Sadness is NOT a Common Cold
Can depression be cured or simply endured?
I was reading Mitch Albom’s Have A Little Faith and I came across a small passage (from where I clipped the title of this article as well):
Happiness in a tablet. This is our world. Prozac. Paxil. Xanax. Billions are spent to advertise such drugs. And billions more are spent purchasing them. You don’t even need a specific trauma; just “general depression” or “anxiety,” as if sadness were as treatable as the common cold. (Albom 2009)
The tragedy of living is that we are not immune to pain; mental or physical. We are formulated to feel things and to react to them but it does not mean we can always regulate and monitor our reactions. Some of us react to failure more than others, the others might enjoy more in their happy hours.
I have seen several people recalling good memories and smiling in pain and I have also witnessed so many of us feeling depressed on a happy occasion. None of it makes us a “patient” to be treated, we are merely different in our reactions and we should accept it, Milan Kundera says in Farewell Waltz:
I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails. (Kundera 1972)
We humans barely understand it and always try to talk people out of their sadness, we are not accustomed to handling “sadness without reason”, we try to trace it back without realizing that it is not a physical ailment that would have a specific stimulus. It might appear irrational and unreasonable and that’s why it cannot be treated like a common cold.
More often, what we need is the time to process the sadness and depression, we have to face it and experience it before it can be treated. I am not implying that psychology is but a myth and that we don’t need mood-boosting medicines or anti-depressants but I also believe that this is not the answer to our sadness, this is not the answer to our existential dilemmas, and this is not the answer to the tragedies and traumas we face in life. Shoot the Damn Dog by Sally Brampton is a very good book on depression which she calls “A Memoir of Depression”, she notes in the book:
Antidepressants do not mask or take away pain — that’s the Disney version — they simply bring brain back into some sort of focus. (Brampton 2018)
I have often witnessed doctors and friends suggesting anti-depressants as if the pills would ease the financial troubles, the heartaches, the burden of studies, and the stress about careers, as if a pill and a good sleep will miraculously resolve all the problems and we will no longer need a good listener or a kind shoulder to rely upon in our times of distress. The anti-depressant seems to have become the knight of this generation who rescues the lads and damsels in distress.
We have to understand that depression or anxiety can be chronic and it can as easily be occasional and we don’t need to rush our loved ones to doctors in such times. We need to build a bond and be present for them without asking many questions, and without triggering any trauma. Living with a person who has mental distress is like holding a bomb in your hand you cannot mingle the wires or it will explode.
It might even happen to us at some point in life, we have to know that we need to give everyone the right to feel sad, and if it prolongs, if we see everything around us collapsing without the energy to pick up the mess we can surely consider the pills or the treatment. But even then, we have to realize that it is more of a behavioral issue than a biological issue and we have to treat it as such. Brampton notes in her memoir:
A journey through depression and the causes of depression is in some ways like the unravelling of a mystery story. (Brampton 2018)
Furthermore, not every anti-depressant suits everyone suffering from mental distress, they can bring the mind back to focus but they cannot brush away the thoughts that keep us awake at night, or the fears that terrify us in the happiest moments.
Above all, sadness, I believe is not something to treat (only). I am of course not a psychologist or some expert whose opinion matters much on the issue, but I am surely one of those who have spent restless nights and laborious days without any apparent reason and I have felt the need to be sad at those times, even if momentarily, it was my form of catharsis. I have known so many people in my life who do not understand their sadness and do not want to share it either, all they want is to be given space and time to feel it and process it and they eventually come out of it as well.
In any case, sadness is not supposed to be treated like a physical ailment, it is not a seasonal cold that would go away with comfy blankets and warm tea. It lasts longer and sometimes lingers around us, and most of the time, we all come up with our own unique defense mechanism to deal with it and we should be allowed to treat it on our own terms.
Depression therefore has to be endured by the victims and those who are around them — to wait until the perfect time comes to cure it. So perhaps, “sadness” “anxiety” “depression” “trauma” “phobia” or whatever name you might give to the feeling of sheer helplessness coupled with intense emptiness is something you need to endure before it can be cured.
References:
Albom, M. (2009a). Have a Little Faith. Sphere, An Imprint of Little, Brown Book Group.
Brampton, S. (2018). Shoot the damn dog: A Memoir of Depression. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Kundera, M. (1972). Farewell Waltz. New York : HarperCollins Publishers.
