I really should be writing about homesteading today, but I need to address something else today. Depression. The death by suicide of Robin Williams, due to ongoing depression issues, has me really upset. Some of the commentary about it that I've seen is ridiculous. Let's get something straight right up front. Depression is a silent killer.
There are a number of silent diseases. I suffer from one of them with my fibromyalgia. But to those who know me best in person, they can tell by watching how I move, in less than five minutes, just how bad it is at that point in time. It, like most of the the silent diseases (if not all), has physical symptoms that can be measured and seen so others know you are suffering. Depression is not like that. I should know. I have that, too. Part of it is family genetics. My Mom has it, I have it, I suspect my daughter has it to some degree. Part of it is due to suffering from the fibro and there's not a lot that can be done about that.
But depression, unlike what most people think, does not just "go away." It does not "get better on it's own." You can't just think happy thoughts and feel better, so it goes away. It's a hollowness inside you that aches at the same time. You feel more alone in a crowd of people than you do by being by yourself. People tell you they love you, and you wonder how much and what they want from you. You laugh and smile, when inside, your crying and dying by inches. People tell you to "cheer up, it can't be that bad," or "Smile, it'll get better," or "Don't be so gloomy," or whatever they think will "help." You know what helps? TALKING ABOUT IT.
Okay, so depressives may end up talking about it to an extreme that others would consider excess. The more a depressed person talks about or around what's bothering them, the more they are able to process through what is happening, and work with it. Just having someone listen and make appropriate noises ("Yeah," "Uh-huh," "Really?," etc.) helps more than you can know.
Depression is the most common mental disease in the United States. The stigma of mental illness keeps most depressives from talking about it. We're afraid of being looked down upon or hearing the platitudes I mentioned above. I have one friend who is horribly depressed, has been for a year or more, from her husband's sudden death. You think it's easy for a depressive to do anything, and wonder why our favorite activity is sleeping? We do it because it's easier than having to have our eyes open, getting dressed and feeling the inner pain we have. For a depressive, just getting up and getting dressed is a major accomplishment. That many of us hold down full-time jobs and deal with family issues and pay the bills and all the rest of the minutiae of everyday life is a bloody miracle. And yet, if we mention our depression, we are ostracized for it, as if we choose to be depressed. Trust me, if I could get rid of mine, by choosing not to have it, I would do so in a freaking heartbeat.
The numbers for depression are depressing in and of themselves. Consider these statistics (and these are just some of them):
Major depressive disorder affects approximately 14.8 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population age 18 and older, in a given year
People with depression are four times as likely to develop a heart attack than those without a history of the illness. After a heart attack, they are at a significantly increased risk of death or second heart attack.
Depression often occurs with other illnesses and consitions. 25% of cancer patients, between 10 and 27% of post-stroke patients, 33% of heart attack survivors, at least 50% of eating disorder patients, up to 27% of diabetics, and 27% of people with substance abuse disorders all suffer depression.
Median age at onset is 32. (This means 40 or more years of living with depression, if you don't take the "easy" way out as Robin Williams did, and kill yourself because the pain is literally too much to bear.)
There are a ton more statistics I could throw at you, but you can see what I mean. Depression is a horrible disease. Everyone suffers from mild depression at some point in their lives (loss of family member, loss of job, things like that), but they pull out of it as it is a part of life to have life changes. There are those, like Robin Williams, who can't pull out of it, because it just hurts too much.
It's like young people I've known who were cutters. (I won't discuss that here, you can look that up yourself.) They're not suicidal, despite what people may think. They are severely depressed a lot of the time, and one conversation with a teen who was a cutter went like this:
Me: Why do you cut yourself like this?
Teen: Because it hurts less.
Me: Less than what?
Teen: Less than everything else.
That's depression which is leading to suicide in a heartbeat. Hurting yourself, killing yourself, hurts less than "everything else" that has left you depressed. Life is tough on people, but with support, it can be much easier for a depressive. We're never going to be 24/7 Pollyanna types, but we can be much more stable. So how are you going to help the depressives in your life today?
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