How many of us would feel able to tell a prospective employer that we suffer from even mild depression?
BURNING EYES, dry mouth, listlessness, a growing sense of detachment from others, and a constant feeling of dread in the pit of the stomach – these, for many people, are familiar dark clouds that periodically appear on their horizon, as ominous early warning signs of a fast- approaching storm.
Much worse is to come, of that they are certain. Just as they know that there can be no escaping the black fog of hopelessness and despair soon to descend and envelop them. All they can do is try to resist retreating too far into the furthermost regions of an over-active mind.
During daylight hours, there is a constant longing for respite in unconscious sleep. If anything, night-time is worse. A relentless tossing back and forth between sweat-drenched nightmares and wide-eyed sleeplessness has one exhausted, but yearning for daybreak nonetheless.
Dealing with other people, especially those not familiar, often seems barely manageable, but it must be done. Even the most mundane of tasks is a burden and the least of human interactions a trial. Every compliment is a well-meant lie, and the tiniest real or imagined slight another body blow to an already crippled self-esteem.
Every little bump on life’s road is a mountain to be climbed, every pothole a gaping chasm to be negotiated.
No matter how many times someone has been through the storm before, on each occasion fear of the unknown gnaws away at the insides. How long will it last this time? How far down will they be dragged? In what state will they eventually emerge on the other side?
The above is just a flavour of what a milder form of periodic depression is like. It may come upon sufferers only once or twice a year, and the clouds can lift as suddenly as they descended, but there is no fixed timescale. It can last for a few weeks or a month, or sometimes longer. Coping mechanisms will long ago have been developed – in some cases honed since childhood, from before the sufferer could even put a name to what ails them – but it is still a living nightmare while it lasts.
However, even to those who have experience of relatively mild depression, the everyday crushing pain of the extreme sufferer is barely imaginable. For those people, there are no extended in-between periods of respite, just unrelenting mental torment of a much deeper kind altogether.
Even those with bipolar disorder, whose plight is not to be envied by anyone, at least have extreme highs to compensate a little for the extreme lows. There is, of course, treatment and medication available that can provide some relief from depression, but not every case responds to intervention.
Besides, medication of the type required is not without, sometimes severe, side effects, and sustained use can bring its own problems. Many mild sufferers choose to battle their way through each bout of depression rather than spend time in what feels like a semi-comatose state.
Depression knows no boundaries. The high-flying executive is just as likely to be a sufferer as the street drinker. Neither, as we were tragically reminded last week, is the successful, international sportsperson immune.
After the young German goalkeeper Robert Enke took his own life last week, much was made of how a macho culture within sport had made it impossible for him to be open about his illness.
This is true, but it is deceptively far from the whole truth. It suggests that precisely the same culture doesn’t prevail within society as a whole, when it patently does, whatever sympathetic noises we make to the contrary. Although it is more common than probably any other illness, depression is still one of the last great taboos. For the sufferer, it is the unmentionable ailment – something to be ashamed of, and kept hidden behind a mask of “normality” from everyone but immediate family, from whom, incidentally, it is usually impossible to hide, the family being destined to witness and share, at least in part, the anguish of their loved one.
This need for concealment is learned early, a vital part of the coping mechanism in response to an overwhelmingly dismissive and unsympathetic world.
Self-absorbed, unhinged, attention-seeking, and so on in similar vein, is generally how society views those who suffer from any form of depression. No wonder people feel inadequate and ashamed of their illness, and want to hide it from all but the most trustworthy.
As things stand now, how many of us would feel able to tell a prospective employer that we suffer from even mild depression? Indeed, how many employers would knowingly give a job to someone with depression? How many sufferers would feel safe enough to confide in their close friends or colleagues at work? In each case: very, very few.
The need for concealment is a massive extra burden that society places upon people suffering from depression – one they could well do without.