I managed to get myself together to actually concentrate, due to an input of my therapist (I was telling him how I liked maths and wanted to study it but I felt like with my recurring mental health issues, I couldn't do it, so he was like "why not take it on and have something to work for?" - this was the first input for me, I don't know you well enough, but you probably also have that type of "button" somewhere that just needs to be pushed). And after acing a test, I felt motivation that I'd never felt before. I know this sounds fairly optimistic, and it might be because it was more of a depressive phase than actual depression. But what I want to recommend with this is that you could just stop doing whatever it is you need for your classes at the moment and find something else to do, in the best case something having to do with maths, and thereby getting a bit distance which might bring you the necessary motivation to finish your degree. I don't know how strongly depressed you are, but from what I've learnt during my therapy sessions, it is that you should always try to start with the smallest, easiest step - because that step you can actually take and it will not leave you as powerless as you'd feel if you tried to take on a big step. Just think about what the smallest step you could possibly do is, and then act upon it. You can do it.
I don't think "how do you do math with depression?" is a different question than just "how do you live with depression?". I'm lucky in that I can usually do the bare minimum of tasks I need to function, and since I'm a grad student, that includes math.
I'm sure you have other things that the depression makes it difficult for you to do, but you force yourself do them because they're necessary. Try whatever strategies you use for those to also do math, and once you've gotten over the hump of getting yourself started, you might find it a bit more interesting again.
Sorry you're dealing with that. As a math major with depression that really flairs up during the winter, it is tough. I don't think it makes me love math itself less, but it definitely makes learning in the academic environment toxic and horrible sometimes. Like when my depression slows down my studying and then I get a bad grade that sinks me into a deeper depression, it can be a vicious cycle.
This might not work for you but the best thing I found to do is to study ahead at your own pace for the courses you know you're going to take, then you can get good enough grades to get through the courses even during the rough patches. I also have found that you should make time to study some math that you love unrelated to your school work to remind yourself why you love it so much in the first place.
Best wishes.
While there is a lot of good advice and anecdotes for how people dealt with the math side of this problem, my thoughts would be to seek help managing your MI, first and foremost. I went through a lot of grad school struggling because of untreated MI and it made me suffer. I ended up having to leave the program, but the year prior to leaving I finally worked up the courage to go to a counselor and after a while it made math and my life generally so much less painful - It was just a little too late for my program. Being healthy is a necessary precursor to making decisions about how you might want to tweak your goals or deciding how you feel about math.
Please don’t bury yourself in math as a replacement for actually becoming healthier. It may lead to more resentment.
I started realizing I was depressed in high school. I was failing all of my classes except getting straight A’s in all my math classes. Math seemed to be the only thing that made sense to me. I don’t know where I’m going with this but I know math can help but it can also prevent you from focusing on things that “really matter” (nothing really matters) like how to socialize. Now I’m two years out of high school and still in love with math taking diff eqs since yesterday, and have a good balance of math and friends. Anyways I guess what I’m trying to say is it’s possible to think about math a majority of your time while still getting help for depression. If anything I said resonates with anyone, feel free to PM me.
I believe you can do it.
Both graduate and get over depression.
the more math that i learned, the more i realized that there is that i dont know and probably will never learn in my lifetime and that made me depressed for a while. then instead of branching horizontally, i began studying and working vertically in the branches of math that i liked
2 years ago i almost dropped out from univ, i'd not go to courses anymore, would lay in bed for hours, stay long at night mindlessly on the internet, bored and everything felt dull.
to be clear, i don't think i had depression, it's quite a heavy thing, more like depressive symptoms, the usual, feeling dull, not enjoying anything, asking yourself what do you even wake up for.
ofc the grades took a big hit, i went from having really good ones to not enough to pass, it was such a shitty year. I didn't keep my love for math at that moment, i hated it with passion, cause i became bad at it
then, last year i tried again, i was still very meh at math and feeling wise, but i forced myself going to courses, felt better actually, cause the grades went up a bit, i didn't feel anymore as "that one" everyone notice is never comming, the lazy loser.
then i met someone that pulled me through it, and am fine again.
the message, i suppose, is that we're all different, it depends on why you feel like that, how you approach math.
My best advice would be to go and see a therapist, alot of people do, i know at least 5.
