I read an article yesterday which prompted me to return
to my blog, given that I can express my feelings here with a degree of
anonymity, whilst venting my spleen. Whilst I am not concerned with getting an
audience, I felt the need to put my thoughts down somewhere as a cathartic
process; it was that or thump the first tourist to get in my way wandering the
cobbled streets where live!
I’ve always enjoyed the writer India Knight’s articles,
when I sneak myself a copy of the Sunday Times if my husband is not around; Murdoch
papers being banned outright in our house! I don’t always agree with her point
of view but I consider her more balanced and less reactionary than, say Barbara
Ellen. But today she really saddened me with an article she wrote on
depression. She made some sweeping statements, trivialised and mocked the
illness and when challenged on twitter by one or two readers (including Monty
Don) came across as defensive and prickly.
So why did it irk me so much? A few key phrases really
made me bristle, particularly her use of ‘we’ where she really meant ‘I’ (or at
least me and my select group of friends and family). Her key argument was that
there is no longer a stigma attached to depression and that some celebrities
should stop publishing their stories thinking that they are helping to lift a
taboo and enlighten others. On that point she is so, so wrong.
My experience of depression goes back a long way,
although I have only ever been an onlooker and never a sufferer. As a child my mother taught me that
depression afflicted ‘lazy bastards’ only (her words). I was too young to
question this logic when she first proffered her opinion and for many years
considered this explicable: sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself whilst
others toiled appeared, to my teenage self, intrinsically thoughtless and
selfish. She also cited her theory that 'no-one got it in the olden days when
they didn't have benefits to support them' and lumped it together with ME as
one of her so-called malingerer’s diseases.
I grew up, left home at 18 and when my best friend died
aged 21 from Meningitis, we were both living abroad. The Dutch family who were
with her at the end welcomed me to their home after her death and mentioned (in
that blunt, oh so Dutch 'let it all hang out' way) that she had been on Valium.
I was shocked. I'd never have guessed and for months we had been inseparable
whilst we had both been living in France. To hear now that I had missed this
fact meant that she had been depressed and hidden it completely. Well, sort of.
Her parents told me years later that when she had been down and crying to them
on the phone they had told her to call me and ask me to come over for a girl's
night in. Looking back I remembered that I'd sometimes found those evenings
odd. She was often 'up and down' and we'd had a few spats when she didn't want
to do anything and I'd questioned why she'd bothered asking me to come. I was
18, self-absorbed and not nearly wordly-wise enough to spot the sign that she
simply didn't want to find herself alone in case...well let's not elaborate.
I told a neighbour in France about the Valium revelation,
as we had become close when I had needed to escape the French family I
au-paired for (their issues made my friend's depression seem trivial). She then
told me she had spent a large chunk of her life on anti-depressants and that I
would not necessarily 'spot' a depressed person. That she carried on
'functioning' whilst ill was not an indication that those who didn't were lazy,
but was more to do with degrees of depression. She explained that for some
people it was mild and tablets/counselling might enable them to get on with
their lives as if there was no problem. For others there would be greater
issues and they may need recovery time that wouldn't allow them to work whilst
some people would be hospitalised. What I learnt that day was to never judge
anyone in terms of how they were coping with it and above all, if someone could
get support through an illness and not have to cope with added pressures such as
work, they would stand a better chance of recovery (though even then, even with
all the help in the world, she made it clear that the illness may still claim
them no matter how hard everyone tried).
At university I had a friend who developed a depressive
illness when she went to live in Italy, part way through our year abroad,
leaving behind the support network she had built up in France. She sank very
low and as I had a studio with room in Annecy big enough for two, she asked to
come and stay when her university course ended. For 4 weeks she slept on a
mattress on my floor and many mornings when I woke she was already sobbing in
bed. She was taking Prozac and had been told it would take a while to 'kick in'
so I tried to keep her busy. We went to agencies with her CV to find her a
summer job, met with friends and did anything other than sit at home. I thought
I was helping but looking back I was trying too hard to make her better. I
wanted to heal her, and hadn't yet learnt that I was no cure for depression!
All the same, I knew she had to see the treatment through and was furious when
she came off a call from another friend in Spain who had told her to come off
the pills. She claimed to know the efficacy (or not) of Prozac and had said
that it was bad for her. She hadn't seen our mutual friend in 6 months and had
no idea how much she had changed and whilst I recognised that I had no true
knowledge of the medicinal side, I wanted her to at least take her first dose.
