Calling out the Black Dog

Acknowledging the insidiousness of depression. 

My father suicided in February this year. It wasn’t his first attempt.

His first attempt was in March 2013 and left him with a crippling combination of brain damage, acute anxiety and severe depression. From my experience, it doesn’t get much more traumatic than that for the sufferer.

Now that I’ve prefaced this story with my own deeply troubling experience, let me discuss what I’ve come here to write.

Depression is one of the most under-acknowledged diseases in Australia at the moment. It’s the single largest killer of young people in Australia and this number is climbing at a terrifying rate. Depression isn’t visible in the form of scarred skin, missing limbs, or a pallid complexion; depression is between the ears and is almost undetectable on face value. Perhaps this is why, as far as diseases go, mental illnesses don’t receive the attention they need in public discussion. Maybe it’s due to the stigma attached to them. Either way, this needs to change.

When you think about depression in a logical way, it’s horrifically crippling. It’s an illness that doesn’t have a prognosis of X amount of months. Depression and anxiety can last for years on end, maybe decades, tormenting the sufferer with feelings of inadequacy, insecurity, apathy, frustration, debasement, worthlessness and perhaps, even more poignantly, a feeling that it will never end. While most diseases have a prognosis (be it good or bad), depression is steeped in ambiguity as to how long it will take to heal.

Maybe it won’t heal. The idea of perpetual misery is what I figure to be the tipping point for suicide. In a way, it’s a chronic illness. In another way, it can be considered terminal without anyone ever realising.

When someone realises that indeed it may be terminal, where they don’t know how long this affliction will last, it’s all too much. The fear of the unknown drives people to carryout what non-sufferers see as irrational actions. The voice in their head drilling them about all their inadequacies, fears and anxieties, simply becomes too much.

Watching my dad slide into depression made me realise that it doesn’t happen overnight. His case started off with anxieties about a career change during his fifties and this soon developed into fears about smaller events that occur everyday, such as trying hard not to give signs that something isn’t right when doing prosaic tasks, like when ordering a coffee. (This is how it developed — anxieties about his future soon translated into anxieties on a daily basis).

From being terrified at the prospect of change in his life, it progressed to the stage where social settings were placed off limits. The thought of being around other people and thinking they are judging you for all your foibles or shortcomings is unnerving at the best of times. Couple that with a voice inside your head drilling you with the notion that you’re worthless, and it soon begins to eat away at your foundations, eroding to a stub whatever defences you’ve built over your entire life.

My day was a wonderful person. He raised a helluva family — one he could truly smile about — and built an extremely respectable living as a farmer. Depression reduced him to a skeleton of who he really was. He was unable to express himself and was unable to take pleasure in the little things because he was so overwhelmed by feeling worthless.

He felt horrible, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, for 3 years.

The mental decline of my father to the point of suicide fills me with something more than sadness. Something more than pathos. It fills me with a deflating feeling of rued opportunities (if that’s possible) because I couldn’t help him. It’s completely floored me for the past several months because I was so helpless at the time. I know that I couldn’t help him anymore than I did, but the question still lingers: what if I did this, or what if I did that.

Now it’s too late.

When you think about the ripple effects of suicide logically, it’s alarming to say the least. I’m sure I’m not alone in the emotions I’ve articulated; I would venture to say that anyone who has been in close proximity to a suicide by family member, friend, lover — whoever — will have felt these feelings. Some more strongly that others.

I believe that I have depression and am currently seeking help about it. I hope to make things better before they become worse. Clarence Greenwood articulates what I’m trying to say better than I do:

These feelings won’t go away
They’ve been knockin’ me sideways
I keep thinking in a moment that
Time will take them away

When you consider that on average 6 people a day suicide in Australia (staggeringly, with another 250 who make suicide plans daily), this means that 6 social circles are rocked, everyday. These 6 social groups, comprising of family and close friends, will experience acute feelings of pain and trauma for months on end, if not years. (This isn’t even taking into account the immense sadness felt, which lasts for life, I presume). Suicide cases directly affect the mental wellbeing of the general population, with this increasing at an exponential rate.

This may well lead to new cases of depression as a form of collateral.

So what can we do? I’m not an expert on mental health (I barely have a Bachelor in Advertising & Marketing), but I believe that talking about the prevalence of depression and the possibility of resulting suicide is a discussion we have to have, albeit a painful one.

The thing is, if people don’t realise that they’re not alone, it will only get worse.

If people can’t stop stigmatising mental health, it will only get worse.

If society can’t recognise the insidiousness of depression, the immeasurable internal pain it causes to the sufferer, or the dangerous ripple effect it has on family and friends, it will only get worse.

Bringing honest dialogue to public forums about the options people have treatment-wise is important. But so too is developing an understanding of depression. People have written books about addiction in their past, inspirational comebacks in their sporting career, poverty during their childhood, and these are all for very noble causes. But my question is, why isn’t there a book —or at least that I can think of — that’s centred on someone who has experienced depression and how they pulled through. I don’t think it’s the case that anyone consciously refuses to write about his or her experience, it just happens to be this way. I believe that there needs to be an open discussion about how dangerous this disease really is.

That’s what it is, a disease.

Dialogue is important. So too is recognising the importance of getting treatment sooner rather than later; tragically, in my dads case, it was too late.

Ironically, mid-writing, Pandora decided to play “Shiny, Happy People” in my channel.

If only it were so, all the time.