Tags
breast cancer, Breast Cancer Action, Depression: A Global Crisis, Mental disorder, Mental health, Rosalynn Carter, Sir Austin Bradford Hill, The Yellow Wallpaper, World Mental Health Day
“Mental illness affects all of us, but there are still many myths and misconceptions about these disorders. If people are willing to talk openly about mental health, we can defeat stigma and discrimination against people with mental illnesses. ” ~ Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter,
October 10, 2013 marks the twenty first anniversary of World Mental Health Day, established by The World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH). The theme this year is “mental health and older adults.” Last year, depression was at the forefront, with the World Health Organization (WHO) estimating that 350 million people worldwide are affected by the illness. In spite of this number, and the fact that depression can and does affect anyone, regardless of gender, age, race, ethnicity, or socio-economic status, a stigma persists.
Depression is not quite “as acceptable” as some physical illnesses, is it? Certainly not as acceptable as the fairy tale version of early stage breast cancer which – especially in October – attracts the lion’s share of media attention and most of the research funding. Breast Cancer Action points out that “metastatic breast cancer is what kills women, yet only 2% of research funding goes to treating metastatic disease.” Metastatic breast cancer is what killed Susan G. Komen too.
What are we so afraid of? Aging? Losing our faculties? What lurks beneath the surface? Depression is non-communicable and highly treatable, but there are only certain diseases, disorders, and ailments that can be the subject of “polite” conversation. Unlike the “common cold,” its symptoms unapologetically made public with persistent sniffles, sneezes, loudly blown noses, and a tell-tale trail of balled-up Kleenex in its wake, the “common” depression sometimes seems more like a secret never to be told.
So who is affected by depression? In its report for last year’s World Mental Health Day Depression: A Global Crisis, the WMHF reports that, worldwide, the following risk factors indicate a higher susceptibility to the illness:
- Depression is two to three times more common in women, according to most studies.
- Poverty
- Low education
- Genetics: you are two to three times more likely to develop depression if someone in your immediate family has the disorder
- Exposure to violence
- Separation or divorce, especially for men.
- Other chronic illness.
Sobering. Given the numerous crises we face – all across the globe – on October 10, it should come as no surprise that depression and other mental health conditions are increasing. Still, we find ways to conceal it. Perhaps it is easier to camouflage depression with the routines and rituals by which other people have always defined us.
In the Public Service Announcement, “I had a black dog. His name was depression.” ,” writer and illustrator, Matthew Johnstone, and WHO, provide some insight into depression, how to recognize it, confront it, and overcome it.
Very shortly after I was diagnosed with cancer, I slipped into an altered state, a kind of despair. I talked about it and through it, which brings me to the woman ensnared within Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s The Yellow Wallpaper . . .
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Like Gillman’s character, I too felt diminished. Diminutive within cancer’s giant complexity. Depressed by it. Altered by it. Often wondering if the woman I used to be had disappeared forever within its labyrinth and willing her to come back.
Why had Charlotte Perkins Gillman written such a story? On World Mental Health Day, it seems fitting to share the story behind the story. In 1913, a century ago, she explained:
Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it. Now the story of the story is this: For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia–and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to “live as domestic a life as far as possible,” to “have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,” and “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again” as long as I lived. This was in 1887. I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist’s advice to the winds and went to work again–work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite–ultimately recovering some measure of power. Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it. The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate–so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered. But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper. It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.”So on World Mental Health Day 2013, you are invited to The Third Annual World Mental Health Day Blog Party.
What do you need to bring? Just your commitment to publishing a blog entry on Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2013, about a mental health issue that’s close to your heart. It may be on the topic of access to treatment, resources or support within your local community. It may be on an individual’s personal struggle with a mental health concern. It may be about the prejudice a person faced when discussing the issue with a family member or co-worker. Help flood the Internet voices that can help bring mental health to discussions and readers that might not often hear about these issues.
Together, we should be able to stomp out the stigma associated with mental illness, shouldn’t we? Too many people are suffering. Lest we forget the people behind those staggering numbers, remember the premise of Sir Austin Bradford Hill, pioneer of the randomized clinical trial:
Health statistics represent people with the tears wiped off.
***
Yvonne, I love this post. So important, so unique, so relatable. I mean really, who hasn’t suffered some form of mental illness? I don’t even like to use the term illness. Should be called mental malady or something.
Anyway, I want to join in on the blog challenge! But first I need a good night’s sleep. 😉
Thanks, Renn! I hope you got a good night’s sleep 🙂
Yvonne, the temptation to look the other way when another person is in the throes of a challenge too big to resolve with an aspirin is strong. Every day I see homeless people asking for money. Many are holding cards that say they are veterans. Some speak to themselves. One of the reasons they live on the street is mental illness. I know a young woman who cares for a sister with schizophrenia. Their mother threw the sister out when she began to demonstrate signs of illness. My friend has hunted for her sister on streets and in shelters. She has helped her qualify for disability benefits and job training. She monitors her sister’s compliance with treatment. I have friends who wake every morning and their first thoughts are unhappiness that they are alive. They have no desire to commit suicide, just a longing to end daily struggles with a mental illness science cannot yet address. Who doesn’t know someone taking medicine daily for depression or anxiety? Among my mother’s generation there are countless people prescribed medicine to alter “outlook.” I have a friend who has taken one or more such drug for the more than fifteen years that I have known her. The medicines reduce the need to cry but leave her feeling emotionally flat. She has lost interest in many things that used to make her happy. I see ads for medicines to address depression and anxiety. People tell me how they ask their doctors for help with these conditions. In my city, we closed many public health treatment locations to control costs. The patient population protested. Their physicians explained that altering the place for service could affect treatment as habit is critical to keep some on their course of treatment. We can look the other way, but the issues do not go away when we ignore them. Thank you for recognizing the problem of depression and the need for new approaches that reduce stigma, improve treatment, and expand resources for persons suffering from mental illness. I realize that no one wants to pay more taxes, but society means shared responsibility for the group’s survival. Your post reminds all of us that mental illness has a human face–350 million of them.
Cheryl, I have read and re-read your poignant comments, and I can plainly see every one of the people you describe. From the person who stands by the freeway exit at rush-hour, holding a sign that says he is a Vietnam Vet to the woman in the middle of the street who is who is gesticulating wildly while talking to herself. You’re right about what it means to be a society. Somehow, we have lost our way.
Pingback: Stay Tuned…..For Scenes From Last Month « WELL CALL ME CRAZY
What an important topic on which to post. Mental illness, and depression in particular, is swept under the carpet by our society in a collective denial of its presence. More efforts must be taken to help those who don’t know where to turn in their quest for “normalcy.” Some of us are fortunate enough to have close friends with which to share such struggles, but others have no one to whom they can turn, and they can’t afford counseling or treatment by a physician. Thanks for bringing forward so eloquently the plight of so many who can’t speak for themselves. xo
Pingback: World Mental Health Day Blog Party, October 10, 2013 | World Mental Health Day
I think that together we can stomp out the stigma. Conversation, open sharing, realizing it impacts so many – every change to understand a little more takes us forward. That’s what I think, at least. Awareness campaigns are important, and hopefully a well-rounded understanding is developed. Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case with breast cancer. ~Catherine
Unfortunately, indeed, Catherine.
Thank you.
Pingback: the woman in the yellow wallpaper & me . . ...
Pingback: “i had to go see about a girl” ~ thank you, robin williams | considering the lilies