Depression is the opposite of vitality

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When you’re depressed you don’t think you’ve put on a gray veil - seeing the world through the haze of a bad mood. You think that a veil has been taken away. The veil of happiness, and you believe you’re seeing the world as it truly is: alone, petrifying, and painful. But the truth lies. The depressed say “No one loves me.” And you say, “I love you, your wife loves you, your mother loves you.” and the depressed ignore you. The depressed will continue, “None of this matters, we’re just going to die in the end.” To which you have to say, “That’s true, but I think right now should focus on what to have for breakfast.”

(Quotes butchered from Andrew Solomon’s superb TED talk, as are many parts of this post)

Unless you’ve experienced depression, you can’t understand it. Even having experienced depression, I doubt you’ll have the words to describe, let alone discuss depression. Andrew Solomon’s TED talk is gripping, depressing, funny, hopeful, and insightful. If you’ have a reason to read this post, you need to watch the video. It’s worth the full 30 minutes.

Depression, Grief and Sadness

It’s a strange poverty of the English language, and indeed of many other languages, that we use this same word, depression, to describe how a kid feels when it rains on his birthday, and to describe how somebody feels the minute before they commit suicide.

Grief is explicitly reactive. If you have a loss and you feel incredibly unhappy, and then, six months later, you are still deeply sad, but you’re functioning a little better, it’s probably grief, and it will probably ultimately resolve itself in some measure. If you experience a catastrophic loss, and you feel terrible, and six months later you can barely function at all, then it’s probably a depression that was triggered by the catastrophic circumstances. The trajectory tells us a great deal. People think of depression as being just sadness. It’s much, much too much sadness, much too much grief at far too slight a cause.

Anxiety, Depression’s cruel enforcer

In it’s weaker forms, anxiety is the difference between reality and expectations. But as it becomes fiercer, I’ll quote Solomon again:

And then the anxiety set in. If you told me that I’d have to be depressed for the next month, I would say, “As long I know it’ll be over in November, I can do it.” But if you said to me, “You have to have acute anxiety for the next month,” I would rather slit my wrist than go through it. It was the feeling all the time like that feeling you have if you’re walking and you slip or trip and the ground is rushing up at you, but instead of lasting half a second, the way that does, it lasted for six months. It’s a sensation of being afraid all the time but not even knowing what it is that you’re afraid of. And it was at that point that I began to think that it was just too painful to be alive, and that the only reason not to kill oneself was so as not to hurt other people.

I can’t describe my anxiety in a way that conveys the feeling. All I can say is there’s a constant loop playing in my head saying “Oh my god, Oh my god, oh my god”

My own experiences with depression and anxiety

Depression and anxiety have touched me and my family.

My antidotes

I’ve tried lots of things, being consistent is hard, especially when you get depressed. Here are many of the things I’ve tried

Books On Depression

The Noonday Demon: An Atlas Of Depression An extremely well written book about depression. It helps a reader understand the experience of depression from a superb story teller. This is written by the author of the ted talk.

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness A psychiatrist’s story of bi-polar disorder, a very well written personal memoir. It gives a good feeling of the highs of Mania as well as the lows of depression.

Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide, Second Edition An engineering manual for laymen on bi-polar disorder. This is a great book if you’d like to understand the current medical knowledge around bi-polar disorder, as well as what you can do to for yourself and your loved ones.

Videos

I find these videos great discussions on how to head off depression, especially for folks before spouses and kids.

Seven ways to maximize misery - A tongue in cheek tale on a path to depression

Keep the core spinning - A COVID-19 themed tale of how to maintain structure in your life to avoid drifting. Skip COVID though it’s equally applicable.

On Depression - Good talk on bioloigical take on depression, symptoms, and implicit stress. (Author has a great book why Zebra’s don’t get ulcers)

Stats

From CDC

  • 11% of US 12+ take antidepressants
  • 22.8% of Females 40-50 take anti-depressants

From John Hopkins Medicine

  • 10% of Americans suffer from a depressive illness (major depression, bipolar disorder, or dysthymia).
  • 18% of people ages 18-54, have an anxiety disorder.

From: National Institute of Mental Health

  • 19% of US adults have Any Mental Illness (AMI)
  • 5% of US adults have Severe Mental Illness (SMI). SMI implies illness substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.