When she flushed the last few weeks' of tablets down the loo I worried myself
sick she would go down even further having not seen the initial, tough period
through. I was sure that one person's cure could just as easily be another
person's waste of time but that you can't prove anything until you give it a
go. She ended up getting an au-pairing job in a town about an hour away from me
and went on to do it all summer, but admitted later she spent most of the time
going through the motions then shutting herself away. When she returned to the
UK in the autumn she sought medical help again, saw her medication through and
eventually recovered to sit and pass her finals.
As I went on through life I came across many more people
who struggled. Some survived and others succumbed. A friend of my Godless-mother
eventually killed herself and the desperate attempts made by her husband to
stop her have stayed with me. My heart went out to him as I have tried so hard
to stop people hurting themselves in the past, but only recently, nearing 40,
learnt it's utterly impossible to be anyone's saviour. My husband takes each
day as it comes and I try to do likewise. Nearly a year after he was first
diagnosed he continues to fight it and whilst he’s not harmed himself yet, I
live with the certain knowledge that one day he could. Nothing I say or do in
the meantime will ever lessen that chance.
So my experience has been wide and varied and I know,
without a doubt, that there is still a massive stigma associated with
depression. For every kind soul that would consider my husband's current struggle
with kindness and compassion there is another saying ‘I don't get it and I
think you should pull yourself together’. Maybe, just maybe, reading the story
of someone in the public eye they would be surprised to learn had suffered, might,
just might help them to get it.
I tell very few people about my husband. Enough people
have made scathing comments in the past about depressives for me to know I
can't tell them. He is crippled with shame which, no matter how many times I
tell him he shouldn't be, he can't shake off. Occasionally I let myself down
and say/do something which causes a massive row between us. I am not
superhuman. After hearing for the umpteenth time how inconsiderate our
piano-playing singing-teacher neighbour has been that day, after my own long
day at work, I suggest he might like to deal with it or shut up. When my
brother emails one of his regular, inflammatory missives, to call me a murderer
for an abortion I had 15 years ago after a date-rape I flip my lid and leave
the house to deal with my feelings. I don't want to burden my husband but he
sees it as me rejecting his help and thinking he's useless and once again we
end up arguing. It's a minefield and I try every day not to do anything which
might create more tension, whilst not being able to talk to others about events
at home because they would probably think my husband unreasonable and
over-sensitive. He’s not. He’s a man struggling with having to admit each day
that he is laid low by this awful illness.
India Knight claimed that everyone gets depressed. I once
spent a day in bed at university, crying uncontrollably with no idea what was
wrong. I eventually got up at about 6pm and called my mum. She told me to call
my aunt (as she was on her way out to a dinner party and hadn’t got the time) and
tell her what was wrong. My aunt and uncle lived nearby and they offered to
come and get me. I said no, I'd come out to visit in the morning and just sleep
it off. I was still fragile when they picked me up the following day but after
a good lunch, lots of hugs, a hot bath and a stiff drink I was OK again. That
wasn't depression. It was a bout of the blues. It scared the shit out of me
because the thought of waking up and feeling like that day after day was
terrifying. But it was simply a massive down day, probably hormone-related, and
I got over it. If someone has exaggerated something like this for literary
effect, it's a shame, but we need to overlook and ignore the drama queens. For
every attention-seeker there are 10 more genuine stories. We can naturally sift
out what sounds like a made-for-autobiography anecdote and a real, from the
heart, revelation of desperate times. To suggest that we all know what
depression is like is incredibly dangerous. Also, no-one should ever denigrate
someone else’s story as one of the made up ones (or as India Knight suggested
one caused by excessive drug-taking). One day a person might be too scared to
tell someone how they feel as it will look like attention-seeking and the
consequences may be that they never let it out and it might just totally consume
them.
An article in The Guardian last weekend summed up my most
recent feelings and I sent it to my husband. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/sep/29/letter-to-husband-on-first-anniversary
You see, even those of us who are capable of discussing it need all the written
help we can get. He worries I am being saintly/wasting my life and I can't
prove I am just one of many people being stoic. I could with this wee article
and whilst someone else might have read that and thought ‘so what?’ for me it
helped me reiterate my feelings towards him and show that he is not alone; we are
not alone.
