I thought it significant that a question where the reader was experiencing the textbook symptoms of
schizophrenia appeared adjacent to the question about types/severity of
depression. Mmmmmmmmaaaaybe mental health issues aren't taken seriously enough by those experiencing them or others? Yeah.
So, I'll admit, growing up, I was a bit of a "depression skeptic." It's well-known that Utah has a high rate of antidepressant use, especially among women, and there was a family who was particularly vocal about their mental health struggles, including over the pulpit. For a combination of reasons (she was just kind of a judgmental person, I'm pretty sure she had wells of rage and unfulfilled ambition within her own soul), my mom was in turn very vocal that their problems were overblown and attention-seeking. I saw merit to this claim — I felt I knew people far worse-off than this family — so I internalized an attitude that "depression" = "weakness, bad, do not want."
Looking back, I think this attitude was problematic, perhaps precisely
because I myself have experienced what used to be called "situational depression" and almost certainly do
not have Major Depressive Disorder.
1)
Depression is a symptom — not just a single diagnosis. My temperament is what you might refer to as "moody:" when things go poorly, the entire world seems bleak and I'm usually reduced to sobbing; when things go well, I'm elated. (It probably sounds like I have the emotional landscape of an adolescent — though I think I can relate to teens well, I'd say this particular issue was most pronounced in my early and mid twenties, and seems to have evened out a bit, but not disappeared.)
So yes, on a bad day, I may say I'm "feeling depressed," but its very transitoriness rules out a Depressive Disorder as such. Even my most extended period of the blues — when I was unemployed? when my mom was dying? — was punctuated by days of extremely good emotions/happiness. Many of the writers mentioned numbness, or a lack of affect: that's never been my problem.
I'd agree with the notion that the notion of a "chemical imbalance" is reductive at best and outright inaccurate at worst. Take moodiness — despite a preponderance of evidence that most teenagers' wildly swinging emotions and impulsiveness comes from underdeveloped frontal lobes, there's this idea that it's "hormones." I don't have any MRI evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if my own frontal lobes were somewhat late to develop fully/markedly less able than the rest of my brain, since I'm considered to have high intelligence.
I guess I just don't think it's helpful to police other people. Yes, obviously, some people have Sylvia Plath levels of suicidality; others are grumpy. Just like some people have nervous/paranoid temperaments, and others experience intrusive thoughts which they interpret as demonic. If I use the phrase "I'm depressed" (which I actually tend to try to very much hide; more on that later) I'm not co-opting someone else's experience. I may actually
be depressed, leading me to:
2)
There are straight-up weird causes of depression. I knew I was a moody person. But I generally liked being alive. However, I noticed that, with a regular occurrence, there'd be a day or two where I felt like I wanted to die, and that everyone hated me, and that the things that reliably make me feel good were stupid, so maybe jumping in front of trains was a good idea, after all.
After ruling out a bunch of other things, a friend pointed out that it could be related to my menstrual cycle. After reading about
PMDD, I totally think it rings true. (And I'm not a hypochondriac. I'm in generally good health and don't go fishing for "issues" to have. I'm a pretty private person in my day-to-day life, too, but this
why do I want to die stuff was getting out of hand.) If there was ever a time to say "it's chemicals! it's hormones! I'll totally want to live in two days, just leave me alone!" this is that time.
Because it's a female thing, and a fleeting thing, and something that usually can be managed with short-term solutions (pills, huge amounts of sleep, avoiding Life Stressors, as it mentions, because seriously I will blow a fuse during those days), make it less
real? Well until you're standing on a train platform contemplating an Anna Karenina, I don't know, maybe assume it's real.
It can be very difficult to tell someone about this: I didn't exactly relish the thought of other people freaking out and causing them pain. So as a friend to someone who says they're depressed, listening and helping them find solutions is probably going to do them more good — maybe even help them to a treatment that works for them — than being kind of judge-y and rude.
If you're in college, it may be that it seems like it crops up a lot because so many mental illness have their onset in their early twenties. Take our friend with intrusive thoughts — it would be terrifying to have this happen to you, no? Schizophrenia and related stuff usually hits at age 20. (And I've never heard anyone doubt that it's "real," although in developing countries, schizophrenics are often locked in cages like animals. Yikes! Not how we want our friend to get help!)
3)
Our mental landscapes are as surely shaped by our circumstances and society as is anything.
In societies where women are routinely treated like trash, their
mental health suffers.
If there's anything I have, it's high levels of anxiety. After many, many discussions with friends, family members, and past and present love interests, I've concluded that being a woman is stressful. Being a Mormon woman, in my experience, was especially more stressful. Literature abounds with intelligent, ambitious women who have nervous breakdowns trying to fit a paradigm that might not be useful for them. I've heard a culture of perfectionism blamed — for me, at least, it was plain demoralizing not being felt I was taken seriously.
Not to say that only women suffer, either mentally or otherwise. Read the "Gender and mental health" article to see how acute alcohol abuse is among the male population. Again, most people aren't hypochondriacs, and most men I've known who self-medicate anxiety or depressive symptoms with booze (this is straight from the horse's mouth: "I've been really stressed and drinking a lot more lately," for example) are very much secretive about it. No one likes to be seen as a failure! Few people want others to pity them!
4)
I believe, if anything, most people are hiding at least some sorrow from others. I wonder if the twenties are a tough decade precisely because so much realness hits you at once — your first heartbreaks, your first real-world failures, maybe your first experience with death, your first time being away from your family.
Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.