Ashli Howell (Contributor)
In the wake of Robin Williams’ apparent suicide on Aug. 11, Fox News Contributor Shep Smith said “…something inside you is so horrible – or you’re such a coward or whatever the reason – you decide to end it,” in talking about the actor’s tragic end to his battle with depression. I’m going to go ahead and guess that Shep Smith has never dealt with depression. Depression is a civil war of sorts, one that you have to fight with yourself every single day. While suicide shouldn’t be the answer, there is nothing cowardly about someone who is at war with depression; and it is a war. When you suffer from depression, you fight every day; it is not a coward’s disease.
Depression is increasingly common in America, though the subject remains stigmatized. Now, I could tell you that according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) that approximately one in ten Americans are prescribed antidepressants, that antidepressants are the third most prescribed drug in the nation, and antidepressant use has increased fourfold since the mid 1990’s, but that will not adequately depict how difficult depression is to deal with. What I can tell you, however, is that I am one in ten.
At 19 years old and a sophomore at Kennesaw State University, I felt ready to move out on my own. I rented a cheap apartment a few miles away from campus, bought some furniture, and lived on ramen noodles. At first, everything was great; I finally had freedom. Then I started to struggle, juggling a full-time job, a part-time job, and a full-time course load. So much for freedom. Depression, a quiet disease, started to take hold of my life. At first, I was just tired all the time. Then I became increasingly antisocial. When my friends asked me what was wrong, I didn’t explain. They stopped coming around, likely because I pushed them away. My family, concerned about the way I was behaving, was at a loss; unsure of how to help when I insisted that I was fine.
As fall turned into winter, I retreated into depression, weirdly comforted by the thought that at least depression was always there. That’s when I stopped going to class. I was being swallowed by depression while everyone else seemed to be doing great. I couldn’t handle it. I was deeply ashamed and confused about what was happening to me. After two months, at my mom’s insistence, I visited a doctor. When the doctor came into the patient room, she asked me what my visit was about. I didn’t want to admit that I was depressed, I thought it made me weak, so I just started crying.
My doctor prescribed me an antidepressant, which I will admit, I was not keen on taking; an argument for a different day. However, the antidepressant helped me gain back some of the control I had lost to depression. It took me another two years, five failed classes, a sabbatical in Albuquerque, N.M., and a very supportive group of people for me to develop the skills I needed to cope with depression.
I will likely always be susceptible to depression and my depression may be different from yours. There are many types of depression with differing levels of severity. However, depression is not a coward’s disease, it is not something that anyone should ever feel ashamed of. It takes a very strong person to fight depression, day in and day out. Even though Robin Williams may have lost the battle with his depression, he fought it for many years and touched so many lives along the way. And now, after his death, he is bringing awareness to this silent and lonely disease. If you are struggling with depression, loneliness, or anxiety, you don’t have to do it alone.
To get help or more information, you can visit kennesawstatecares.org or call the National Suicide Hotline at 1(800)273-8255
I’m not going to argue about depression being a mental illness. BUT, I do want to point out that there seems to be a difference between a depression brought on by a life situation – such as the one you describe – and another pathological type in which a person is depressed regardless of their circumstances. (I’m not a mental health professional, just making an observation.) In your own story, you gave a scenario which led to an episode of depression – an extreme life change and high stress. Also, for me, the one and only episode of depression I had in my life was triggered by a devastating personal loss and life change. So does that mean in each of these cases we were temporarily mentally ill? Or just reacting to an isolated episode? (That is to say that minus the triggering circumstances we do not normally suffer from depression.)
I never treated my depression with meds and it eventually resolved as time healed the wounds. To me that means it wasn’t mental illness, but rather physical and mental reaction to an emotionally painful event. On the other hand, someone who is chronically depressed in the absence of a clear trigger might have a different kind of depression which is a mental illness that needs medical treatment.
Again, this is just my observation: It doesn’t seem clear to me that all types of depression are created equal.
I do believe there are different stages or levels, even types of depression, like mentioned by lisalu. Depression is a struggle, but it’s also used as an excuse for attention by the wrong people, therefore making it lose its importance. I’ve struggled with depression for years, self image issues, anxiety, eating disorders, the whole shebang. I was hospitalized, put on different medications one after another, saw therapist after therapist, and in the end I gave up. None of that seemed to help, all I wanted to do was sleep, but in the past year I told my self that I needed to fix this and to work on it. I didn’t deserve to feel like this all the time. I made myself go out more, be more social, change the ways I viewed everything, and that has helped a lot. I don’t think medications should just be the answer. If you keep pushing everyone away, hiding in your room, and getting mad at yourself, you won’t get better. Talk to someone, work it out, but most importantly learn to love yourself no matter what it takes. That’s what we should be promoting to people.