Have any of the parents of children with special needs here ended up suffering from depression?

[roastparsnipsandbrusselsprouts]

My ds has been diagnosed with anxiety and depression. It also looks likely that he will be diagnosed with ADHD.

This in itself is bad enough to deal with but his problems are slowly and painfully isolating us socially.

We live in a small village and everytime ds upsets a child, their parents become more distant from us. Some try very hard not to let it affect our relationship but inevitably it does.

I also find myself increasingly exhausted by social contact and less and less keen to socialise.

When I do socialise I find I am not myself and have been quite embarrassed by the way I behave (either too quiet or too brash - neither of which is my normal behaviour).

By the end of most social events, once I am in the privacy of my own home, I just want to cry.

I know that dh is struggling too. His social life is not as deeply affected but his ability to function at work is, his sleep is and his enthusiasm is.

I don't know if we are just exhausted by the whole process and experience or if we are now suffering from depression ourselves.

Is this common? How do parents in similar situations cope?

I think dolfrog is spot on and in our house we do try to celebrate some of the 'quirks' because DS is so like DH sometimes. 'That's your apple not falling far from the tree dear' has become like a jokey shorthand for us. It also helps diffuse things when they clash, as people who are very similar do.

OP I am lucky in that I didn't make a lot of 'mummy' friends in the first place, so I still have my 'before' friends and so I'm not faced with that terrible 'oh look at Peter Perfect' chat too much. Maybe joining a class or club or something which is completely un-child orientated would give you a bit of an interest, and if you make some sort of financial committment to it you'll have the impetus to get up and go, even if you don't feel like it?

We've all been there, and particularly at the dx point (which sounds like where you are) it is very hard.

Not uncommon Roast
I would avoid trying so hard to make your child fit in with the 'norm', find some friends on an equal footing (try local carers group for advice or some mentioned above)

Mine have Fragile X and apparently Fragile X carriers (me!) are more prone to clinical depression than any other mother of a disabled child. I can vouch for a few FX carriers there inc my mother who was in and out of places all my childhood for mental illness.
And i do get down, knowing my boys (13 and nearly 15) will never have a mate knock on the door, and even if they did knowing they can't go out unsupervised anyway...but they have some lovely mates at their SEN school and the boys are incredibly popular there cos they see the loveliness of my boys and not just that they have FXS.
All us parents there 'get' each other and each others kids...and this alone makes you feel less isolated knowing that someone's on the end of the phone if you need them to be.

Remember it is purely their ignorance and unacceptance of anything 'different' re your son. So make it their problem not yours. Don't take their ignorance and fear on board.
Embrace your son for his special-ness. Their kids are mundane and boringly average really in comparison!

www.getselfhelp.com is a website that I have come across recently, it has load of resources on it but will take a while to look through it all (perhaps a job for after christmas!).

I do embrace ds2's differences, I find it hard when family members aren't really in tune with what his asc./adhd means. DD3 recently dx with adhd kicked off all their nonsense again. Hey ho!

I'm having a horrible time! Since my son's dx (ASD, three years ago at age 3) I've been walking round telling everyone that he's no problem its his older brother I struggle with. Well I'm still struggling with his brother, increasingly I AM struggling with him and life in general is not that easy either. I spent this last year trying to "pull myself together" and I even spent quite a lot of money seeing a therapist without getting anywhere (my fault as much as hers I think). I think I need to ask my GP for a referral and maybe some kind of ADs or something, I think I need to put that very close to the top of my post-xmas agenda in fact because I'm functioning but I don't think it would take much to tip me way over and it's just me here with the two boys... no back-up :(