I have been suffering depression for a long time now and I like to play sims as realistic as possible.
I watch my simself as he smiles and is always on the go.
But that is not truw, I'm not like that, is there any way to make my sims suffer from depression.

like:
-Sits/lunges on the couch all the time,
-if there a lot of sims in one room your sim well go to another.
-declines skill building and job sreaching.
-sad, angry, nasty thoughts
-more would be great,

anyway to make your sim suffering from depression??

I'm not sure why you want your sim to suffer as you have done, but you know better than I do what's best for you.

I have a couple of sims who for story purposes are depressed due to mourning a death, and in both cases I get the best results by just not controlling them except minimally.

Tommy Ottomas is at school, rooming with a couple consisting of a close friend and the sister of his dead girlfriend. I control him just enough to keep him viable and his grades up (since his stated goal is to learn the secrets of life and death and resurrect Spring, and for story purposes he's buried himself in his studies, so good grades are necessary; this is of course not a clinical depression, but obsessive behavior but whatever) and otherwise he eats, bathes, sleeps, and interacts solely on freewill. The result is that he wanders around the house in his undies a lot, wastes a lot of time online, and doesn't voluntarily interact with anyone outside his household. When his friends and family members invite him over he's started slipping away from groups and getting online, plus I'm changing his appearance periodically to gradually get that shagged-out, unkempt look. His relationships are all decaying, except for the friends he lives with, who are worried about him and do their best to engage him; and despite the occasional platinum mood after completing a term paper he spends most of his time in the low greens.

Spring's father has only one child left at home and I have him mourn at her urn at least once a day. The night of the death he took all his kids downtown, drank a lot, and assaulted a judge who objected to his flirting with a woman they'd both dated and later spent a lot of time talking to one of his surviving daughters in her bikini - I don't have InTeen, but it really was impossible to interpret the guy's behavior any way except "perving on jailbait" and there was no way Hi was in the mood to put up with that! When I do make decisions for Hi they're based on the conflict between his desire to pull himself together and take better care of the kids he has left and the desire to forget everything in a self-destructive riot of short-term pleasure seeking.

If you really want a sim to suffer, of course, just fulfill his fears rather than his wants, and you'll soon have him in the red; but actual aspiration failure may be more dramatic than what you're looking for. Sims in aspiration failure become violent, not listless. Keep him in the low, low greens in continual danger of falling into the red, and you'll probably get the behavior you're looking for.

That's actually pretty good, I like your story and would like to follow up up on it!

I have depression because I have a lot of anger built up and I don't know how to control it. all those hateful emotions built just plummited into depression, and everyone at school bullies me... a lot, I am a teen (in-game) you think if I put all of his relationships low you'll think he'll be depressed?

I think you'll get the most satisfactory results if you let it build up over time and adjust your approach according to his personality. It may take a shy teen a long time to get really lonely; an outgoing one will suffer more but will also put himself out there when not in your control (when you have another active sim on a community lot, for example) and approach people autonomously. His aspiration will also factor in.

I have to say we're exactly opposite in our approach to dealing with this. When I'm simming while depressed, the big draw is that I can force the little buggers to be happy whether they want to be or not.

If all your Sim Teen's relationships with his household members get too low he run away. You could definitely purposely not grant his wants as well and force him into a low aspiration level. That right there would be cause for angry/depressed behaviors... I suppose. As for the rest... You can't stop a Sim from rolling those wants but... Like I said, they can be ignored and you can make your Sim spend their day rotting their brain in front of the tv which for some people, a way to have a "social life" without having actual human contact in real life.

Also, I sympathize with you. That type of treatment from others is what I got in school too. I found I preferred computers far easier to cope with.

I know exactly how you feel, but posting this here gets a lot of negative attention (as you can easily observe by all the ratings)
I just have to ask, why do you want your sim to be depressed?
I suffer from the EXACT same thing you do, but I never want any of my sims to be depressed. If you REALLY want your sim to be depressed then I'm sure someone can make a mod like that (maybe they already have?) You can check Sims 2 WCIF for a mod that makes sims sad. If there isn't one you can ask.