I have bipolar type ii. When I'm depressed, my cognition literally gets sluggish, and it is much more difficult for me to stay focused on a task, partly because of a lack of pleasure from it. Yet doing math requires incredible focus, as well as cognitive ability, so it's really hard... I can end up doing just as well, but I am much much slower.
I don't really have coping mechanisms for when I am depressed, IME the best thing to do is to keep the depression at bay.
Yeah it's killing me. It hasn't taken my love of maths from me (at least not yet). However I find it next to impossible to study topics that I don't find too interesting. Of course fate would have it that my final year project would be on just such a topic. I have to present it on Thursday and I have never been more afraid or anxious about anything in my life.
Freshman year I hit a major depressive round after a series of unfortunate events and lack of sleep, and obviously my grades suffered. This was also during remedial class time and despite placing out of a few courses, the laundry list of courses I didn't care about, didn't want to take, had seen before, and didn't need to put effort into made me feel like college was pointless. Learning felt useless. However sophomore year I started actually taking more upper division math courses, things that were totally new for me. Between taking courses that interested me like they used to and motivated me to keep expanding my knowledge, learning to strike a work/life balance (aka not getting fucked up beyond belief more than half of the nights of the week), and taking a summer off doing something else I love, canoeing, I slowly overcame it through the next few years.
I can't really give you advice since I think the nature of mine was a bit different than yours (with the MI and all, plus having no motivation for math at all) but if you seek help and despite the bleakness and hopelessness dragging you down, try to keep yourself moving, there is a brighter future. Finishing that last math class won't lift your depression, you need to work to improve it directly, and others are out there who can help.
Maybe you shouldn't search for motivation in maths but in other disciplines
take the class, get an A, and start a side project with all the cool ML tutorials out there
if job search is stressing you out, i feel you. could take quite a while after graduating. best knowing in advance that it'll be a long, slow process; plan accordingly and start chipping away at posts, companies, and people with any relevant opportunity
Math is the best hobby I have ever had in my entire life, but the combination of perfectionism, procrastination, and deadlines is a real pain in the ass. I keep thinking about studying something else mildly interesting to me and self-studying math with all the passion I have for it without the stress. I really don't want to make math a job and lose the fervor I have for it.
P.S. If you are studying math in school don't burn yourself out by studying 10 hours a day or something. I have read this before and I really do agree with it: studying math and math in general is somewhat and feels somewhat unnatural. Do things for the sake of being a human being such as making friends, meeting women/men, relaxing by watching a movie. I think the world is so competitive now that people are unhappy due to the need or feeling the need to overwork. Just enjoy a balanced life, you don't need to live fast or be the best there is.
My PhD supervisor (who has supervised a hell of a lot of students over a very long time) called it the mathematicians disease, and really says all you can do about it is CBT or similar talk therapy. If it's causing you problems, don't look at fixing it for the sake of doing mathematics. Whatever you're doing the most important thing is that you're happy doing it, your mental health comes first, mathematics later.
Sometimes being too hard on yourself and expecting too much can make the brain fog worse. I've found that tutoring a little helps, when you hear the questions that you used to ask, it kinda triggers things to fire up in your brain again
I am not diagnosed but I surely do have some mental health problems.
For me math can sometimes give me purpose and in a way the feeling of doing something insteadof rotting away and sometimes I don´t notice how long I work. Math is beatifully abstract and thus your thoughts once you started working on math have a hard time wandering of to sadder and more depressed thoughts.
The hard thing is always to start studying and especially if you are depressed. My advice would be to make plans as early as possible what you will study and when and where. For me I found it usefull to make it social so either I tell someone about my plans or involve them in it so I feel duty bound to study then. I found that the library is a great place to study for me as I have to leave the house and so on.
Another advice I would give is don´t push to hard don´t think about how slow you are or that you are slower because of depression just study. I found that especially in maths very often true understanding will come weeks if not months after you have engaged yourself with a certain topic.
Depression makes it way harder to memorize things for sure. I learn equations and procedures by making a voice recording of what I need to learn and listening to it every couple days until it sticks. This works but you need to put the effort into making the recording. I then listen to it on a loop when I get groceries or walk between classes, most of the time I don't pay attention to it, but I do stop and pay attention occasionally, enough to keep the things I need to know memorized. I use a couple apps on my phone to manage the recordings.
