NPR : 'Against Depression' Urges Ending a Disease
NPR : 'Against Depression' Urges Ending a Disease
This is a subject that absolutely always grabs my attention. (Note to self: must get this book soon).
I have always agreed with the statement used by Dr. Kramer last night on NPR, that we need to treat depression as a 'real' disease. The same way we treat any other disease. Cancer, diabetes, asthma.
You would never, for example, blame someone for getting asthma or accuse them of doing it on purpose. So why is there such a stigma attached to depression? And not just a stigma but as Dr. Kramer so brilliantly pointed out in this interview, in many ways we've 'romanticized' depression. (i.e. Shelly, Byron)
Romanticized indeed.
From the beginning of this blog, I have been writing about how depression has directly impacted me, ruined my marriage, blazed it's glorious, technicolour trail through my life. It's left me angry, bitter, confused and depressed myself.
On the one hand I married a man that I felt was highly intelligent, easy on the eyes, funny, witty, sarcastic, extremely well-read, and quirky. Turns out he was also (and still is very much) depressed. I mourn this loss. But romanticism aside, I have to wonder how much he'd be 'him' WITHOUT his depression. Because depression makes you turn inward - (depression helped make me write).
In a perfect world, we could USE our depressive states for things like self-reflection, self-discovery, and perhaps as a way to make ourselves better human beings by learning to forgive ourselves...
But (as I've seen first hand), what's more likely to happen is that we destroy our lives, and those of the ones we love most and need the most help from.
How do you treat a disease when the person is more than likely to decide 'well today I feel OK so I am not going to take my medicine' or 'I just can't handle the side effects, so I am not going to take my meds'? Or where, when they do reach out and go to counseling, a lot of times they aren't able to find someone they can truly connect with - and there really isn't much in the way of help and support for people who love those suffering from depression....
The very nature of this illness is so insidious and debilitating that often times people on the 'outside' just give up. Which then makes the person suffering from the depression give up too.
My husband (at least to my untrained eye) seemed to have a 'combination' of depressive/manic/neurosis/personality disorders because I truly don't think 'just' his depression necessarily caused him to have an affair - I do believe he felt alone and empty and this brought about a chain reaction.
So what is one left to do. You love somebody like this and you search your soul for answers of how to 'deal' with it yourself. I can tell you frankly I never found an answer that helped or eased my mind, or took away the guilt. I was running on compassion for him for so long - and that never seemed to help. And eventually, I ended up having to just take my leave because this 'illness' started to make ME unravel and take ME down. So it became a matter of self-preservation. (I often joke that depression is contagious; I don't think it's a joke anymore).
I have my doubts that anyone in the field is going to listen to Dr. Kramer or even put his suggestions to use. I believe that the current system needs to be shaken up - I believe that a huge part of the population suffers in one form or another and I think that because of the way this disease gets treated (ignored is the better term here) - that it's just a matter of the blind leading the blind.
In the end (the final analysis if you will), it's time for a revolution, as in the way we moved away from how we treated 'crazy' people at the turn of the century. There needs to be a more aggressive approach to treating this disease. There needs to be a system where people touched by this illness can find help (and I don't just mean the main patient I mean the entire family). People suffering from depression need advocates in their corners because they DON'T KNOW what to do. I believe there is enough data out there to suggest that if this disease goes untreated for long enough, eventually it will kill it's victim. And that seems to me to be a huge pity and a horrible waste of human life, and, I think we owe it to ourselves as a society to try to find a cure for this plague.
This is a subject that absolutely always grabs my attention. (Note to self: must get this book soon).
I have always agreed with the statement used by Dr. Kramer last night on NPR, that we need to treat depression as a 'real' disease. The same way we treat any other disease. Cancer, diabetes, asthma.
You would never, for example, blame someone for getting asthma or accuse them of doing it on purpose. So why is there such a stigma attached to depression? And not just a stigma but as Dr. Kramer so brilliantly pointed out in this interview, in many ways we've 'romanticized' depression. (i.e. Shelly, Byron)
Romanticized indeed.
From the beginning of this blog, I have been writing about how depression has directly impacted me, ruined my marriage, blazed it's glorious, technicolour trail through my life. It's left me angry, bitter, confused and depressed myself.
On the one hand I married a man that I felt was highly intelligent, easy on the eyes, funny, witty, sarcastic, extremely well-read, and quirky. Turns out he was also (and still is very much) depressed. I mourn this loss. But romanticism aside, I have to wonder how much he'd be 'him' WITHOUT his depression. Because depression makes you turn inward - (depression helped make me write).
In a perfect world, we could USE our depressive states for things like self-reflection, self-discovery, and perhaps as a way to make ourselves better human beings by learning to forgive ourselves...
But (as I've seen first hand), what's more likely to happen is that we destroy our lives, and those of the ones we love most and need the most help from.
How do you treat a disease when the person is more than likely to decide 'well today I feel OK so I am not going to take my medicine' or 'I just can't handle the side effects, so I am not going to take my meds'? Or where, when they do reach out and go to counseling, a lot of times they aren't able to find someone they can truly connect with - and there really isn't much in the way of help and support for people who love those suffering from depression....
The very nature of this illness is so insidious and debilitating that often times people on the 'outside' just give up. Which then makes the person suffering from the depression give up too.
My husband (at least to my untrained eye) seemed to have a 'combination' of depressive/manic/neurosis/personality disorders because I truly don't think 'just' his depression necessarily caused him to have an affair - I do believe he felt alone and empty and this brought about a chain reaction.
So what is one left to do. You love somebody like this and you search your soul for answers of how to 'deal' with it yourself. I can tell you frankly I never found an answer that helped or eased my mind, or took away the guilt. I was running on compassion for him for so long - and that never seemed to help. And eventually, I ended up having to just take my leave because this 'illness' started to make ME unravel and take ME down. So it became a matter of self-preservation. (I often joke that depression is contagious; I don't think it's a joke anymore).
I have my doubts that anyone in the field is going to listen to Dr. Kramer or even put his suggestions to use. I believe that the current system needs to be shaken up - I believe that a huge part of the population suffers in one form or another and I think that because of the way this disease gets treated (ignored is the better term here) - that it's just a matter of the blind leading the blind.
In the end (the final analysis if you will), it's time for a revolution, as in the way we moved away from how we treated 'crazy' people at the turn of the century. There needs to be a more aggressive approach to treating this disease. There needs to be a system where people touched by this illness can find help (and I don't just mean the main patient I mean the entire family). People suffering from depression need advocates in their corners because they DON'T KNOW what to do. I believe there is enough data out there to suggest that if this disease goes untreated for long enough, eventually it will kill it's victim. And that seems to me to be a huge pity and a horrible waste of human life, and, I think we owe it to ourselves as a society to try to find a cure for this plague.
posted by Colette at 7:30 AM
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