That’s [Not] Me in the Corner
10 Min Musing on How We Show ‘Depression’
I was working on an online health course this afternoon when the photo of accompanying the depression section caught my eye. It was a photo of a young, anguished looking man sitting in on the floor, resting his head on his knees.
Why is that dude sitting on the corner of his kitchen? I wondered. Is that what the world thinks people who are depressed do after work? Hold themselves on the kitchen floor? How weird.
I realized that I’d seen this photo before. Not the same actual stock image, but some version of this trope of ‘depressed person.’ I’m sure you’ve seen it, too. And listen: I know it can be hard to convey emotions through photography, but this irks me. I am pretty certain I’ve never sat on my floor, hugging myself, staring off into space. Or held myself like that in the forest. Or in a field. Or on a dock (seriously, I searched for ‘depression’ photos and found all of these).
But really what irritates me is not so much the composition of the photography (who knows how the original artist intended this stock photo to be used), but the pairing of it photo with the subject matter. When we only show photos like this — illustrating ‘depressed people’ as moping around on the kitchen floor — we play into the narrative that this is how depression looks. People holding themselves in corners, crying.
Yes, maybe this is part of it, but what about the part where people do pick themselves up and go to work? Drag themselves through their days? Yes, it is much harder to reflect the emptiness a person experiencing depression can feel while going about their routine (home, work, dishes) but it paints a more accurate picture of what it is actually like to be in the depths of depression.
It might be easier to recognize that someone in your life is depressed if they sat around looking like these photos. Then again, if someone in your life sits around looking like these photos, they might be a model. What is harder to recognize with depression — both in yourself and others — can be the sometimes subtle changes that occur. The small changes that add up to the overwhelm and crushing emptiness or sadness that can knock you down. But maybe if we had more true-to-life visuals of what depression looked like, we would be able to recognize it more easily. Just a thought.