I have major depression and anxiety disorder with ADHD as a cherry on top. I use the word 'drag' to describe how I get by a day. My relationship with math is complicated. I was like you and used to do math like breathing but then boom, depression and I wasn't as good as I used to be when it come to logical thinking. But I still find joy in learning math, and even though I'm slow I'm still picking it up bit by bit. Math is hard but never too hard to learn, so maybe give it a chance?
When I'm majorly depressed, I cant study anything no matter how easy because i cant focus when I'm constantly having suicidal ideation
As someone who thinks anti'depressant pills are placebo, have you looked into magnetic treatment (or ect) or ketamine? Supposedly ketamine actually works. Of course also deal with what caused depression like making your expectations realistic.
I used to be very good, now I’m praying to make by.
My intuition got impaired so badly that I lost my ability to make sense of abstract concepts (gave up on learning pure maths because of that) It used to be what I excelled in.
My memory is ok but I lost concentration. I still think I enjoy maths, at least more than how I’d enjoy anything else. I probably forgot how enjoyment feels, unfortunately.
Yesterday I helped out a girl in my class that struggles with anxiety and attention deficit, it took around 7 hours to do a workshop, but also the same 7 hours to teach her all the topics in the semester. I helped her out because she seeked help in the first place, she didn't want copy of the workshop. She truly wanted to understand, however she couldn't retain any information.
I told her about the placebo effect, if you don't know the placebo effect means that if you are sick and receive a sugar pill that will help with your state, it will only because you thought it would. So basically if you are positive it will better your chances to be better. The same effect works backwards too, if you are negative you will possibly be worse. So if you head a problem thinking negatively and blaming other factors than yourself, welp you are likely going to do that problem worse.
Don't blame your depression, dont blame anyone. Go positive and relax yourself with stuff you like. Don't torture yourself.
I'm wishing you the best of luck. I started going to therapy in my second year of college when I hit my personal breaking point. I graduated just over a year ago with a BA in chemistry. I'll say that I had absolutly loved math until my junior year of high school when (in retrospect) my depression began to kick in. After seven years and a lot of help from people along the way I can now truly appreciate mathmatics again, but it was a process. The advice I'd give is go seek help off-line because that's a game changer. I can't promise that it'll instantly make everything better, but if you can find a therapist and/or psychiatrist and tell them your goal is to just make it through this last stretch that's what they'll focus on. Really diving in and getting you out of this funk will take a while, but you only need enough juice to get that diploma for now.
General advice.
Try to keep a routine. A therapist can help you set up your schedule, but make sure you're keeping up with good hygiene and a consistant sleep pattern.
Study groups are a good way to complete your work while also socializing and getting outside your own head.
If you're not taking any psych meds yet Saint John's wort makes for a decient antidepressant in a pinch. Seeing a professional and getting perscribed antidepressants should work better though. Idk how you feel about medicating but I'd recomend looking for something right now if you're in danger of dropping out.
Lastly, in the "worst" case scenario remember that you can take a gap semester/year (probably, I don't know the full extent of your circumstances) and get yourself set up with a therapist and psychiatrist. Then when you started up again you'd have a lot more tools, techniques, and support at your disposal.
I hope you make it through this unscathed. I think you'll get to love math again. It could be that you'll see that once you get your diploma and can finally catch your breath. Take care of yourself in the meantime.
Yes, severely depressed at times, since I was a child. Interest in math waxes and wanes in most people so keep your eye on the prize if that's what you want when clear headed. If math contributes to the depression, however don't torture yourself. Lots of stuff as fulfilling intellectually but not as isolating
I’ve got severe depression and it hasn’t changed my ability to do math. My grades and effort in other classes have dropped even in the classes i used to love (Bio + chem). I’m taking a higher course of math that covers a range of mathematics and i love it. To me, i use the math to understand the world around me and that’s why i love it so much. Everything just works. Physics wasn’t offered when i was a junior but i still think about it’s application in real life and always look for answers to my questions. I gained quite a bit of knowledge and understanding of math(no where near the top yet) and it’s helped me uncover new interests. I tried a little bit of javascript (required for a dumb class) I managed to be the ‘coding wiz’ for everyone because math helped me. The only thing that keeps my interest in math is my curiosity thrives and it can usually answer my questions.
I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder around 7-8 years ago. Unfortunately this illness impaired my cognition, specially last year. I failed two Math classes last semester and felt dumb, stupid and worthless.
