Whats in a Name?

How often have you heard someone do something trivial, say chip a finger nail, and say they are depressed about it? How does it make you feel?

For most people, it will have no impact, for anyone who has suffered clinical depression, or cared for someone who has, that comment can make you angry. Normally when I hear the comment made, I feel angry, walk away, try to ignore it… more recently I have actually reacted to the person making the comment, told them precisely what I thought, and how offensive the remark is.

Are you still with me? Then you probably have experience of depression, and I am with you, ready to help as much as I can. For the most part that is by fighting my battles with the local Adult Mental Health Service so totally screwed up my wife’s treatment and pushed me into depression feeling suicidal, and further my work with voluntary groups supporting mental health carers.

Hopefully some of my experience, which appears throughout my blog, will resonate with someone, show them they are not alone, show them there is help to be had and people are fighting for the cause. Maybe someone will be inspired to pick up the challenge and get involved themselves. It is at times frustrating, but also exhilarating.

Any improvements we can achieve will of course benefit, in some little way, every mental illness sufferer and carer.

I have often heard people referring to people who seem ‘different’, who have a mental illness of any kind, use the phrase “there’s something wrong with him!” Yes, there is, the person has a mental illness… you would use a term like that for someone obviously racked with cancer would you? No, because it is an insulting and offensive comment, and you don’t treat cancer victims like that.

Let me be clear, I have seen too many people close to me lose the battle with cancer to ever consider trying to belittle it, it is an awful, destructive illness, which all too often proves fatal. I only use it here to try to give an example. There is no offence meant to anyone involved with cancer, and certainly no intention to minimise its destructive power.

My point remains, people treat sufferers of mental health differently. Unless you have been personally involved you may well not understand the nature of depression, may not understand the destructive power it has, not only to the sufferer, but to their carer, and the whole family.

That is why it doesn’t seem incongruous to describe yourself as ‘depressed’ when you really mean ‘disappointed’ or ‘a bit down at the moment’.

What does depression look like, well, it can be different from person to person. In my direct experience depression stops you getting out of bed in the morning, stops you caring about yourself because your self-esteem and self-confidence has gone, you don’t bother to wash, don’t bother to dress, can do nothing for yourself. The cleaning becomes irrelevant, the house gets dirty, you can’t eat or drink, often you think you don’t deserve to because you value yourself so little.

Your relationships suffer because all the domestic work, as well as wage-earning and caring falls on your partner who then has to work virtually around the clock to keep things going. This leads to relationships stretching and potentially breaking, you lose contact with family and friends because the patient cannot go out or socialise, and the carer has no energy or time to do so.

Other people suffering depression display different symptoms. Sometimes the pain of isolation, of despair, of lack of motivation of pointlessness can push you the other way… you make extra effort with appearance, you prepare a perfect smile for the public and say “I’m fine” even though you are hurting so much inside, feeling so desperately alone, isolated, pointless, un-valued, un-wanted.

This situation is what can lead to self-harm or self-motivation. Self-harm is not about attention seeking, it is about the mental pain getting so unbearable that you have to inflict physical pain because you can cope with that, you can get plasters, stitches, painkillers and the rest… you have a pain you can cope with.

So, next time you chip a nail, don’t tell me you are depressed, or I will react…

The trouble is, I understand this, all sufferers understand this but most others don’t, so they see no problem with claiming to be depressed… they then here people who are genuinely suffering from clinical depression putting on a brave face and think their problem is as trivial as a broken nail.

No-one chooses mental illness, and because so many people equate depression with a minor mishap, people do not appreciate how you are suffering, think you are being a drama queen. They even make comments like “pull yourself together” which is one of the most ignorant, heartless and offensive things you can say to someone suffering depression.

So, I am looking now at the celebrity culture, at the shallow majority out there who use inappropriate words to draw attention to their selves. There are other examples, how often do people with a bit of a cold claim to have the flu?

Please, let us try to use language more appropriate to the situation, depression is a serious, debilitating, destructive nightmare of an illness… it is not a weakness, not a chipped nail…

As long as people use the names attributed to mental illnesses to trivial day to day issues, the public at large will never be able to associate them with the destructive illnesses they are, will always believe that the illnesses are minor, and consequently will never be able to understand the how serious they are, never understand the indescribably horrors that sufferers go through, and never understand the massive pressures and stresses that build up on the carers.

If this persists, mental illness will always be a Cinderella illness, never get the support or understanding it needs and things will never improve for the sufferers or their carers.