Depression – Only For Women?
I have suffered from depression a number of times during my adult life; sometimes just mildly when everything seemed ‘blue’ and I just couldn’t be bothered with anything, at other times more severely when I needed help and knew it.
Knowing that you are depressed seems to me to be the most difficult thing to accept. There are many issues in life that you agonize about – people, careers, marriage, childbearing to name but a few, but none compare with accepting the fact that you are depressed and need help.
Why should this be so? Why so much guilt associated with an illness that is not your fault? Perhaps it is all bound up with the emotive references like ‘barmy’, ‘loony’, ‘mad as a hatter’ and ‘insane’. All the colorful descriptions that call up images of gibbering, dribbling, ugly people in mental hospitals, or – dread the thought – shuffling along the street where they may actually accost you.
I hid the fact that I took anti-depressants from everyone for years, until a particularly intuitive doctor took time to explain and stress to me that depression can be a ’simple’ deficiency disorder where the body cannot synthesise or control the amounts of serotonin in the system, and depression is the result. I know that this explanation is simplistic and I don’t want in any way to diminish the complex and serious forms of mental illness that cause distress to sufferers and family alike. However, what troubles me right now is that my husband is suffering and would seemingly rather die than admit that he may be depressed.
Is this because he is a man? The notion that he is somehow ‘letting the side down’, showing weakness or acting in an unmanly manner is dominant in his refusal to seek help. And yet, as he denies the malady, the behaviour gets worse. Irritability has long progressed to paranoia, annoyance to rage, and periods of silence punctuate our family life.
We have all learned to avoid any form of confrontation, however ridiculous, and expressing a point of view that differs from his is challenging his very maleness. What a relief it would be if he could be treated and maybe return to half the person he was a few years ago. Treading on eggshells has become a way of life but the horrible reality is that unless something changes, our three boys will never want to spend time at home other than for ‘duty visits’ because it just isn’t worth the risk.
GardenMad1 at http://www.gardeningforeveryman.com
http://www.gardeningforeveryman.com