I've made my Sims depressed ... there are mods that can cause aspiration failure. Insimenator can do it, and I believe the blender can as well. (Many people prefer the blender, by the way.) It can be therapeutic in real life. (And if THAT doesn't work, you can always fashion versions of people who make your life miserable, and have the depressed Sim torment them.) In the case of teens, I pair that with a no-runaway mod. (Simlogical, I believe, though I might be wrong.) Do the usual precautions ... download the version compatible with your game, test before saving and check for jump bugs or "off" interactions, etc.

While I do purposely let a Sim stay in the red for a while, I like to have my Sim work through his or her depression, little by little, building gradually into the green. I've played the Sims while I was depressed as well, and enjoyed having them slowly become part of the neighborhood again. I don't make it easy for them, and they relapse, but I do let them become "normal" in time and better for it.

Hopefully, playing your Sim helps soothe you. Oh, and I was bullied as a child and teen as well, and the one thing that sustained me was that one day, I would be away from these !@#$s, and put them behind me. In time, I found true friends, and we helped each other ... people I'm still friends with decades later. It's not easy getting though those rough points, though, and it can take patience and yes ... courage. Please hang in there.

At the risk of being too OT, I have to say I agree with others who're concerned that constructing your game to mirror your real life struggles might not be the best idea. We reinforce and multiply what we focus on, so if you focus on misery, that will absolutely continue to be your experience.

If you focus rather on what you'd LIKE for your life to be like, you create opportunities for change! Your Sims 2 game could be a vehicle for exploring ways your life could be different.

That said, you know yourself better than anyone, and if playing your real life out in your game helps you cope, carry on. I just wanted to present an alternative to consider, if/when you're ready to.

well you could kill all your sims friends, pets, burn down the house. you know anything to traumatize the poor sim. I have depression too and pretty severe but I find it relaxing to play the sims different from my own life.

The only 'real' depression I've seen in the game is when sims cry for no reason at all, or walk down the stairs with their shoulders slumped and their head hung low.

I don't think the creators of the game wanted to depress their customers too much, since although it is based on the bare essentials of the real world, it is a completely stripped version of the real world.

Of course there are mods and poses that might be of use to you, but other than that, the game is about as depressing as a baby elephant.

I have depression and borderline disorder and I am looking for a mod that makes sims more depressed. I want exactly what you wrote.
If I find something, I'll let you know.

That's nice of you, but this post was created two years ago, and original poster has not logged in since april 2013

If we're doing threadromancy, I have something to add!

I often use playing the sims as a metaphor for dealing with mild depression, both in my internal dialogue and in conversations with friends. Sometimes you have to "operate" your life more than live it, to ensure that you keep taking care of yourself when you don't want to. You just have to click on yourself and then select "get out of bed" on the pie menu, then click the stove and "have breakfast," then the computer and "get to work." It's a flippant way of talking about a tough subject, but personally I've found it helpful

I thought this was a new thread and didn't look at the date, until Gummilut mentioned it. Mindofglass must have forgotten to check that as well.
It seems useless now to address the topic opener, but the subject itself is interesting to continue.
I think it basically comes down to: does a person play his or her game to mimic his or her life and feelings, the opposite or even leave that out of the equation?
For me it is the latter, imo. For starters because I don't have a self-sim. The closest I got to that was just a sim with my name and two children with the names of mine. I left that idea when one sim day the nanny started to act up. She prevented my 'self sim' from picking up her daughter by standing in the way screaming and what not. Nothing helped to get the nanny out of the way and then the social worker took the daughter away. That felt bad for me and since then I abandoned the self-sim idea.
Also since then I'm more into just creating scenarios for my sims that only mimics my fantasy for creative writing.

