“Ted Talk- The Struggle of Mental Health- Andrew Solomon” Analysis
This week I decided to watch a Ted Talk by Andrew Solomon about mental health and the struggles humankind goes through with depression and anxiety. I think he thoroughly understands depression. I listened to his whole lecture, and some things he said stood out to me for various reasons. While he was talking, you could tell that he had been through a lot, and life had left him tired and cautious, but when he felt happiness, he felt it all the way.
He said, “Even people who consider themselves tough, can get depression.” This was significant to me because it shows that a person doesn’t have to be emotionally weak or vulnerable to have depression, it’s just a hereditary trait or something that just happens because of a trigger event in a person’s lifetime. People who could survive major physical challenges are subject to mental health problems, just as much as someone who plays video games all day. In my opinion, this evens the playing field because it bridges the gap between the fit and the unhealthy, the rich and the poor, the old and the young, etc. Everyone and anyone can get it, like a real disease or a factor that they couldn’t change.
He also said, “The opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality. Everyday things become tiresome and seem pointless.” This was a noteworthy thing to say because it illustrates just how real depression is. It isn’t just a passing feeling of sadness, but it’s a lingering feeling of pointlessness and repetition. Nothing feels fun or happy anymore, and all the things a person used to enjoy become meaningless or seem like tasks instead of things to look forward to. Vitality means consistent energy or the power that continues life, so the opposite of that would almost just be death or lethargy. This would make death, lethargy and depression similes, and therefore they are very similar topics.
I also thought the way he described anxiety was quite eloquent. He said it is the feeling of falling on a sidewalk and seeing it rush towards your head. Anxiety is to be similarly afraid all the time, but not knowing what it is you’re afraid of. He said that depression is bearable over a long time, but anxiety is torturous. Personally, I agree. Anxiety feels shaky and panicky, but depression sits and stews.
He also expressed his belief that depression is something braided so deep into us that there is no separating it from our character and personality. I have mixed feeling about this statement. I think that the effects of depression can be mitigated if a person tries hard enough, and it depends on the individual depth of the depression. It definitely does leave an irremovable scar on the person’s psyche, however I disagree that depression is part of someone’s character. I think that it can become a part of a person’s character if they choose to let it define them, but personalities are always changeable. Also, depression manifests itself in different ways for different people, so I don’t think it’s fair to make a generalization about how deeply rooted it is in a person’s life.
He articulated that “Depression is the flaw in love. There’s no such thing as love without the anticipation of loss.” I think that this is true but he stated it in the most pessimistic way possible. It can be restated as “Love has flaws just like everything else, and depression can come from love is one of them. There’s no such thing as feeling loss without having love in the first place.” In my opinion, life is just a balanced scale of happy and sad, and to have love is to feel loss, and to feel loss is to have had love. Personally, I’d say it’s worth it to have to feel loss in exchange for the ability to have felt love.
One of the people he interviewed described depression as a slower way of being dead. I think that this is accurate. He really seems to understand the emotions that come with feeling such deep, consistent despair. However, I also think that everyone is dying; minute by minute everyone is creeping one moment closer to their death. Depression only makes this process long, tiresome, and unenjoyable.
He mentioned that depression is the leading disability worldwide and people die of it every day. This was interesting to me, because I looked up the worldwide causes of deaths around the world, and suicide was the 15th leading cause. That’s a lot of people if you look at the whole earth’s population. Adding to that, if the suicide rate is that high, the number of people with depression must be much higher. So he is not exaggerating at all, many people do kill themselves from overwhelmingly consistent patterns of sadness.
His friend was singing “where have the flowers gone” to blot out her mind when she was severely depressed because she was trying to block out the voices in her head that told her that she was worthless and doesn’t even deserve a life. Repetitively they told her “You are nothing, you are not enough, you don’t even deserve to live,” and to block them out she stayed in bed and sang to herself to make it stop. I think it’s scary sometimes; the way our minds can work.
He also said that one thing that depressed people often say is “We’re all going to die anyway one day so it doesn’t matter.” or they say, “There can be no true communion between two people because they are stuck in their own bodies.” This struck me because people joke about things like that, but to some people, including me, it’s an important thing to think about. He said that depressed people tend to ponder existentialist questions a lot in life, and it torments them in a way that it doesn’t torment other people because other people learn to let go of it. Also, I think that the belief that there can be no true communion probably comes from long periods of feeling isolated and disconnected to other people emotionally and spiritually.
He ended his talk with these words: “I have found a way to love my depression. I love it because it has forced me to find and cling to joy, I love it because it has forced me every day to cling to my reasons for living, and that, I think, is a highly privileged rapture.” I think that is a difficult thing to say, and I admire Andrew Solomon for saying it out in public to the world. I do think that it is a privilege to be able to feel the kind of joy a person who has felt immense sadness has felt, but I also feel like depression is a high cost to pay or those few moments of extreme, happy clarity. But I love that it forces people to be thankful for what they have in their lives every day, because they have been on the verge of losing it all. That’s a great lesson to learn from anyone; be thankful for what you have, because you could unexpectedly die tomorrow. Clinging to our reasons for living should be something we all do.
The Struggle of Mental Health. Dir. Andrew Solomon. The Struggle of Mental Health. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2015.
