THAT'S MEN:We feel we have come a long way in accepting depression but who would admit having it, at work?
THE FIRST JOB I ever applied for in journalism was with the Irish Pressand in the process I learnt a lot about attitudes towards depression. I had just finished school and had got as far as the shortlist for appointment as a trainee journalist.
The form I had to fill in for the second interview asked if I had ever been depressed. In a fit of exuberance, which I now know to be foolishness, I wrote down, “Only when it rains.”
That remark earned me what I can only describe as a verbal beating up at the second interview. Was I depressed? How often did I get depressed? I didn’t get depressed? Why, then, had I written down on the form that I got depressed?
I didn’t get the job and perhaps it was all for the best. Still, I wish the gentlemen who conducted the interview a long stay in a hot place and I don’t mean Spain.
I still wonder, though, if that reply about depression was what did for me. The mere inclusion on the application form of a question about depression suggests some concerns on the part of whoever drew it up about employing anybody who suffered from this most common of conditions.
I mention all this because I wonder if attitudes today have changed all that much. We might say we have changed our attitudes to depression but, there again, who except an idiot like me is going to even hint on an application form that they might be suffering from this condition? Instead the form, as completed, will reflect what is expected – namely that the applicant is perfect in every respect and entirely free of any of the usual quirks of the human condition.
This is part of the burden we are expected to carry around with us: the pretence that there isn’t a thing wrong with us, that we are all 100 per cent up and running, just as good as the day we came out of the box.
Maybe women get a little more latitude in this regard, what with PMT and their mysterious plumbing and all the rest. Still, I wouldn’t recommend to women either that they go around “admitting” to depression on application forms.
A blog on Psych Central’s website recently caught my eye – it was a piece singing the praises of well-known men who had gone public about their problems. Writing about his depression, the astronaut Buzz Aldrin says in his latest memoir Magnificent Isolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon: “There were days I could not get out of bed. Some mornings I responded to the doctor’s questions, other mornings, I ignored his questions and carried on my litany of self-doubt and self-hate.”
The message might be that if Buzz Aldrin can talk about his depression, so can you. On the other hand, if I was applying for a job as an astronaut, I wouldn’t be putting depression down as a characteristic I suffer from.
Eric Clapton went public about his alcoholism. Winston Churchill drank quantities of booze which today would have him carted off by the health police and floated out to sea. Harrison Ford, that paragon of manliness, has struggled with depression.
But though we accept the imperfections of these public figures, we still seem to feel the need to present ourselves, especially at work, as paragons of all the strengths and virtues. Yet there are no paragons, really. The man who presents himself at interview as a gung-ho manager may wake in a sweat the morning after he is promoted. The trade union official who presents himself as a tough, no-nonsense negotiator may be eaten up with insecurities behind the façade. The old Gaelic Irish, the Christian Brothers told me, expected their High Kings to be without blemish. A silly expectation, I think you would agree. But have we changed? Would my experience in the job market be substantially different today than it was when I gave the impression to my Irish Pressinterrogators that I might, just might, suffer from depression? I think we all know the answer to that one.
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book That's Men, the best of the That's Men column from The Irish Times, is published by Veritas.