Once again I'm choosing to focus this blog on depression. This time of year people experience depression as often as the common cold, but for the most part, the common cold won't kill you, depression can.
I'm often left feeling dismay when someone tells me that they suspect that they are experiencing depression but they refuse to get help for it. How is it that in our high-tech, intellectually enlightened era people are still afraid to seek medical help for an all too common problem? The most common excuse I hear is "I keep telling myself that if I just make myself feel happy, I will get past it," Bull-Pucky! Let me fill you in on an apparently little known fact..."Depression is not equated with weakness! And you can’t pretend your way past it!" That is called denial.
Of course I understand that part of feeling depressed is feeling helpless and or worthless. Depression makes one feel like they don’t deserve to be helped. It is like the Devil’s advocate whispering in your ear, continually telling you that it is your fault that you are feeling this way; that you are just too flawed to be happy; and that going to a Dr. is admitting defeat. But giving into that defeatist voice in your head is allowing the depression to win.
Depression is a medical condition of the body - specifically, the brain. Every year people get the common cold, and every year they go to the drug store and get cold medication to help relieve it. They may even anticipate getting a cold and stock up on vitamin C, Echinacea and Zinc to help prevent themselves from getting sick. How is it any different with Depression?
Every winter 25% of the population experiences some degree of depression. But instead of trying to prevent it from taking over, or getting it under control once it hits, otherwise intelligent people make a choice to spend their winter months suffering. They allow their ill body to be in control of their life and the daily decisions they make. They begin to suffer with anxiety about everything and everyone around them and instead of doing something to solve the problem, they change their life to accommodate their pain. They stop engaging in exciting activities "because something bad might happen." Or they stay indoors because they just can't get the energy to do anything else. How is that living? It isn't, it's hiding.
The fact is you are human, and as a human you aren’t any more capable of curing yourself of a clinical depression than you are of turning off a nasty cold. Yes, there are things one can do to help alleviate mild symptoms of depression or despair, but when you get to the point that you are making decisions to accommodate your fears and lack of motivation, you are no longer experiencing a mild form of the illness you are clinically depressed, and you don’t deserve to suffer.
According to a Virginia Commonwealth University study in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry "patients with recurrent depression could benefit from long-term maintenance with anti-depressant medication."
There are so many things that the world has been provided with to help ease the suffering that depression can bring. Why make the choice to continue suffering? Take advantage of the wonderful benefits that modern science has to offer and be grateful that you live in a world where treatment is available. OK, asking you to be grateful while you are still depressed is asking too much, but after getting some help you will be.
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