[One Thousand Characters a Day] Studying Depression for Precious People <4>

Editor's NoteFor patients suffering from depression, who endure lethargy and mental distress, meeting medical staff and talking about their illness can be a significant source of stress. The author accompanied his wife to all her medical appointments whenever possible, blocking inappropriate remarks and behaviors from medical personnel, and accurately conveying the patient's condition observed firsthand to ensure proper diagnosis. He also considered ways to maintain his own resilience during the prolonged treatment process and sought solutions in child-rearing to prevent his wife's depression from negatively affecting their children. Not all efforts yielded immediate results. After a superficial declaration of recovery, the depression relapsed, worsening the situation and causing the patient to struggle with severe suicidal impulses. However, the author never gave up hope for improvement and, through persistent effort, his wife has now overcome severe depression and regained her daily life. Word count: 1021.

Depression and sleep are closely related. In particular, for patients with severe depression, poor sleep quality intensifies feelings of depression and anxiety, directly impacting the progression of the illness. If the three pillars of maintaining health are diet, exercise, and sleep, depression patients often lack strength in all three, but sleep is usually the most compromised.

Because they cannot sleep well, they lose appetite, experience poor digestion, and lack energy to exercise. Feeling unwell makes it difficult to fall asleep, and even when they do, they wake up quickly, creating a vicious cycle. When disrupted sleep becomes chronic, health deteriorates rapidly. My wife could not recover even after sleeping; instead, she would wake repeatedly during the night, making sleep so distressing that she feared going to bed. I, too, have experienced similar issues as my sleep decreased while raising children, so I believed that unless we solved the sleep problem, even if the depression improved, relapse would be unavoidable.

There are many causes for poor sleep quality, but for my wife and me, chronic muscle pain, shoulder stiffness, and headaches drained our energy as we endured pain until bedtime. We were not falling asleep from exhaustion but rather lying with our eyes closed while managing pain. Because of physical discomfort, we naturally slept lying on one side, but this caused pressure that felt bruised and painful, stiffening the neck, making it impossible to sleep on a hard floor. Sleeping on a bed was also uncomfortable, as it felt like the lower back was sinking, preventing deep rest anywhere, which was agonizing.

After exercising for a while, I realized that the muscles in the back and waist had almost atrophied, so the body could not support itself. At that time, before starting exercise, I did not understand why sleep was unrefreshing and pain worsened, which made things even harder.

(Omitted)

We changed our mindset from "must sleep well" to waking up at a consistent time even if we did not sleep well at night, to regulate our internal rhythms. Whoever woke up first would wake the other, then immediately measure weight and body fat, wash up, prepare supplements, eat breakfast, and exercise, making sleep, waking, and health management habitual.

－ Choi Uijeong, Studying Depression for My Precious Person, Audiobook, 20,000 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.