Beating Depression Together
(Part 1 of the Depression Foundation Series)
“I blamed myself as a parent. What did I do wrong? How did I mess up with this one? He wasn’t talking. He locked himself up in his room. He smelled. He was failing school. I just kept pushing him and pushing him. I would ask, “What’s happening? How’s everything?” and I just kept getting the same answer, “I’m fine. Leave me alone. It’s okay.” When I tried to get him to open up to me, he’d get so irritated. He’d scream at me and walk out of the room.
I felt like I had lost my boy. I’m a mom. When I see my child hurting, I hurt too.
But after a certain point, I had to stop. I wanted to take a break from being mom because I didn’t know what I was doing anymore. I felt so helpless, so alone.
The main problem was that I didn’t know what depression was. Growing up in my generation, we might have read about it or seen something on television on occasion but no one really taught us about depression. And when it happens to you and your family, it’s like “Wait, what? What do I do?”
Not knowing what my boy was going through and not knowing what to do to help him led me to blame myself. I blamed him. I said and did things that ended up hurting both of us and caused us to drift apart for so long.”
My name is Max Savage and that was my mom. I struggled with depression throughout most of my college experience. My mom loved me, but her not knowing what I was going through reinforced my existing feelings of loneliness.
I didn’t know what was happening. I felt angry, confused, and betrayed by my body. Even though I was hurting, I could tell that my mom was hurting too. She and I just didn’t know what depression was and so we’d take our frustration out on each other. I’d yell at her or she’d say things that made me feel bad about being sick. With every empty conversation and slammed door, we drifted further away from each other until we stopped talking altogether.
Recovery starts with understanding. When my mom took the time to really understand depression, she learned how to communicate and interact with me in ways that stopped making me feel ashamed of my depression. I became more open to letting her back into my life and rather than fight each other, we started to fight my depression together as a team. We both felt less alone, and over time with the support of my mom, I recovered.
Mental health literacy is the first step in facilitating recovery, providing effective social support, and rebuilding broken relationships. Studies have shown that strong support systems lead to improved recovery outcomes and less relapse for people who are mentally ill.[i, ii] Family matters. Friends matter. When ‘I’ becomes ‘we’, mental illness can become mental wellness.
My mom and I spent too much time looking for the basic information we needed to understand depression and recovery. Over the next few days we will be releasing articles based off of leading medical journals and published research that make understanding depression and recovery simple. They’re written for depressed people and their families, written by those of us affected by depression.
Continue on to part two here.
I’m one of the founders of Atlas Mental Health. We’re a team of Stanford and Berkeley graduates backed by the President of the California Psychological Association.
We’re building the tools that families and friends need to help their loved ones beat depression. You can learn more about us and our project here.
References:
[i] Brady, Pamela, Maria Kangas, and Katherine McGill. ““Family Matters”: A Systematic Review of the Evidence For Family Psychoeducation For Major Depressive Disorder.” Journal of marital and family therapy 43.2 (2017): 245–263.
[ii] Nasser, E. H., & Overholser, J. C. (2005). Recovery from major depression: the role of support from family, friends, and spiritual beliefs. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 111(2), 125–132.
For any questions, feel free to leave a comment down below or email me at max@atlasmh.com. If you enjoyed what you read, be sure to like the post and share it among people who might find it helpful.
