I was diagnosed with chronic prostatitis a couple of years ago, while living in Japan. The Japanese medical system has no provision for counseling, and I was informed I had prostatitis, and told to come back in three months for a check up. With only limited information, largely researched myself from the Internet, I went through the classic symptoms -- denial, anger then depression...a tailspin depression that lasted about 18 months. I spent a lot of time thinking about suicide -- and came pretty close on a number of occasions. With time I've learned to deal with prostatitis -- changing my lifestyle, and expectations from life. Looking
back at how close I came to suicide, and how depression negatively affected my work, relationship and health, I feel amazed that more attention wasn't given to this side effect of the illness. Chronic prostatitis doesn't kill, but depression can....so to speak. Your site states that 50% of men with prostatitis suffer from chronic depression. On all sites that I used to research about the illness, only cursory mentions were given to the occurrence of depression, and ways to deal with it. I feel that this is a serious omission! From my own personal experience I can only imagine that diagnosis of this illness results in a significant number of suicides each year -- many of which may be attributed to depression, without an analysis of what caused the depression.

Anonymous

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