However, after I started taking my current AD my cognition suffered great improvement. I still have bad days where my memory, concentration and learning caapcity feel like shit, but they aren't as preponderant. For example, today I made silly mistakes on my test and I didn't feel like a failure for the first time in my life – I was able to solve the hardest questions and recognize my mistakes with little effort.
Don't give up! There is hope for us that suffer from cognitive impairment induced by depression :)
(English isn't my native language, sorry for any mistakes)
Forgot to mention: I failed Linear Algebra and now my scientific initiation is about Functional Analysis. See how things can change? Depression is terrifying, but it doesn't define us or our abilities. Keep that in mind!
(I also recommend opening up to a professor who is comprehensive. I only passed Calculus II because I felt comfortable about asking for help to my professor. It's okay to need assistance!)
Yes. Unfortunately there is a correlation between great math skills and mental illness. If you've taken college level math classes you might notice one or two of your teachers with some anxiety. Whats important is they don't let that stop them from teaching.
There are already many great comments here but I just want you to know I know exactly how you’re feeling. I remember crying over an upcoming calculus exam and I just couldn’t get anything as if someone erased all my knowledge.
Depression can affect the things you most care about like that. What helped me was calming down, and starting from scratch. Day by day I started feeling more confident again. I remember there was one question on the exam I couldn’t solve and I didn’t let it go till I solved it even though the exam was over. I didn’t do it to prove anything, I was just genuinely curious about the answer. I always go back to that moment and remember my excitement.
You are still that person who was good at it, who loved it but you just need to go back and remember this. Nothing wrong to go over things as well. As many have said, it’s also ok to forget some information, it happens.
I think it's easy to begin to hate math, because once you find yourself not doing so well, you feel like it is an attack to your intelligence. I occasionally feel that way, but more recently not, because math is a critical part of my passion, which is physics (I'm only studying it as a hobby).
I'm not to sure what kind of advice would be suitable, but I guess try to find a passion that you will for sure enjoy, and one that relies on some more advanced math.
Hope your depression doesn't harm your grades too much.
You need to hire best math tutor who can help you to teach the basic and solving tricks of math problems. When you got the basic concepts of math then you will be never in depression but you will take the interest and love to solve the math problems.
This happened towards the end of high school and I ended up not keeping my love for math. Still subscribed for this sub in case in future maybe I could get back into it when I'm feeling better and when i get more time to focus on it.
John E. Littlewood suffered from depression throughout his life; alleviated somehow via appropriate medication. This did not stop him from becoming one of the top mathematicians of his time. Take heart!
Once upon a time in 2013, I failed elementary middle school math for an entire year. Me, as someone who once scored full marks an entire year and impressed others with my skills. I had major depression and suicidal ideation close to daily due to school, social life and family life. Oddly depression didn't kill my love for Math per se but rather education as a whole.
Come 2014 and my friends and family lifted me from the dumps. I started to concentrate on school again and I started to enjoy math again- treating it as more of a hobby. The backlog of what I had to catch up on was pretty impressive though, and I must say it was an uphill job. But I kept consistent. I have kept the behaviour until now.
I'm currently in the highschool. My mind isn't passing through a pure depression, but a some awful anxieties. I've been on a therapy slightly a year ago, but fears constantly comeback. My mood is differing everyday, from a suicidal thoughts to an unrealistic imaginations. Having a crush in the school, also isn't helpful in this case. The most difficult thing is just to start doing it. After breaking the wall, I can focus to sit 8 hours straight on next math problems. At the same time there are days with infirmity on my side - state of can't doing anything. Besides of that, I love to solve different math problems. It clarifies my mind, enables to not-thinking about insecurities. Especially, I like to grasp my mind on fields beyond highschool, precisely calculus currently.
I ASK WEIRD MATHEMATICAL QUESTIONS TO MY PROFESSORS ONLINE SO THAT THEY'LL HAVE AN IMPRESSION OF ME, MAKING THEM PROFESSORS THINK THAT IM ONE WEIRD STUDENT AND THEN I'LL PRETEND TO BE ONE TIL I WORK IN THE UNIVERSITY WITH THEM
There was a period of time when math was something I was something I was using to escape from my mental health problems
I still like math. But I'd be lying if I don't admit it's severely affecting my studies and my health.
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