Depression cannot be ignored

| Thursday April 1, 2010 00:00

The sounds of life reach your ears with a touch of melancholy; a feeling of sadness that defies description. You are lying in bed, staring vacantly ahead, your mind in turmoil as negative thoughts of varying degrees flood your mind. Small matters of the past beleaguer your mind at full force. Matters that before were not a big deal assume prodigious proportions as they churn in your mind and you start feeling guilty about the least things that may have happened in the past; things that would normally be rather insignificant.

This in turn is resulting in further negative thoughts taking residence in your already troubled mind and you start feeling like the worst person right here in this world. You don't deserve to live; life is meant for good people; you are bad, your mind keeps saying to you. Things are the way they are because of you.

You have a lot of errands to run during the day, but you are devoid of the will to carry them out. Just thinking of all the chores awaiting you is cumbersome in itself. Besides, you know that even if you got off bed, you simply neither have energy nor elan to do anything.

You just want to lie there, all alone in your room and not be bothered. Your phone is ringing, but you don't answer it; you just don't feel like talking to anyone. You have distanced yourself from your friends and according to your mind, you don't deserve them because you are a bad person. A family member walks into your room and talks to you, but you maintain a blas expression. The family member is saying something but you only hear half of it; your mind is wondering, flirting with all sorts worries; worrying over the least of things.

Last night and the nights before you only slept for three hours; broken sleep for that matter. You woke up more than once during the night and each time you did so, your mind is inundated with a torrent of negative thoughts. You start overanalysing things and questions like, 'Why did so and so look at me that way? He/she must hate me. Why did so and so say such and such a thing to me.

He/she must be angry with me, that's why he/she said such and such a thing, etc. On the nights that you slept right, you still felt unrefreshed in the morning when you wake up. You haven't eaten well for days; you simply don't love food anymore.

You used to be a big Zebras fan, but not anymore; you just don't enjoy the football anymore. Or you used to be a football player, but not anymore; you just couldn't be bothered. Or you were a big fan of cooking; cleaning the house; going shopping, etc, but not anymore. Nothing gives you fun/joy anymore. The world is like one gloom blob that's blocking your happiness. Thoughts of doing away with your life become a regular in your mind and on occasions you consider a rope around the neck.

Or you actually jot down a suicide note, stare at it vacantly, rewrite it, tear it up, rewrite it and then start thinking, 'What about my family; what will they do if I hanged/killed myself? Oh no, tears start streaming down your cheeks.

You decide to distract yourself by going out to watch television, but talk of war or anything else of such calibre on TV brings a torrent of tears to your eyes. Why is the world so bad? The world is such a bad place to live in, you start thinking. And, in the most extreme of cases, you may even start blaming yourself for all the wars going on around the world; it's because you once stole someone's pencil back in primary school. Somehow the theft of the pencil has resulted in war right up there in the Middle East.

You haven't worked for the past week because you just can't function. You simply can't put your mind to it. You boss has advised some time off because of your reduced productivity. Now as you lie right there in bed, you suddenly get scared. Could this have just been a polite way on your boss's part of firing you? Could this mean the job no longer belongs to you? Tears and more tears.

Now, you may be like, 'What is this guy talking about?' Well, some of you may have gone through a similar scenario as described above. For most people that have gone through such, unfortunately, they may not really be aware of what it really is.

This may be a Depressive episode. In other words, you may be suffering from depression. Almost on a daily basis, I see people suffering from varying degrees of depression. Depression is an illness that is, unfortunately, common and most people go untreated and decline in functioning as a result; ending up losing important relationships, their job and some other important things. Because some such people fail to recognise depression for what it is, they may be tempted to turn to the one and only remedy that is believed by many to fix things instantly as the only possible solution: booze.

Now, although some people may not believe this, what alcohol does is to enhance the very mood that you're in just before you start drinking. Say, if you are overly happy and you drink alcohol, you will become too excited and over-enjoy yourself.

On the other hand, if you're depressed and you drink, you will get more depressed. I don't know if you know this, but alcohol tends to make one become impulsive, such that what comes to the mind is acted upon pronto (hence a naturally subdued gentleman may suddenly go vulgar after a few stiff ones). Now, what do you think would happen to someone whose mind is in as much turmoil as one described above after a few stiff ones? Good, there we go.

On some occasions alcohol may actually lift the mood of a depressed person, but only temporarily. The depressed drinker may think to themselves, 'oh, my problems have disappeared', after a few stiff ones, but what about tomorrow? Where do you think the problems went to; booze dissolved them?  Well, now we understand each other. If unchecked, this of course may culminate into a vicious cycle which involves the depressed drinker drinking because they are depressed, then getting more depressed because of the drink, and drink more in an attempt to dissolve the further dip in mood and so on and so forth. This may in turn result in alcohol dependence which unfortunately brings forth a hodgepodge of problems. In other words, alcohol is not and was never meant for curing bad/low mood.

To most people, depression is merely feeling sad. In clinical terms, clinical depression is in fact a syndrome made up of the symptoms I highlighted above as well as others. Such other symptom may include feeling agitated (rather than sad); being snappy towards other people; being unnecessarily sarcastic or 'militant' (which may result in scarred relationships with other people or even losing friends as no one would be willing to stick around a sarcastic or snappy person); and having unexplained bodily aches and pains. And, oh, by the way, you may not have all the symptoms I described in this article.

Depression is an illness that, if unrecognised, may result in suicide. I am not going to go into the various causes of depression for now; I will leave that for next time. If ever you go through such an experience as described above, please seek help as soon as you possible. I think more effort should be put into making people more aware of depression and of the services available out there for them.

Nsununguli MboMelbourne, Australia