India Knight quoted the statistic that one in seven people
is on anti-depressants, so this makes it commonplace. Sure they are taking them
but they won't all be telling friends and family. If me and my husband, a
middle-class, white, professional couple with degrees and mainly similarly
educated friends can’t tell all, what hope for others with additional stigmas
or battles to fight? She claims that ‘we get it’ – and don’t need any more
stories to help us understand – but this ‘we’ applies to a certain set of
well-read media folk. I get it. My best friend gets it. Most of my colleagues
don't get it, which I have ascertained from chats around the office. Just this
morning I heard someone whispering about a famous person being in The Priory with
it and she questioned how he could have been allowed to hold a high-powered job
down if he was ‘so unstable’. My neighbours probably don't get it, which I have
gleaned from the interactions we've had about our neighbour in the basement who
is housebound with her depression. Some family have said to my husband’s face
that they don't get it. Harsh but they think they are being cruel to be kind. Some
friends have previously intimated that they don't get depression, maybe when we
have discussed other friends and 'celebrity' sufferers, so I am absolutely
certain that the stigma is still there. Even when I take a risk and tell
someone new about my husband (perhaps because yet again I am attending a social
event alone) I know that some will probably outwardly sympathise whilst,
perhaps, thinking 'what a load of bollocks'.
I can’t be sure they won’t because I’ve heard them do this about others
when their backs were turned.
Sharing is never a bad thing or too much information. Every
so often when I am talking to someone I don't know too well, I might mention my
mother. Her cruelty knows no bounds and we are now estranged, so I am usually
reciting an anecdote about how evil she once was to me. It's generally
considered taboo to suggest that the maternal bond is totally absent, so when I
tell someone my story and they can relate to it and finally unburden themselves
and their own pain it's a relief to them to know they are not alone. Again,
every neglectful mother's behaviour varies but sharing my story stops some other
people feeling guilt and blaming themselves, if they know others had this
happen to them too. Depression is much the same. It defies 'logic' so the more
examples we have, the more people can learn about its pernicious, random and
utterly illogical nature.
My preferred analogy for enlightening people as to how
hard it is for sufferers to be open about the illness is by comparing it with
migraines. I have had 3 migraines in my life. The first terrified me. It felt
like someone was cleaving my head open with a hammer. The second rendered me
unable to open my eyes and remove my contact lenses as even a dark room proved
painful. I haven't had one since my 20's (thank God, touch wood) and yet since
then I have heard many folk describe a headache as a migraine. They haven't got
a clue. But who am I to tell them that? I might know it's not and want to tell
them so, but I can't. That's not for me to say. One man's agony is another
man's slight ache. They have been told in the past perhaps that it’s a migraine
(maybe by a well-meaning parent) and so they think it is, but it’s probably
only a bad, annoying headache. We can't ever know what something truly feels
like for someone else and it's incredibly presumptuous when someone claims they
do. But that person who thinks they have a migraine, takes an aspirin and feels
better within an hour will never understand their colleague who calls in sick
with one. That other person may be at home unable to move until the extra
powerful drugs start to work but their colleague thinks they should at least
make an effort and come in. They have no idea and never will. If only India
Knight had written ‘me, I think, I presume, I suggest’ but instead she stated
certainties and facts; yet she has none.
So what have I learnt that I do think could help?
1. Depression doesn't excuse a person everything. Yes it
can cause them to behave in a way that they regret but someone admitting they
are depressed does not excuse them all human failings. It is possible to feel
compassion for them for struggling with the illness without having to forgive
them their every negative characteristic. I don't need to like a celebrity
suddenly because they say they have been depressed but I can still respect them
for admitting it. Even if their story doesn't 'ring true' who am I to
judge?
2. One size most definitely does not fit all. To hear
testimonials from lots of people, those you might 'suspect' and those you would
never have guessed helps put that in to perspective. All the people I have met
in life have suffered to varying degrees and whilst some surprised me when it
developed or I heard they had been suffering, others only came in to my life
whilst in the grip of it and were obviously melancholic personalities. You
never can tell and whenever someone chooses to tell their story it only
highlights that fact.
3. Not everyone knows that they are depressed. Reading a
testimonial can be their lightbulb moment. Don't knock it. If David Walliams
means something to them they will read his story, but Bill Oddie’s struggle may
well pass them by. Horses for courses.
4. Not everyone knows that their partner/child/friend is
suffering. Take Gary Speed. No-one knows if he was or not but he is not the
only person to have committed suicide and left even those closest to them
mystified. If reading about someone's depression causes a person to consider
someone else's struggles afresh, they may be able to reach out. Or not. No-one
can cure another person's illness but if 1 out of 10 leads to a breakthrough
it's better than 0.
