Depression In Session

Ok so I have to give the credit for the title to my brother-in-law Cooley Cooley ^_^

In February of 2006 I was diagnosed as suffering form severe, chronic depression. Although the diagnosis occurred in ’06 I think that I actually started feeling depressed back around 1999 or the year 2000. During those years we attributed the depression to other, spiritual struggles I was facing. At the time of my diagnosis I did not understand how dramatically the path I would take in life had been changed. I don’t mean a small change either. I am talking about a course correction of ninety degrees.

The first challenge, other than the day-to-day ones, that I faced was that I was sent home early from my religious mission in Brazil. On one of these missions a young man is normally “on” the mission for two years. I was out for only 14 months before being sent home because of the depression. Unfortunately there is a stigma among members of my faith about these young men who return early. Because of this I caught numerous disparaging looks from people at my local and other congregations. Though not particularly emotionally damaging, these glances did frustrate me. Not a crippling experience, but a struggle nonetheless.

I feel that the second challenge I faced was the most life-changing. For years the dream of the future that I held showed me as a commissioned officer in the United States Air Force and retiring after twenty or more years of service. This being my goal I decided that a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program at college was the best way of starting my Air Force career. When I returned from my mission in Brazil I began working on a ROTC scholarship and had my academic crosshairs centered on the University of Virginia or the University of Utah. Thinking that the scholarship might fall through I decided to talk to a recruiter about other possible types of financial aid the military offered. As we were talking the recruiter asked if I had ever taken the military’s aptitude test. I replied in the negative and the recruiter asked if I would like to. I was excited and readily agreed to fill out some paperwork allowing me to take the test. We went through a number of questions dealing with things like schooling and physical health. The recruiter then asked if I had ever been diagnosed with depression, bi-polar disorder, ADD or ADHD and some other mental illnesses. I of course said that yes, I had been diagnosed with depression. He then asked if I was taking any medication for the depression. At my affirmative answer the recruiter put down his pen and in that split second the view of my entire future crumbled before my mind’s eye. The recruiter said that neither the Air Force nor any of the other military branches would accept me until a psychiatrist wrote that I no longer needed the medication and I had been off of it for a year. I was devastated. I knew that the depression and medication were things that would be a part of my life until the grave wrapped me in her liberating embrace. When I finally recovered enough to start thinking again I was faced with the continued need to attend college, but without the financial resources to go where I wanted to. My parents were not in a position to help financially so I had to find a school that I could pay for independently. This only left me with one option. Brigham Young University in Rexburg, Idaho: One of the last places I wanted to go. I went anyway.

Another challenge presented itself my second semester at BYU-I. For reasons I am not aware of my depression worsened severely. I reached the point where I was suicidal. Fortunately I did not kill myself at that time. At the same time I realized that in my current mental state I could not continue under the strain of college life. I had to do something else. I did not want to return to Pennsylvania to live with my parents and I did not have anywhere else to go so I decided to stay in Rexburg. In order to stay in my student apartment I had to still be a student at the school. What I ended up doing was dropping all but two of my classes. Unfortunately it was already past the date to drop classes without taking a penalty. So now I had only two classes and a part-time job working at a restaurant owned by a friend of mine. A couple weeks later I stopped going to my two remaining classes, and therefore failed them. The end of the semester arrived and the school put me on academic probation. I was not bothered by this as I had been planning to completely withdraw from the school once the semester ended.

The last big challenge I’ll mention here started just two and a half weeks ago on the sixth of January. I had been pretty depressed for a couple months, but never too seriously. At around 1:00 pm on the sixth I was struck by an overwhelming feeling of despair and hopelessness and a desire to end my life. At that moment I began formulating a plan to do so. Two days later I was sitting in a mental hospital in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Twelve days later I was finally permitted to leave. I am not going to go into any detail about my stay there at this time. It is possible and even probable that I will do so at a later time.

