It’s been a funny old week.
My day job is seasonal and eerily quiet at the moment, which has provided me with the rare opportunity of pushing ahead with ‘the book that will never be published’.
In spite of its themes, (some of which that can be emotionally destructive), I have found myself completely submerged in my fictional characters and their life trials once again.
You need to be in a particular frame of mind to immerse yourself in a story where one of the main themes is depression.
You can just tell that it’s bestseller material, can’t you?
And then, on top of sobbing my way through several chapters that were sadder and darker than Harry Potter’s home life, came the terrible news of the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. We knew him well in our household because he starred in one of Kurt’s all-time favourite movies, The Boat That Rocked, and each of us have mastered the dialogue of that movie almost as well as Top Gear.
Like Heath Ledger’s death, his passing made me revisit my own particular ideas about the causes of drug abuse and self-medication, because self-loathing and a lack of self-worth can often be fuelled by depression and self-medication can cleverly camouflage itself in the short-tern as a viable solution.
And when I waved off a more mentally balanced Kurt to school camp this morning at ridiculous o’clock, I noticed how clear his arms were of cuts for the first time in a long while. The scars of the darkness are finally healing and I found myself saying a secret prayer that they stay that way, even though I know that ADHD and depression are life-long buddies who can get into all sorts of trouble together.
So I will always need to helicopter be vigilant.
And that thought process drew me to watch an amazing TED talk by Andrew Solomon on the subject of Depression – Depression, the secret we share. Have you watched the TED talks? I’m sure that you can come out with a BA in TED if you watch enough of them.
The main problem with depression is that no-one really wants to talk about it, just like no-one ever used to talk about cancer, even though we now wear bright ribbons and ugly rubber bracelets to celebrate beating it.
We don’t really celebrate beating depression because it’s always there, lurking in our psychy, and more often than not, only the drugs will help keep it at bay. And sadly, there’s still very much a stigma attached to taking anti-depressants, even though they prevent millions of people from taking their lives prematurely, preventing their loved ones from loving them.
Anyway,it’s just too depressing to talk about depression.
Many of us probably believe that we’ve experienced a level of depression at some point in our journey. Life is hard, and the pressure to keep buoyant can sometimes become too much to bear. But as Andrew points out, there is a huge chasm between depression and sadness in terms of its symptoms, its effect on quality of life and its duration.
Not many of us will have experienced the inability to get out of bed, or to care for our children or get out of the house.
What a bizarre choice for me to attempt to write my first book with depression as a theme when I like writing humor. But writing has always been therapeutic for me and writing about what I know seems a safer way to start.
If I use Andrew Solomon’s yardstick, I’ve never suffered from true depression, but I’ve come a little too close for comfort. And I’ve known people who have suffered from it and witnessed my own son become tainted by the Black Dog too.
Mental illness is a terrifying experience for those outside the box as well as those trapped inside, because it is so difficult to manage.
Telling someone who is depressed to cheer up is like telling someone with a nut allergy that Brazil nuts are fine.
Perhaps Philip Seymour Hoffman used Heroin to try and control his depression?
The biggest issue with depression is that like ADHD, it is an invisible illness which for some reason dents its credibility. If you break a leg, the plaster proves you are injured but when you suffer from depression, people assume it can’t be that serious because sufferers rarely want to talk about it or share their story. Platitudes are more along the lines of ‘toughening up’ rather than healing.
I was lucky. The reason I only touched the surface of depression is because I am a hypochondriac, as in tune with any subtle changes in my body as the finest athlete. My anxiety draws my attention to any new blockages in my system. So when I began to lose ‘vitality’, which as Andrew Soloman states is the most obvious symptom of depression, I sought help immediately.
Most people ignore the symptoms or don’t have time or money to deal with them, or put them down to life’s set backs and assume they will just get better with time.
But anxiety and depression don’t get better with time when left untreated – they fester.
Which is why sometimes we need to fight mental illness with drugs.
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My Midlife Mayhem 
I never considered hypochondria as a benefit to suffering depression! What an interesting idea. I know your writing is often for humor, but I think you might be on to something there. OTOH, I am also tuned very finely to even the smallest things in my mental, emotional, physical complex, but not having been blessed with hypochondria, that awareness does not necessarily provoke me to act.
Have you ever read the theory that depression was selected by evolution to cause our ancestors to hunker down and conserve calories during winter, or famine and near-famine? I know that does not help us now in the so-called “first world” with the problems and “benefits” we now face, but it’s an interesting theory.
Enjoyed the post as always.
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I hadn’t read that theory but I suppose that might also explain the extra kilos.
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“Exactly right,” says the theory. And I have remembered where I heard of it. It was in the book “Younger Next Year for Women” by Crowley and Lodge. This is a mainstream book that I found interesting, especially for the anthropological theories. It has annoyed some folks (as you can see on the Amazon reviews if you go there,) including me in parts, but I found it more worthwhile than annoying.
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I enjoyed that talk by Andrew Solomon–lack of vitality–the best way to describe it. And it does fester if left untreated.
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Yes, it was a fascinating insight but the information needs to be shared so that more people understand it.
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His book, The Noonday Demon, An Atlas of Depression, is very good too. I first got the audio version and liked it so well that I also bought the book. I recommend it.
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That’s the truth. However, I have been trying to explain what it’s like for me to my husband. A person who has only watched me go through the torture, but has never experienced it. Sometimes, he looks at me with a blank look on his face. I don’t know I thinks it’s the mentality that all people struggling with mental illness are going to go on a rampage.
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Hear, hear. I’ve had my own struggles with black dog and have been on antidepressants for 15 years … although I’ve been for counselling etc, at the end of the day, I have a chemical imbalance that is successfully treated with medication. Why should I be ashamed of it? Is a diabetic ashamed of needing insulin?
Thank you for raising an issue that far too many people think is “all in the head”! And that we can just “snap out of it”! It sounds mean but sometimes I wish they would get it and THEN they’d understand!
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Unless you’ve been there or know someone who has, generally people just don’t get it and have very little compassion. It’s beginning to affect a lot of our teenagers now and more needs to be done to educate them.
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Thankyou so much for starting this open & honest conversation about Depression & in particular teenage depression.
My teenager daughter was diagnosed & hospitalised for severe depression, anxiety & self harm (cutting) earlier this year & for the 3 months afterwards my husband, myself & our younger son felt like a deer in headlights.
Since her diagnosis, I’ve done a lot of reading about teenage Depression & self harm & found myself unexpectedly taking on the role of being her spokes person when she’s required medical attention for her cutting.
While she seems happier & less anxious these days, my daughters physical scars from her last cutting episode are still very visible & are a constant reminder that she & indeed we as a family still have a long journey ahead.
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It is about six months since my son last cut himself and since then he has been on anxiety meds but every time we go through a tough time, or he takes a screw driver or the razor disappears, I freak out. The physical scars have almost gone though, thank goodness because once he cut out song lyrics on his arm.
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I think as parents & Mums, we can’t & won’t ever stop inwardly freaking out when we know our child is physically harming themselves.
I can relate to that horrible sense of panic when I see razor blades & certain knives not in their usual storage space. There’s also a huge sense of relief when you realise you actually moved these things to a different place !
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Agreed. I’m not freaking out about ‘weed.’ The whole self-medication thing is exhausting. Perhaps I need to cut the helicopter blades for a while.
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