I have been free of severe depression for some time, now. But I still have moments when I can feel the darkness come over me. I can tell when I am falling. And yet there are times when I can’t or-is it won’t-stop the plummet. And when it begins, so too, do the tapes of negativity that feed the darkness. It’s almost a compulsion. I once wrote that I hold on to my dark thoughts like a child clings to her teddy bear. I get comfort from them. You know that makes no sense. But then I am not thinking clearly when I go into the rabbit hole.
I remember one of my last visits with my psychoanalyst, Dr. Steven Fowler. He trained as an emergency room doctor and then became a Freudian analyst. I was feeling better. We had worked through some of my triggers and awareness is a big part of the battle against depression and anxiety. For a split second, I was frightened by the feeling of wellness. What if I was all better? What if the talking had made me better? Not the drugs. Wouldn’t that mean that mental illness is not an illness like diabetes or low thyroid? Would it mean that it was only in my head? That it wasn’t “real.”
I write this now because I have had my mental illness thrown at me. That I somehow use it-in the context of pity or some such thing. The first time this was said to me I got scared. I asked myself, “What have I done?” My credibility was being questioned. I was now second guessing myself. And then I realized why it is so difficult for so many to speak up.
I am of a certain age where I cannot be harmed by foolish people who attack those with a mental illness. But there are far too many who are hurt by their illness. First by remaining silent out of fear of ridicule. And then too often stigmatized for speaking up. And today we have too many young people attempting suicide and succeeding.
There is a wonderful organization-The Jack Project– started in Canada that speaks directly to our young people. It was started, sadly, by the unexpected suicide of a beautiful young man, Jack, on the cusp of adulthood. He was overwhelmed at school (Queens University, Ontario), and without warning he took his life. Students are now greeted on the Queen’s campus by peers who talk about the stresses of campus life and that it is OK to seek help. They hand out funky glasses with a link to a website stamped on the arm of the glasses that provides resources. I am fascinated with the choice of sunglasses. Sunglasses tend to keep the light out-putting one in darkness. Yet, the need for sunglasses speaks to the light, coming from the sun. I remember one of my psychiatrists (I’ve had the pleasure of working with several!) said to me one day when he could see I was struggling. “You just have to wait, just a little bit longer, and know that the sun will come out, because it will, and that life will be better, brighter.” That’s the meaning of hope.
I’ve been reading about these young people who talk of being overwhelmed at university. I Googled students and suicide. I stopped reading after the tenth page. Students ending their lives around the world. Some are away from home for the first time. Some are insecure when they arrive.
A recent mental health study on Canada revealed: “Almost 90 per cent of students said that they felt overwhelmed by all they had to do in the past year, while more than 50 per cent said they felt hopeless and 63 per cent said they felt very lonely. 9.5 per cent of students saying they had seriously considered taking their own lives in the past year, while 1.3 per cent said they had attempted suicide.”
Dr. Su-Ting Teo, director of student health and wellness at Toronto’s Ryerson University, said “I’ve been here almost 13, 14 years and definitely, there were mental health issues first when I started, but the sort of volume and the crises and the need we’re seeing is increasing year after year.”
I fear that the numbers of young people developing mental illness might come from the fact that we are coddling our children too much. We have made the reduction of pain-physical, emotional, spiritual a priority. We fear a child getting hurt on the playground so we take away anything that might lead to a bruise, a cut, or even a break. We don’t let the boys be boys and rough house like boys are wont to do. We don’t let children play outside, making up games and rules as they go along-learning about cooperation. We don’t give our children skills to cope with adversity, to fail and then get up and try again. Rather we try to prevent failure in the first place-with non-competitive activities. We don’t let children learn how to lose gracefully and recover. That is how one develops inner strength.
Then we go out of our way to ensure that our children’s feelings don’t get hurt. Kids say mean things in the course of a day. They must learn that not all people are nice. They must learn how to deal with it. We have bullying programmes in place, but how many of them teach the children to stand up for themselves rather than running to an adult to take care of it? We have programmes in place to monitor microaggression and trigger works like books and movies that might trigger a bad memory. How will our youth manage a blow to their spirit if we protect them from all emotional pain?
We know, too, that stress can trigger depression, yet, we programme our children to the point that they have little free time to just “be.” To be alone with their own thoughts. To be alone to think. To process. Dinner is often on the run at the drive-through. Dinner tables find family members hunched over their electronics rather than talking to each other, learning to read body language, a skill we are losing.
According to Sayar Ansari, psychologist at the Columbia Asia Hospital, “Parents need to spend ample time with their children, talk to them and encourage interpersonal communication with others. They also need to tell them that success is important but failure is not the end of everything.”
Growing up my mother would say to me you learn from the little hurts so that you can deal with the big ones. You develop coping skills when you are hurt. Your skin gets a little thicker. You learn when to walk away and when to stand firm and how.
We need to rethink the way we are raising our children because today, too many parents are burying their children for all the wrong reasons.
