Prisoner of the Mind: Living with Depression

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Prisoner of the Mind: Living with Depression

continued

It was an odd emotional roller-coaster that seemed always to point downward. I worried constantly about neglected home repairs and the lack of money we had to fix them. I had little appetite (partly due to the AIDS drugs and the anti-depressant I was taking), and I only ate enough to wash down my many AIDS medications.

For the first few weeks, I was particularly angry. It’s a “character trait” I’ve had all my life—a bad temper, an irritable personality. (I now know that irritable, angry children are often depressed.) And this summer, nothing that came out of my mouth was positive. I hated everything— from TV commercials, to our status-conscious neighbors, to the doctors who couldn’t get to the bottom of all my pain.

Shame and Denial

Not surprisingly, my own denial and lack of information kept me from really understanding I had a mental disease. I’d been told I was depressed (and of course, by the time I was infected with HIV, I had “a good reason” to be). Doctors had prescribed anti-depressants for me since 1996, but none ever explained the disease. It was only this year that I tried to discern when I’ve had “episodes” of depression—to tease out the disease from what I always thought was just my “rotten” personality.

In fact, shame is the real reason it’s taken me nearly 35 years to face this thing. I’ve learned that shame is one of its symptoms, but I still believe depressed people feel shame for more reasons than “distorted thinking.” Maybe “embarrassment” is a better word for it, but mental illness in America is still often ridiculed, if not scorned outright.

Of course, my slowness to come to terms with depression parallels the painfully slow learning curve of the medical system itself. Thirty-five years ago, even the psychiatric profession didn’t know much about it. My father was a psychoanalyst, yet even he did not see (or want to see) the symptoms of depression in his own daughter.

And even my current doctor doesn’t seem to “get” it, although she’s been prescribing antidepressants to me for years (since 50-80% of people with AIDS have depression). Recently she told me of a new study that showed depressed HIV-positive women had higher mortality rates than those who weren’t depressed. To my mind, this conclusion merited “a big ‘duh.’” Yet my doctor said, “But this shows depression is real!”

Understanding Depression

There has been a sea change in America since the sixties, when depression was never discussed in casual conversation. Celebrities have confessed they have the disease. The media has picked up on it, and psychoactive drugs have flooded the market. Now it seems family physicians are prescribing antidepressants for almost every kind of upset.

Much progress has been made, and many lives saved. Depression went from being mysterious and unknown to ubiquitous and almost fashionable. But there’s the rub. Movies like “As Good as it Gets” and TV shows like “Monk” make mental disorders look cute and endearing. Such shows sanitize the problem, smooth out the unpleasant edges, and leave out details so that painful diseases become palatable and even humorous. The reason, I believe, is because the real thing is still somewhat unsavory in our society, which values productivity and conformity above all else.

The problem is that the incidence of depression is growing rapidly—up to 20% of Americans experience it at any one time. And to stop its spread, we have to examine it more closely—and I think the stigma of mental illness prevents us from doing so. Instead, we hold it at arm’s length, as if gazing at it through the wrong end of a telescope.

Recently I read that “everyone knows what it’s like to be depressed.” In other words, depression is something like a long-lasting sad feeling. But sad feelings and a major depressive episode are as similar as a drop of water and the ocean. You simply can’t know the ocean by observing the drop.

The Turning Point

When in July of this year the episode had gotten so bad I was speaking in a monotone and my husband looked like a whipped puppy, I got scared enough to face the shame and admit I had a serious mental disease. I swore to myself that if there were anything I could do to prevent it, I would never go through that again.

Of course, it was very difficult to do anything at first. But slowly, I read a half-dozen self-help books that were, to my astonishment, helpful. I switched anti-depressants. And even though I’d sworn off psychotherapy after a half-dozen ineffective attempts, I tried yet one more therapist (who will, I hope, be my last).

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I began to walk in the park, having learned that light and exercise are helpful. I improved my diet. I wrote my thoughts in a journal and renewed my spiritual practice. I’m still not out of the woods, but I have regained a shaky hope.

For me, the sobering reality is that after a lifetime of dysthymia, it appears I’ve begun experiencing major depressive episodes that are worse each time. Statistics show each episode increases the likelihood of a recurrence. I’m working hard on staying well.

Last updated: 7/06

Source: GNIF Brain Blogger
By: Colleen Bridget Farrell
Editor: Shaheen Lakhan

Prisoner of the Mind: Living with Depression

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