Fact and fiction

By admin on March 29, 2011

Depression can be fatal. I now know that a condition barely visible to an observer can be deadly. I know the fabulous wonder of the mind and its creative imaginings and only a little of its destructive power when in the grip of a dark absence of feeling.

You can recover from depression. With support, treatment and care, it is possible to recover. Recovery is an option. “To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better.” said Abraham Lincoln.

Suicide is preventable. I hope so, that is not my experience so I can’t say for sure. Reading the story in the Australian, I caught the part, about guilt. There is a guilt shared by people touched by a death by suicide. Prevention efforts and campaigns have high visibility and lend support to the premise that suicide is preventable. Is the burden for prevention to be shouldered by those with the closest relationships? The wife, mother, sister, daughter, the best friend?

It might be more truthful to say that suicide in not inevitable. I don’t know if that is closer to the truth. To believe suicide is preventable belies the numbed, detached state of the suicidal. If suicide is preventable there are many, like me, who failed in that task. The shadow of guilt, cast by not having prevented a death, is a big part of the stigma that holds back conversations about suicide.

I feel implicated by various reactions of disbelief and horror, and the lack of discussion and the reluctance to engage on the topic. It is funny how upsetting others can be when they don’t want to upset me.

I may not be guilty for Mottsu’s suicide, the super pillow incident notwithstanding, certainly not to blame. Blameless? That’s a whole other conversation for another blog post. I am guilty of not having prevented his suicide, for not knowing it was even a possibility. I am guilty for underestimating the possible outcomes of his depression.

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Filling the silence with sharing

By admin on March 27, 2011

There are calls to talk more openly about depression and suicide. There are many reasons to support those calls. Importantly, more openness would mitigate the social isolation that suffers bear, the loneliness of the condition. If there was more understanding of depression and how it feels, if we could see how many are afflicted and affected, some of the stigma and shame would be lifted.

There is too little appreciation of how depression can be experienced.

The Australian newspaper published an article about reader responses to the story run at the end of February headed “It’s Time to Talk”. This second article is a call to speak more openly and publicly about the mostly hidden experiences with suicide and for greater appreciation of its devastating impacts. Much of what is reported is familiar to me, and I am surprised at how similar some of the experiences of others in the aftermath of a suicide, are to my own. I believe we don’t know enough about suicide.

The discussion is stifled by attitudes and publishing laws. The social costs are hidden along with the stories and largely unknown, and those costs that are estimated almost certainly undervalue the impacts of each death. The damage done.

When you lose someone to suicide it hurts. The experience is all the more painful for the general lack of understanding, so little is shared about our experiences with depression and what is is like to have someone close die by suicide. Breaking the silence as many, including me advocate to us to be better informed, more aware of the risks and better able to help and support.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.

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It might be time to talk but not with a psychiatrist…

By admin on March 13, 2011

An article in the New York Times caught my attention. It states that:
“Recent studies suggest that talk therapy may be as good as or better than drugs in the treatment of depression, but fewer than half of depressed patients now get such therapy compared with the vast majority 20 years ago.’

The story describes how brief consultations are required by insurers who reimburse patients and set the rates schedules. In a 15 minute consultation a psychiatrist can do little more than provide a prescription. I understand it is only psychiatrists can prescribe psychiatric medication, and other types of therapists can not, and previously psychiatrists could also provide talk therapy, with more patient time (and more patient insurers), there was more opportunity to tailor the treatment.

I find that alarming and worthy of talking about, because medication is not for everyone. Mottsu,for example did not feel psychiatric medication would be helpful and he sought psychological support. The treatment is not condemned by the outcome, Mottsu’s situation and process were complex.

The treatment of depression requires healing in the guise of both medical science and healing arts, there’s no panacea. Anybody’s situation and process are complex, what works for one may not work for another. I like talk therapy.

Returning to the article, linked above, “Dr. Levin expressed some astonishment that his patients admire him as much as they do. ‘The sad thing is that I’m very important to them, but I barely know them,’ he said. ‘I feel shame about that, but that’s probably because I was trained in a different era’.”

That’s a good reminder: my therapist is, in all likelihood, more important to me than I am to them.

There are many helping professions offering healing interventions, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors, and then doctors too. Standards are established and maintained by professional authorising bodies. Qualifications and requirements differ in different states and countries, so I won’t attempt to describe them and risk getting it wrong. Each offers different forms of treatment and there are some overlaps, and there are different schools of thought and approaches within a profession.

A doctor would be a good person to advise on what each can do. Recommendations are helpful and listen to your inclinations and leanings, follow your them. Trust your cynicism and seek treatments that fit best. Talk about it.

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So how does it feel if one simply can’t get a grip?

By admin on January 20, 2011

As a counter-point to The Daily Mail article I wrote about yesterday is this truly fabulous blog Who Stole My Smile? subtitled as A Blog of One Man’s Fight Against Depression and its Stigma. It’s written by Adam Glenn, someone who is really making a difference.

On January 5th he posted an entry called What I’m Feeling and said….

“But I’m tired. I’m tired of the low self-esteem. I’m tired of the feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. I’m tired of simple tasks feeling like monumental undertakings. I’m tired of finding no joy in things I used to love to do.

I’m trying to get better, but these feelings hit me every day. This dark fog envelopes me and makes it so hard to see the way. How can I hope to get out? How can I hope to be the person I was before all this depression?”

This is one eloquent person with depression who doesn’t need to get a grip, he has a firm grip already. I nearly wrote ‘depressed person’ in the previous sentence, but I think ‘person with depression’ is a better phrase, it makes a difference.

