Source: hellogiggles.com
No one chooses it. No one deserves it. It runs in families, it ruins families. Depression is not an emotion. Depression has no cause. Too often depression is conflated with sadness or anxiety. It is often treated as a taboo subject. It is like dropping a D-bomb in a conversation.
Depression, when it is present, is more like the force of gravity. It is there, pulling down on you under all circumstances. It is a creeping numbness that insidiously degrades and diminishes every aspect of conscious life, a storm of screaming and hatred in dreams, a dull apathy in waking, a sinking stomach in the face of joy and a faithless lassitude in the face of hope. Depression is not an emotion. Depression is a contradiction to every worthy aspect of life.
The human brain and its abilities has always been my subject of interest. The hurtful comments that surfaced after Robin Williams’ death are a proof that the world is yet to understand depression. Happiness is not a choice to some people. Wanting to be happy and expecting it to just happen is the equivalent of someone with green eyes wanting blue eyes and expecting that to just happen. When a – rich and famous – comedian, no less, commits suicide, you know that unhappiness goes hand in hand with the human condition. Depression may be psychological, biochemical, or rooted in physical, economic, and material reality in one way or the other, but depression also operates on another, spiritual, level. Have you ever thought; how brave you would have to be to pull the trigger, cut yourself or jump off the ledge?
An extract from John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding investigates the idea of personal identity- “It is certain that Socrates asleep and Socrates awake is not the same person; but his soul when he sleeps, and Socrates the man, consisting of body and soul, when he is waking, are two persons.” This is simply to say that an unconscious person is not responsible for the action his body does. Say for example, if Socrates sleeps walk and harms someone, this is the action of Socrates asleep not Socrates awake. The consciousness on-off switch is located deep in the brain. Clinically, depression is about the imbalance in your brain’s chemistry. Most mental disorders impair someone’s judgement. They are not entirely in control of their actions.
If you are raised in a ‘suck-it-up” kind of family, depression seems not to be a real thing. It does not exist in their universe. Saying to someone who has depression, ‘What do you have to be depressed about? You have a great life!” is like saying to an asthmatic, “What do you mean you can’t breathe? There’s a lot of air in here!”
The misconceptions a majority of people have towards mental illnesses is due to stigma surrounding the subject. It is often dismissed and not understood, understandably due to the misrepresentations and stories relating to them. How many more lives will it take before the world can acknowledge that depression is not an emotion? It is treatable. This is why people end up hiding their illness and shutting off completely from others.
Depression is real. Compassion is also real. And a depressed person may cling desperately to it until they are out of the woods and they may remember your compassion for the rest of their lives as a force greater than their depression. Have a heart.
More understanding , more tolerance, less suffering.
Junaidah Mubarak Ali is a third year medical student studying in the International Medical University (IMU). This article was written in response to the tragic death of Robin Williams. How did you spend World Suicide Prevention Day (10th September)? Do you know anyone who is depressed? Be a good friend and make sure they get the help they need.
