DEPRESSION – THE REALITY OF ITS EXISTENCE

When we talk about mental health, it’s a wide topic that covers a wide variety of mental health issues that range from (but not limited to) clinical depression, anxiety and bipolar disorders, obsessive compulsive behaviors, dementia, Attention-deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) autism, schizophrenia to mention but a few. Depression, however, is the most common among the youth today and a leading cause of suicide as a result of lack of treatment. Bear in mind that treatment may be something as humane as simply being there for someone with depression or recommending that they seek the help of a mental health expert. One thing we should never do, however, is dismiss depression and its consequences.

Many of us don’t understand the toll depression takes on a person, and rightly so because it’s almost inexplicable. Have you ever been at what you considered your lowest point in life? Not take that and add a hundred floors beneath it; that’s how depression feels. You feel worthless. Useless. A waste of space. Unwanted. Alone. Worst of all, you feel like a burden to those closest to you because you’re mostly afraid if you share your feelings, they will either not take you seriously or tell you to grow up and handle your situation. And that is because we are mainly raised in a society where sharing our feelings is not encouraged and seen as a form of weakness. So if one is depressed, they suffer quietly, by themselves, and the next thing you know, they’ve committed suicide because they cannot go on. Literally.

You can’t accurately tell who is suffering from depression because there are no visible signs. You can’t take their temperature or prescribe a drug to stop their bouts of vomiting. What you can do, however, is check up on your friends and family; show them that you care. As someone who suffered and beat depression, there was no way I could have made it out if it weren’t for the support system around me. And don’t belittle someone who opens up to you about their feelings and distance yourself from them, and / or ridiculing and mocking them. Be present. Offer help where and how you can. Refer mental health experts. Involve family members in the process. Support them. Save a life, be humane. Don’t mock what you don’t understand, and don’t take depression lightly. We have lost way too many people as a result to keep labeling it a “white people problem”; it’s a silent epidemic deadlier than Ebola or HIV/AIDS.