Last Friday, April 7th, was World Health Day 2017. The theme was “Depression: Let’s talk”. I quite liked this theme, it was direct, succinct and therapeutic: we really do need to talk about depression, and to depressed people.
I spent two months rotating through psychiatry at the tail-end of my fourth year. Right off the bat, our first couple of classes revolved around depression. One of the issues that kept coming up was the stigma against depression and other mental illnesses. Unfortunately, since depression isn’t something as visible as, say, a bleeding head wound, it’s trivialized by many. Saying “Just cheer up” to someone with depression is really quite pointless. If we were given a choice in how we felt, won’t we all choose to be mind-numbingly happy all of the time?
Life is full of ups and downs. Everyone has those times when they feel completely and absolutely miserable. But for some people, those downs last much longer. For people suffering from depression, those downs, those feelings, interfere with their everyday lives; interfere with their relationships; interfere with the way they treat the people around them; prevent them from enjoying things they normally would have.
One thing one of the doctors teaching us kept emphasising to us was that in order to make a diagnosis of a mental disorder, there must be characteristic symptoms, those symptoms must last for at least a certain duration of time, and must cause impairment.
We learnt a little mnemonic for remembering the symptoms of major depression, SIG E. CAPS – changes in Sleep patterns, loss of Interest in pleasurable activities, excessive Guilt, loss of Energy, poor Concentration, change in Appetite, Psychomotor activity (restlessness or slowness), and Suicidal ideation.
Impairment refers to impaired functioning, like an impaired ability to function at work, an impaired ability to function socially. For most people, it causes them to isolate themselves, and their performance at work suffers.
Everyone can suffer from depression – even children. But somehow, in Guyana, even though there have been several campaigns to alert people to its insidious and pernicious effects, we just dismiss its prevalence here.
And one of the more serious aspects of a person being depressed is that they think of committing suicide, some plan out their suicide, and might even attempt to commit suicide.
Here, at home in Guyana, we’re no strangers to suicide. In fact, we have the highest suicide rate in the world.
Most of the patients I saw in the hospital were there after they had attempted suicide, or they were brought to the hospital by a concerned family member or co-worker. If someone you care about is suffering from depression, you should offer them emotional support: talk to them and listen to them; actually listen to what they’re saying. Try to remove your preconceived notions and judgement and actually listen to what the person in front of you is trying to say. And offer to help them get the profession help they need, because most people don’t go out on their own and seek the help they need.
And why don’t they? Because we practise a culture that labels persons suffering from mental illnesses as ‘mad people’ and call a psychiatric hospital ‘Berbice Madhouse’. Who’d admit to having a problem, lest they be labelled ‘mad’? So, if you’re someone who likes making light of someone else’s mental illness, you need to check that bad attitude at the door.
Be observant, be supportive. If you’ve noticed someone close to you having a change in their mood, talk to them. Sometimes it might be something, sometimes it might be nothing, but there at least needs to be a conversation.
Depression: let’s talk.
