"Snap out of it!"

“Mental imbalance is about as acceptable as herpes. It’s never going to be accepted. But really, it’s a disease just like cancer. It just happens, and eats away all the good parts of your brain, like judgment and happiness and perception and memory and life. And you can die from depression just like any other disease. And it’s not as if people choose it. So why is it still a joke? “She died of cancer” is a lot more socially acceptable to people than “She committed suicide.” Why?” –Sarahbeth Purcell.

Depression is described in the Oxford Dictionary as “severe, typically prolonged, feelings of despondency and dejection; a mental condition characterized by severe feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy, typically accompanied by a lack of energy and interest in life.”

 

I am exasperated by the way in which depression is viewed, particularly that of a teenager. Depression is not something you can snap out of. Depression is a medical illness, the same as diabetes. But there is a lot more controversy about antidepressants than about insulin. Why?

 

I feel that people are wary of mental illness, and that the acceptance thereof is long overdue. While the status quo is better than it has been in the past, it still needs massive improvement. In the Victorian times, a person with a mental illness was treated as a freak of nature and caged like an animal. Nowadays, people will still talk in hushed whispers about someone being bipolar. Teenage depression is problematic because parents are quick to blame their child’s behaviour on teenage mood swings, because they feel that if their child is depressed, it is their own fault. Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot stress enough that depression is customarily a chemical imbalance.

 

Children as young as four years old are being diagnosed with depression. How does a child who has only lived 48 months on this earth feel so despondent? Moreover, how does a child of this age deal with these feelings? Especially when parents refuse to accept that the child in question has a medical illness.

 

There is such a stigma about being diagnosed with a mental illness, and I think that this is due to people being afraid of what they don’t understand. People need to realise that one does not choose to be ill. It impacts upon everything that one does. Depression is so difficult to get out of once one has been diagnosed with it.

 

Also, I think that it is more correct to say “died by suicide” not “committed suicide”. To say someone has ‘committed’ suicide makes it sound as though they’ve done something wrong. One can’t call suicide a choice on any level. When one’s mind is not functioning properly one does not see alternatives. I didn’t choose to be sick, whether it be flu, cancer or malaria…I do not choose the way the hormones in my mind make me feel. Mental illness is not a choice. Suicide is not a choice. They are not signs of weakness nor selfishness. Living with a mental illness is hard enough without all the shame, guilt and isolation that come with it because of lack of education.

 

I was first diagnosed with depression in 2010. I played around with this label for a while, and decided that I couldn’t possibly be depressed. Depressed people didn’t have friends and just blubbered all the time. I had friends and I never ever cried. Yes, maybe I got sad sometimes, but so did everyone else. My depression manifested itself in the form of anxiety and anger, and when I thought about it, I guess I did feel helpless a lot. I had trouble getting more than two hours sleep a night. I didn’t withdraw from my friends in terms of seeing them, but I couldn’t connect with any of them on an emotional level because what if I told them about how I felt and they thought I was weird? I already felt so worthless, so inadequate; I didn’t need those around me to confirm my self-doubts.

 After a while, I decided that I did show symptoms of depression, but that obviously meant that I had created a problem. And antidepressants were most definitely not necessary. I didn’t need pills for something my mind had created.

Now, I understand that I am not responsible for my depression. Depression is caused chemically, by problems in the transportation of serotonin, or “happy hormones”.

I understand now that my brain isn’t the problem, society’s view is. There’s nothing wrong with me. Would you blame someone for having a genetic predisposition to having something like cancer? Why depression? Yes, a positive outlook helps, but by the very definition of depression, there is a lack of positivity.

I think that if there was more awareness of depression, society will move forward into accepting and handling it. There is such ignorance and this can be rectified by media coverage, magazine articles, support groups, even just discussion.

Over the last few years, I learned to accept myself and not worry about everyone else’s judgement. I have found that depression will never up and vanish, and while it is chemical, antidepressants won’t make it all better. I've developed a mind-set that has allowed me to accept that happiness is a constant pursuit, and that I need to embrace the life that I’ve been given with all the obstacles in my path.