Talking, blogging, sharing all make a difference, helps others to talk about the same. Talking helps us appreciate how depression feels and to start understand what can be done to support people with depression, real people, normal people with their real and normal mental states.

Adam Glenn is doing exactly what Professor Damasio advocates “Perhaps the most indispensable thing we can do as human beings, everyday of our lives, is remind ourselves and others of our complexity, fragility, finiteness, and uniqueness.” Damasio, A. (1994) Descartes’ Error : Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, London: Vintage.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.

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Feeling down clown?

By admin on January 19, 2011

Getting ‘a grip’ is one person’s view based on her experience. Her full article from the UK Daily Mail is published here.

Whatever might be worth reading in the article, the portrayal of the sad faced clown leaves me speechless.

If anybody doubted the stigma attached to metal health look at the photo on the article and doubt no more. Whatever helpful advice or message might be contained in the article are lost on me – I feel so alienated by the layout and image that I can’t read it.

I hardly even know what to say, this newspaper page is so wrong… and such an unfair stigmatising portrayal of depression.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.
Link to the photo source

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Avengers assemble

By admin on January 17, 2011

Capitan America is an average patriotic comic book superhero.

Last week Marvel released a new story featuring Captain America: A Little Help, an all-new story free to all fans through the Marvel Comics App for iPad, iPhone, and iPod. The story is written by a psychologist, Tim Ursiny.

Not being a comic fan, I am tempted to poo-poo this effort and that would be unfair as I don’t know Captain America nor his influence on people the book is intended to support. I have to admit to not having read the book and therefore being uninformed. I should applaud Capitan America and his indestructible shield. I hope it going one better than that to talk about this special comic release.

“Avengers assemble” as Captain America is reported to say.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.

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A Friend Indeed

By admin on January 8, 2011

What can you do for a friend with severe depression? It is an important question, I am sometimes asked what should be done, what might help? Depression is a serious condition that people can die from, it needs treatment. I would just say that if a problem is shared with you don’t wait, start listening and understanding. There is a lot you can do as a friend:

• Be a friend to your friend.

• Hold your friend’s hand in any way that is comfortable. If a substantive physical clasp isn’t your style (or perhaps their style) hold on metaphorically.

• Talk to them and listen to them. Stay in touch, be around. Answer the phone if your friend calls, and ring them just to check-in and say hello. Here is a great practical list of things to say and not to say to a friend with depression.

• Seek support, encourage them to see a doctor. Support your friend to get to appointments, sit in the waiting room and drive them home, be supportive of their treatment. Help them feel safe.

• Look after yourself, make sure you have a soft place to land and seek support for your own well-being.

Here is another practical list of things, there’s some overlap with the list above (as you would hope), it is useful information. Being a friend to someone with depression can be demanding, and you can make a difference.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.

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A sad soul can kill you…

By admin on January 3, 2011

I came across a quote today “A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”

John Steinbeck wrote that in Travels With Charley, his book about a journey across America (and back) with his dog. It sounds like he is issuing a warning not to underestimate depression as an affliction.

A sad soul can kill you, and quickly too.

Last August I wrote about Elizabeth Wurtzel who said it happens gradually and then suddenly . In my experience the gradual part is hardly noticed by anyone.

Wurtzel wrote: “Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won’t even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal…and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live.” Wurtzel, E. Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America (1994) NY:The Berkley Publishing Group

I could take Steinbeck’s quote to mean that sadness of the soul is more lethal than germs. That thought is more evident in the full passage of Steinbeck: “I remember an old Arab in North Africa, a man whose hands had never felt water. He gave me mint tea in a glass so coated with use that it was opaque, but he handed me companionship and the tea was wonderful because of it. And without any protection my teeth didn’t fall out, nor did running sores develop. I began to formulate a new law describing the relationship of protection to despondency. A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ” Steinbeck, J. (1962) Travels with Charley in Search of America. USA:Viking Press

I know I get so easily wounded by the words and action of others, I could think those who harm are the sad souls who will quickly kill you. That might be a part of the message, but reading this again and again I think the sad soul is the one who can’t accept the (imperfect) companionship of another. Friends.

Crisis counselling is available around the world. In Australia Life Line 13 11 14.

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Gossip, scandal, rehab and stigma

By admin on December 13, 2010

When the actor Kirsten Dunst checked into rehab in early 2008 there were many reports of the event and lots of speculation about what might have behind her action.

Many of the gossip magazines concluded she was dealing with alcohol or other addiction problems.

Recently, headlined as a Triumphant Return to the Spotlight. it was reported that “...she checked herself into Cirque Lodge, a rehab facility in Sundance, Utah, to deal with depression. (According to Dunst, her treatment program had nothing to do with alcohol or drugs, an assertion that’s been met with general incredulity.)”

I’m not sure what to make of Kirsten Dunst’s admission. I’ve been writing about stigma and I’m unsure what to make of this. There was such a titter among the celebrity press I’m left wondering if depression is as a lesser or greater ill than alcohol addiction.

Whatever is going on I wish Kirsten Dunst clear skies and plain sailing.

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Stigma reduces one’s ability to seek help

By admin on December 3, 2010

A study of more than 1000 teenagers by the Australian National University’s Centre for Mental Health Research found adolescents overestimate the extent of the stigma of mental illness.

Like me you might wonder why that finding is important, and lead researcher Alison Calear said “… we do find that having depression stigma or perceived stigmas reduces their ability to seek help.” I have heard the same said about people in the medical profession. Apparently the people we turn to for healing less likely to admit to mental health concerns, or seek help, for fear of the stigma that comes with a diagnosis of mental illness.

Sadly, it’s more difficult for a down-story to become an up-story without some sort of intervention of help. Help is needed along with acceptance and understanding…

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