On March 31, 2018, Reona Payne was brutally murdered by her lover, Orwain Sandy, who was employed as a Captain in the Guyana Defence Force (GDF). Sandy shot Payne over 14 times as he went berserk because she was reportedly having an affair.
As the tearful Army Captain made his way to the courthouse for arraignment on the heinous crime last Tuesday, his Attorney related to the media that his client will need to consult with a psychiatrist because of his condition. While the Attorney did not divulge much detail, it would appear that the GDF Captain may have been dealing for years with challenging mental health issues.
And while nothing justifies or excuses his actions towards Payne and her murder, there is need for those in authority within the country’s high security agencies to place more emphasis on dealing condignly with the mental health and competency of their members.
As Hamlet had stated in his writings, “I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory…”
Depression is part of the human condition and Hamlet’s description of its symptoms matches those in a modern medical textbook. The categorisation has become more precise, the treatments more advanced, but the illness is still badly understood and its consequences often hidden. Depression remains if not a source of shame, then at least bewilderment to those who suffer from it and those around them. Yet it is on the increase, neurotic disorders affecting one in six adults at some point in their lives. Society, and medical science, needs a better response.
Back in 2010, UK Journalist and the Guardian’s head of special projects, who led a team of Journalists investigating international trends and issues, Mark Rice-Oxley wrote powerfully of his “decline from unremarkable working dad of three to stranded depressive sitting on the floor doing simple jigsaws”.
His shock was not just at the crushing effect of a condition that seemed to come from nowhere, but the confusion about how to overcome it.
The truth is medical advances have controlled many diseases, but depression in its different forms is either becoming more common or being detected more often – and perhaps both. Pharmaceutical treatments, while restricted in their effectiveness, are being used much more widely: 39 million antidepressants are said to be prescribed in Britain each year.
These drugs have strong side-effects and treat the symptoms, not the causes, of depression. For many people they are an essential relief, but a society in which a growing number of people depend on expensive chemicals to control their mental state cannot be healthy. Nor, however, is one in which depression is ignored, or regarded as a passing private issue, different somehow from illnesses with physical causes and consequences. The world has got better at understanding that people with depression are genuinely unwell and need help, but not always at offering that help. The choice sometimes seems to be between self-cure and potent drugs. Four out of five people experiencing some form of depression get better without treatment, but for many the symptoms return, and for a minority, recovery does not come of its own accord.
Part of the challenge is defining what it is to be depressed. The term has such a wide common meaning that it can be used to cover anything from passing grief to long-term illness. The Royal College of Psychiatrists lists typical symptoms: feeling utterly tired; feeling useless, inadequate and hopeless; and feeling unhappy most of the time among them. But there can be no medical exactitude to an illness experienced in different degrees and different ways by different people – only that you know it when it comes.
There are reasons to think that depression is a disease of affluence, or a consequence of the way modern urban life is lived. This argument can run close to suggesting that people who are depressed but otherwise healthy, wealthy and secure have no business being ill and that their lot in life is still better than that of most of the planet’s population. But it is a real illness and has real causes, not fully understood. Drink, drugs, a lack of sleep, too little company, and too much work can all help unbalance the mind. Sunshine and exercise can help restore it. But there is something deep about serious depression which cannot be driven away immediately by counselling, a brisk walk, kind friends or great music, though such things can help.
The human mind is the most extraordinary and least understood part of the body, the source of joy and creativity. It can also, as Hamlet knew, create the horror of depression: “This brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.”
