Anyone here been ill with a viral infection recently? Did you find that it made you depressed? Me too, but I’ve been really surprised at how deep I went. I have noticed in the past that a drop in mood often signals a chest or other viral infection, but this felt like something much deeper and more intractable and came the other way round. 

It started the weekend before Christmas, attacking my intestines, then lungs and completely wiping me out. I sounded like Darth Vader with an extra death rattle when I breathed (wheezed), and spent well over a week in bed. And then I had that lovely cough where you bark like a seal, but nothing comes up.

The thing I found hardest though was how it was Hello deep anxiety and Goodbye all the grounding and balance that I’d been cultivating nicely for the past year through a conscious connected breathing practice. In addition, I had brain fog and couldn’t really focus on anything. Worse, it felt like my grounded and balanced self had turned to sand and blown away, with an added scary thought that it wasn’t coming back.

I texted a friend at one point as I really thought I was losing it. He sent back the perfect reply which included: Remember, don’t believe your thoughts, be kind to yourself, nurture yourself and avoid any kind of judgement of yourself or what you’re experiencing. That helped me endure until I began to feel better. What helped even more was how stellar my two children were. Now young adults, they cooked Christmas dinner and looked after me really well. So I was feeling rank and bursting with pride at the same time.

When my brain started functioning again I decided to do some research online, typing in can a viral infection cause depression? The resounding answer was yes. According to information on several reputable medical websites including a long research article in the National Library of Medicine, it absolutely can. You probably knew this, but even though I’d sensed it I hadn’t actually known definitively. It was really helpful.

Now the cough has gone, my daily half hour breathing practice has put me back on an even keel, and the anxiety has dialled right back down, but there’s an added consciousness of vulnerability, which is maybe not a bad thing. I’m certainly glad that I’m more informed if it happens again and what I need to do. 

And those of you who have experienced the same? How have you navigated viral and post-viral depression? I think keeping going with the breathing every day, apart from two days when the cough was really bad, helped me get better quicker. What has got you through? 

A View from the Far Side

A Moodscope member