Or the Importance of Treating Mental Illness
Then, I drove home and told my mom about my appointment. She immediately discredited the doctor and forbid me to have the prescription filled because "didn't I know what happened to kids under 18 who take SSRIs? They commit suicide." End of story. No discussion. You're fine. You absolutely do not have that. Now, let's have dinner.
To say I felt deflated is an understatement, and I often wonder how the trajectory of my life would have played out had I been able to start getting treatment for my depression at such a young age.
Instead, it would take me ten years, countless poor relationships, 70 pounds, and numerous risky behaviors to seek out and get the help I needed. I was most definitely not fine and I most certainly did have that. I just couldn't always see it and neither could those who loved me.
I don't blame my mom; I know she was just scared. And I've mostly stopped blaming myself; I was scared too.
But I haven't, and I won't, stop blaming our society. Did you know that 80% of all people who had a physical illness got treated for their medical condition last year, while only 40% of those with a mental illness did? Or that one and ten adults report being depressed? Yet, nearly two out of three don't seek the treatment they need.
This is not okay. The stigma we have created around mental illness is not okay.
Mental health issues are just as real as physical ones. I'd even argue that they're more powerful, more influential, more detrimental (at times) because they come with a large dose of guilt and shame. And they permeate our whole entire lives, including our ability to genuinely connect and be in this world. To experience love, joy, and contentment which are just as much birth rights as health, or did we forget that line about the pursuit of happiness?
No one finds fault with the person who gets treated for cancer. No one whispers about them, questions their abilities, denies their symptoms, criticizes their choices, tells them to "just get over it." But those are all things I've heard, things my clients have heard.
Things that cause millions of people to suffer in silence each year. And that is not okay.
What happens to people, to families, to towns when mental health issues go unresolved is not okay.
So, in honor of National Depression Screening Day I beg of you to begin thinking about health differently. Take your loved ones seriously when they reach out to you and even more so when they don't. Take yourself seriously. Your feelings are real and you matter.
Let's start making getting our souls "fixed" just as important as our bodies.
And because there are many people who've said it better than I ever could, here are some of my favorite depression related links:
A hilarious and accurate description of depression.
It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.
An incredibly moving podcast about how depression is treated in rural Africa. Transcript here.
He said, “You know, we had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers who came here immediately after the genocide, and we had to ask some of them to leave.”
I said, “What was the problem?”
And he said, “Their practice did not involve being outside in the sun, like you’re describing, which is, after all, where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again when you’re depressed, and you’re low, and you need to have your blood flowing. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. There was no acknowledgment that the depression is something invasive and external that could actually be cast out of you again.
“Instead, they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to get them to leave the country.”