Now we come to the real meat of this entry. The previous paragraphs showed major consequences of my depression and my reactions to it. They did not describe, however, the real challenges of dealing with depression. If you have not experienced severe depression, bi-polar disorder or a similar illness I do not think that you can understand the severity of the despair, helplessness, hopelessness, frustration, anxiety, sorrow, fear and self-loathing that we who carry these ailments feel. I believe that in spite of the hell we wade through on a daily basis we, the depressed, have a gift or two given to us that others are denied of. As I continue to use the words “we” or “us” I mean those with depression, etc.

I believe that we are able to feel more than others do because of the sheer intensity of the emotions that we are plagued by. I believe that we feel each emotion with a greater intensity. I think that this is a result of the fact that our minds or hearts have to compensate in a sense for the sorrow, fear or other negative emotions we are weighed under. In writing this I thought of an interesting emotional paradox. As I said, we are weighed down by more intense negative emotions, resulting in an intensifying of our positive ones, just as a person carrying a large stone everywhere will become stronger than one who is not. The paradox comes into play in that although we feel the positive emotions more strongly than others; the underlying depression counteracts that strength because of our increased susceptibility to the negative emotions.

Another “gift” that we, the depressed, have is an increased potential for compassion or empathy. Not all of those suffering from depression are able to use this gift because the original sense of empathy must already be in place. I say that we have a greater potential for empathy because when you have reached the emotional rock bottom and then been ground down ever further, you have felt it all. You are able to relate to others’ pain more easily than someone who has not felt as “down.” Now couple that ability to understand others’ pain and sorrow with the intensity of emotion I mentioned earlier. I think that two things can come from this blend. On one hand you can have a person able to understand and feel another’s pain and be able to share or help alleviate that burden, or at the very least be able to know how to comfort that person. The other result is a person who is unable to channel or separate the added emotions felt from others and is “brought down” into an even deeper state of personal depression.

The ability to create is another major “gift” that many of the depressed have. It is remarkable to note how many of the world’s greatest artists suffered from depression. In Susanna Kaysen’s book, Girl, Interrupted she tells of her stay in a mental hospital near Cambridge, Massachusetts. At one point in the book she says, “Our hospital was famous and had housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers or was it that poets and singers specialize in madness?” She also asks, “What is it about meter and cadence and rhythm that makes their makers mad?” I agree that these things can have an influence on one’s emotional and mental health, but I feel more strongly that the emotional/mental instability is what enabled the artist to create what they did. A close friend of mine said, “I’m not an artist I’m an artiste. I have the angst! I am Ernest Hemingway!” Angst to me is the magic word when it comes to artistic power. Angst has been defined on dictionary.com as “A feeling of anxiety or apprehension often accompanied by depression.” Or “An acute but unspecific feeling of anxiety; usually reserved for a philosophical anxiety about the world or about personal freedom.” It is my opinion that angst is one of the most powerful influences in great art. One of my favorite quotes comes from one of my favorite artists, Fred Gallagher, author and illustrator of the web comic Megatokyo. He said, “Without angst there is no art.”

These are only some of the “gifts” accompanying depression. I continue using quotation marks around the word “gift” because we can benefit from them, but oh the price we pay for them! I would not wish depression upon the worst of my enemies. The torment we feel can be and for some is unbearable. It amazes me what has been accomplished by some people while they bore this burden. Abraham Lincoln suffered from severe depression. Just look at what he did. Heber J. Grant was a giant in the religious world and suffered from depression. The list of artists, of course, is immense, but to name a few…Ray Charles, Michelangelo, Ernest Hemingway, Emily Dickenson and Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh did eventually succumb to the depression and took his own life, but look at what he created while alive.

The potential we depressed have in any aspect of life is great. Our struggle however, is one of survival - not only survival, but living as well. I can survive my depression by not completely giving in to the sorrow and hopelessness, but the real challenge is to accomplish great things in spite of and because of my depression. My struggle and that of so many others is to live. And we can!