Depression someone once told me “is a state of mind”. Well that goes without saying.
We all go through our lives where we have events that take over, death of a good friend/relative, job loss, break up of a relationship, divorce, debt problems, and some of us can cope, and some of us, well we just cannot cope.
For those of us who cant cope, we are told to get on with our lives and make the best of what we have, and even though this makes sense, the words to someone who just cannot cope are “easier said than done”.
In today’s society, I think things are a lot tougher than they were in my parent’s time, although saying that when I think my mum in her youth went through a bomb raid where they lost everything, only to move into a house that got burnt down and they lost everything a second time. My grandmother still managed to set up a further family home and my mum lived with her until she married my dad.
Never at that time was there a psychiatrist asking my mum how she felt about what happened, she just went through her teens as normal and if there were any problems my mother never once expressed them.
Yet now it seems that every person who is going through an emotional trauma, are instantly put into a category of depression and referred to a counselor/psychiatrist.
I mean to say that any slight change in personality or an unusual act by that person causes all else around him to suddenly announce “oh its depression” – is it?
Okay so we know that world events of recent years have completely devastated us, i.e. the 9/11 and the London bombings, and left a lot of families grief stricken, I don’t want to sound blas about this, as I personally never lost anybody in either tragedy, but I can tell you it shook me completely.
I could not travel on the underground (in fact for nearly 2 years) and buses, well I always sat downstairs. Anyone carrying a rucksack was to me a potential “bomber” and if I ever received work assignments in a tower block, I had to refuse them. I still am a very nervous flyer, but despite this, still fly.
The mind is a very powerful organ and can literally take over your life, if you let it, but the contributing factor is the way in which society can add fuel to the fire when dealing with someone who has depression.
Some people just cannot talk about their problems and prefer to resolve them on their own, and that is their choice, but equally some mental problems are just not resolved this way.
Soceity do need to tackle depression and its not always a medicinal cure.