Unfortunately I know a lot about depression and that is something I do not often address to others. I'll make an exception today. It sure can take over your life. Even when you dictate yourself to do the basic things, step by step, some days that just does not work out. Of course that isn't a reason to not try to get through the day by using the above named method by Heimlichbourger. To me a depressive disorder or illness, how you want to call it personally, is more like surviving than living. A lot of things passed me by just because of the depression and that hurts. It also cost friends, because people with depression have the tendency to retract from the world socially to not again have to admit it doesn't go that well and because of what depression does to you in your mind. Or people get fed up with you, to put it bluntly.
I think in my case I do not purposely involve it in my game because for me the game stands on itself. It isn't an extension of my life.
The hood I created is full of sims who aren't based at all on people I know in life. They are new characters with their own story.

However, I can surely relate to wanting to be the game as realistic as possible. So, if you have a self-sim you would want him or her to represent you as close to you as possible.
And when you have a depression, that you would want to have your self-sim to be like that as well. Or just a sim to be like that. Regardless if it is wise to also bring depression in your game on purpose. I leave that to the player in question.

I think in the last 10 years the world (or at least the United States of America) has become more depressed and poorer, and I think it would be neat to make the game reflect that. Although I doubt the pixel people would like that.

I think it would be much neater to make the world reflect the game. Free college tuition and no-fail birth control for all!

Indeed. The only issue we'd have are people that try to move in angry purse-bashers, classy pickpockets, a kind man that gives out free computers, and death himself. Pity we can't reinstall the earth if it gets corrupted.

Can I just say having your sim self mirror the real you could possibly make you feel worse. Many of us with health issues (myself) or depression, social anxiety, whatever the issues are, find it therapeutic to have a simself be who we would rather be, not who we really are.

reading up i see this thread isn't current but dug up for whatever reason. *sigh*

I get depression and anxiety (I'm on medication) and if I made a self sim I would totally want them to be happy, just because I can choose that for them in the game. After all, noone would suffer depression if they had a choice.

You got that right. It isn't júst a mood thing you easily can by pass if you just want it enough. With the developing knowledge about brains we know more and more that people with a depressive disorder/chronic depression have brains that work differently than people who do not suffer depression.

That being said, I'm not sure if I truly can say I have the best interest of my sims at hand at all times.
After all, I have a hood where real drama has occurred for story purposes and that made some sims unhappy. Sorry, sim 'guys'.
But overall, when I catch myself micromanaging again, to prevent basic needs going to low, it ís clear I prefer them to be at least content.
If they do get unhappy, I don't want it to be like that for too long. In my memory just one sim got a melt down when her boyfriend ended the engagement.
But not much later she found new happiness with another partner and they still chase each other for romantical things as elders.

In the game, easy to get started on a decent career track, with even the slacker career path potentially leading to something great. The government is damn near non-existent except for the local police and the social worker Politicians exist, and so does the military, but they have no affect on We The Sims other than as career paths, and there is no excessive taxation. Atheism and conflicting religions are also non-existent; everyone believes in the same god (the player), the Grim Reaper, ghosts, etc. Except for the short lives, they live in a damn near perfect world.

This will NEVER happen in the real world.

The sims live in a world of boundless opportunity, where every college graduate gets enough money to buy a suburban house, you can serve in the military with no risk of death or injury, you can pull infinite fish from a tiny puddle in your back yard and sell your tomatoes to the sky at a profit... Sometimes I imagine that a sim's existence includes utter existential horror, too- the courses in the philosophy major seem to suggest that

Unrestricted access to education and birth control would get us close enough to utopia for me. I can't think of a single major social problem that wouldn't be helped by implementing those two reforms.

Major individual problems...not so much. Those two things wouldn't cure depression. Might get us the scientific team that figures out how best to diagnose and treat it, though.

But we're straying off-topic.

Well, you could make him go into aspirational failure and don't do anything to make it better. Even people who are depressed can smile, it's just a matter of what appears to be happiness on the outside not being present on the inside as well. Also, Sims will refuse to do certain things if their aspiration/needs are too low. You just have to work with the game parameters I suppose.

Aging off.