Posted by JohnD
Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:08:00 GMT
Some Rights Reserved by |spoon| at Flickr
A few months ago, Therese Borchard of Beyond Blue was describing in one of her insightful videos the nature of her belief in Catholicism. She had been accused of being a “cafeteria Catholic,” picking and choosing which of the Church’s teachings she would accept. She emphasized that she read the Church Catechism as a bipolar person, and, as she was clarifying what she meant by that, started with: “Staying alive is my first priority.” That stopped me.
I’ve watched that video a couple of times since then, and, though I hear and respect her thoughtful discussion of Catholicism, that simple statement about staying alive is what cuts right through me. There is no getting away from that stark reality. The deepest depression turns on the neon light of suicide.
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Posted in What Depression Can Do, Surviving at Work, Fighting Depression | Tags depression, energy, Getting It Done When Youre Depressed, Julie Fast, Karl Menninger, living, Man Against Himself, obsession, optimism, suicide, surviving, Therese Borchard, transition, work | 3 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:25:00 GMT
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WARNING: THIS POST HAS POSSIBLE TRIGGERS
Anon for Now recently commented on the sense of renewal in life that served as a deterrent to suicide. This struck me as capturing the most baffling aspect of the temptation to end life. For what does the evidence of life on earth point to but the endlessly inventive will to survive? There is no more fundamental drive than the will to adapt, change, reproduce one’s kind under any circumstances. Yet so many in the grip of major depression or bipolar depression act against that drive toward life and destroy themselves. As Kay Redfield Jamison points out in Night Falls Fast
, the presence of mental illness and/or substance abuse, or worse, the two together, vastly increases the likelihood of suicide. It’s among the top five causes of death in the United States for men and women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four.
What I have seen and sorrowed at is the cool determination of more than one friend to plan and carry out his own destruction. Karl Menninger described the drive to suicide as taking many forms in his classic study, Man Against Himself
. These included self-defeating behavior, dangerous addictions, certain types of self-mutilation, aggressive and violent outbursts, purposive accidents and many other variations. Some of these can lead directly to premature death; many set the stage in a person’s mind as justification for ending a life regarded as failed or too painful or destructive to others.
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Posted in What Depression Can Do, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression | Tags alcoholism, contempt, depression, Karl Menninger, Kay Redfield Jamison, life, Man Against Himself, Night Falls Fast, self, shame, suicide | 4 comments
Posted by JohnD
Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:06:00 GMT
Christos Georghiou – Fotolia.com_
WARNING – THIS POST HAS POSSIBLE TRIGGERS.
After a tough week with a lot of down time lost to pain of various sorts – as much mental as physical – I’ve been trying to draw on lessons friends have been sharing with me. They have been describing a deeper sense of who they are through each spell of this illness. And I can see what they mean. Coming out of depression is an experience of renewal, a sudden shift of perspective rendering all that was doomed and dying now reborn, all that was shadowy now brightly lit, all that was sinister now kind and inviting. This world is turned inside out but then comes right again. There is a richness to this experience, as my friends have been telling me, but still each depression is a bitter and savage attack on all I am and try to be. Call it a testing of the life energy.
I can’t relax about it, thinking of the reward of renewal after it is gone, for the simple reason that many I once knew did not pass this test. Some took their lives by overdosing on the very medication that was meant to help them, others used different means, drowning or a gun. Every time I hear of such a horror, I can’t help but feel the fear in myself that I might be seized by a crazed obsession too. I fight that, I have to fight it hard.
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Posted in What Depression Can Do, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags faith, Fear, fighting depression, God, hope, renewal, spirits, spirituality, suicide, teenage depression | 7 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by JohnD
Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:51:00 GMT
In January 1841, Abraham Lincoln, then a state legislator in Illinois, wrote to his law partner about securing a post for a physician who was then treating him for a nervous disorder called hypochondriasis, or hypo for short, a condition we would call major depression. “I have, within the last few days, been making a most discreditable exhibition of myself in the way of hypochondriaism and thereby got an impression that Dr. Henry is necessary to my existence. Unless he gets that place, he leaves Springfield. You therefore see how much I am interested in the matter.” And what was the treatment Lincoln was receiving?
As Joshua Shenk’s study, Lincoln’s Melancholy
reports, he likely undertook some version of the accepted remedies used by most practitioners. These were drawn from the first textbook of mental diseases in the United States prepared by Dr. Benjamin Rush. This was the physician and political figure who became famous as a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the foremost medical expert of the time. Rush’s approach to “hypo” was to scourge the body with biblical fury and so shock the patient back to a state of normality. Bleeding out enormous quantities, more than was drawn for any physical disease, was the first step, followed by purgatives that would violently empty stomach and bowels (mercury, arsenic or strychnine were the favored agents), immersion in successive hot and cold baths, painful mustard rubs, stimulants that could set off more intestinal fireworks, a starvation diet, vigorous exercise – all of which usually reduced a patient to trembling weakness. That was the point – to shake the black bile out of the system and kick start it at more balanced mental rhythms.
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Posted in Explanations, Fighting Depression, Men and Depression, Spirituality and Depression | Tags adaptation, Benjamin Rush, Civil War, depression, freedom, humor, hypochondriasis, Joshua Shenk, Lincoln, melancholy, mesmerism, poetry, purpose, slavery, suicide, transcendent, treatment | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by JohnD
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 21:24:00 GMT
Photo Credit: Derek Benjamin Lilly – MorgueFile
Depression is a strange thing. No one seems able to explain exactly what it is, yet there is no doubting the reality of its pain. I've had it with me since boyhood, though at that time, I was years away from even hearing the term, let alone getting treatment. I grew up with it, not only experiencing my own moods, headaches and gradual isolation but also watching my mother succumb for years without ever seeking help. In those days, either you had a "nervous breakdown" (something I could only imagine as a kid as writhing and thrashing about on the floor) or you were fine. I was clearly fine – the top-of-my-class kind of fine. It was bizarre hearing people praise me often when I knew damn well that it was all phoney. Those grown-ups might be fooled, but I knew deep down how worthless I was. I lived in fear that this fact would be discovered.
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Posted in Growing Up with Depression, Experience with Treatments, Fighting Depression | Tags belief, depression, failure, family, hope, illness, suicide, therapy, treatment | 2 comments
