Sometimes I feel like depression is making me dumber.
For some background: I was the smart kid growing up. I'm still an A student for the most part, but I feel like my cognitive function has been on the decline ever since the depression started getting serious.
I can still pull okay marks, but it's getting harder to do things like memorize facts and concentrate during lectures, or even motivate myself to study.
Sometimes I wonder if it's genuinely the slight neurodegenerative affect of major depression, or I'm just slacking.
Cheers, everyone. Hope you're well.
@theartistharley
Completely normal. Depression does that, for the same stuff that gives you lack of motivation, your cognitive function just slow down, there are less inputs and it's all numbed. Also it's more difficult to concentrate, hence memorize and learn stuff. I called it "the fog in my head" when I was a kid. If you have troubles sleeping, it makes the whole picture worse. And yes, lack of input can make some of your neurons shrink and die, but I think it's more a reversible effect caused by everything slowing down
@theartistharley
It's most likely because of the depression. It's not an irrreversible thing though, at least I've never come across anything saying it is. But yeah, it can definitely make it harder to memorise things, and to concentrate, both of which make getting good grades significantly more difficult. Like @GhostlyLilian said, it's a process of everything slowing down and simply struggling to survive okay, so not much is left for learning new things and good grades and such. It's also exhausting, depression, as I'm sure you've noticed, and being tired makes it more difficult for anyone to learn, let alone when they're dealing with mental health issues as well. But as awful as it is, just know that it's not permanent, nor does it really mean there's anything wrong with your intelligence and such, more like your attention and memory.
@theartistharley Totally get it. I have the same problem. I'm way smarter than the average bear, but once the depression hits I'm dumb as a rock. I forget the simplest things, leave the gas on, leave the tap running, can't remember my own name. I think it's a product of the apathy that comes as part of the package. I think your synapses fire a little slower, your processing of outside stimuli slows to a crawl, every perception is reduced to what can be processed automatically.
Look on the bright side, though. There are people out there who go through their lives like this as their default setting.
