Having anxiety and depression is like being scared and tired at the same time. It is the fear of failure but no urge to be protective. It’s wanting friends but hating socializing. It’s wanting to be alone, but not wanting to be lonely. It’s caring about everything, but caring about nothing. It’s feeling everything at once, then feeling paralyzingly numb.
–Lisa Earl
Yes, it is an overwhelming reality, the vicissitudes of the human mind and the multilayered emotions it carries in its folds and creases. Just like the primal emotions of happiness, anger, fear, anxiety define the mental framework of us humans who take pride in our identity as ‘thinking beings’, depression, anguish and a feeling of deep despair is also a reality of the human psyche, which we often tend to overlook in our quest to appear perfectly sane, heroic in our mundane everyday. In this age when Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other forms of the social media have assumed an aggressive, almost a voyeuristic presence in our daily lives when we feel we are under consistent, relentless scrutiny by our fellow humans, either real or virtual acquaintances, aren’t we hell-bent on portraying ourselves in the best light, with cheeky pictures and happy posts?
Don’t we try our utmost to deny, negate the existence of dark places that our minds might also have been subjected to? Yes, we are all human and it would perhaps be perfectly okay if we would wear our scars as badges of honour, but in reality, it is still a stigma and a taboo to share deep chasms of unrest and indescribable pain in between the daily chores of living, which has the reputation of a notorious evil named ‘depression’. Yet, from time to time, we stumble on the sudden, unprecedented suicide news of Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, Lucy Gordon, Jiah Khan, Sushant Singh Rajput and countless other celebrities every year, who had everything going for them, at least apparently. But just beneath the façade of propriety, the subject of ‘mental health’ and ‘depression’, as touchy as it might be for them as well, was actually lurking around the corner, sans our attention.
How many of us still remember the harrowing truths leading up to Hollywood’s diva Marilyn Monroe’s death, prompted by her self-administered dose of sedative drugs?
Isn’t history also witness to the dark, shattering suicide incidents of luminaries in the field of literature and art, with streaks of extreme sadism in the way they ended their lives? Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, who marked a brutal cessation to their mortal lives by pushing themselves to the nadir of darkness while remaining at the height of their literary success. What were the existential questions and the unresolved crisis of their lives they had grappled within the darkest hours before their death, which we have perhaps never known, and will never know? What is this seed of deep despair which plagues many of us, ordinary humans in our daily lives, and grows roots surreptitiously, silently? What happens to the human mind when it wanders in those darkest of places? Does it have its origin in a merciless societal structure where one must fit in the so-called parameters of ‘perfection’, both personal and professional, in a sub-culture of bullying and gaslighting that we have tried to adapt to, without questioning?
The facts of mental health and depression that we all need to stress upon:
Delaina Fico, LMSW, a social worker at the arc of Monroe states some ground realities of mental health that most of us are ignorant about. There are misconceptions galore about normal, functional human beings who apparently fit in our social periphery. “A person that is generally mentally healthy may experience emotional problems, changes in behaviour, or have strained and unhealthy relationships with others. A person that is diagnosed with a mental illness may experience moments of clarity and be highly functional.” Fico states in an article, which reveals eye-opening truths about our skewed perceptions regarding whom we consider mentally ill and whom we think are perfectly sane. Yes, unfortunately, we are part of a shameful scenario when we are quick to label and judge any kind of dysfunctional behaviour without even knowing the scientific basis of how the human mind works in relation to depression and other mental health issues.
We might question ourselves why we still can’t think about any discourse related to mental health/mental illness the way we can think about physical ailments, like diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy and so on. Seeking medical interventions for such diseases is a widely accepted norm, whereas speaking about one’s long-standing problem with depression, bipolar personality disorders and other mental ailments is still not considered with openness and empathy. Many of us are yet to come to terms with the fact that mental illness is also a human pathological condition, for which medical intervention in the form of psychotherapy, medication and qualified professional help are the appropriate steps. What are the inhibitions that prevent us from the discourse, that would have led us towards a more balanced society where acceptance is synonymous with understanding and inclusivity?
In the past one year, a staggering number of 17 million adults in the United States has suffered from at least one bout of depression. The picturesque backdrop of Golden Gate Bridge in California has, in fact, been home to at least 1,600 suicide cases, ranking second after the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in China. Globally, there are nearly 800, 000 suicide cases due to depression every year, according to a data of mental health released by the World Health Organization (WHO). As the people of the world continue fighting with the coronavirus pandemic in today’s unprecedented times, we must not forget that the individuals dealing with clinical depression, the after-effects of trauma, thoughts of suicide and other forms of mental unrest are all the more vulnerable in this period of infinite quarantine.
Thanks to the power of words in the social media today, ‘depression’ and ‘mental’ health’ are hashtags which are widely shared and made viral with the intent of starting discourses on the issues. However, we must acknowledge that quick, uninformed posts and comments triggered by sudden news of celebrity deaths will only fuel controversy and lead us further away from internalizing universal truths that define the phenomenon of mental health.
It is high time we start talking proactively about mental issues with an amount of sensitivity, understanding how crucial it is to intervene as humans to alleviate the malady from the grassroots level.
References:
Mental Health: Myths and Misconceptions
Meeting truths in the time of COVID – 19