This is not a lecture! I’m not trying to scold or shame anybody!
What I am asking is for you, dear Reader, who are clearly a smart, compassionate, brave and loving soul, to defend, support, and normalize depression, anxiety, bi-polar, PTSD, schizophrenia, and all myriad forms of neuro-atypical struggles you see in the world. The suffering is atrocious, and we need to do what we can to make it less atrocious. No, we can’t fix it, and we should never ask someone who is so deep in their struggle that they can’t get out of bed if they have tried eliminating gluten and doing yoga. No biscuit, gluten-free or otherwise.
We are helpers. That’s a wonderful thing about us. We see a problem, we want to help. We see pain, we want to ease it. We see ongoing suffering, we want to soothe it. We want to fix stuff, and when we can’t fix stuff we get cranky, we get angry at the stuff, and if that doesn’t help, gods help us sometimes we get angry at the people who have the stuff and start to think maybe they’re just being assholes or making it all up to get attention. As the late great Robin Williams once explained, it’s way easier to fake being happy than to fake being depressed. And honestly, once you start faking being depressed, if you keep on long enough, you will end up depressed anyway.
Have you ever seen a movie or a tv show where there is a character that is so gloriously stupid that you are totally convinced that the actor must be an utter pillock – until you see an interview with them and discover that they are effing brilliant, and the “dumb thing” is incredibly skilled acting? The fact that Hugh Laurie could play both Wooster and House should tell you all you need to know about that. This guy is so smart, and so witty, that he can play the most moronic person you can imagine, and turn around and play a frilling genius. A stupid person could not play a stupid person on tv. It would be totally unbelievable. It takes smart to play that dumb. Kind of the same thing. A happy person can’t convincingly pretend to be depressed for long.
But the big question is, why on Earth would anybody want to? Given a choice between rockin’ on with your bad self and doing the things you love, or pretending you are sick so people will feel sorry for you … um … What? Who would do that? Exactly no one. Every depressed person I have ever known, including myself, would give anything to feel good, to feel strong and energized and creative, to get rid of the brain fog and the body aches and the exhaustion. Not one of us would continue to pretend to feel awful if their mental pain was well and truly gone.
This is not a game, not a ploy, not a way to get out of doing/being/living/whatever. It is a fact. And it sucks.
People with mental illness are some of the most vulnerable people in, probably, the Western world. The puritan ethic, the Christian guilt-tripping, the lack of compassion and understanding, the stigmatizing … it never stops. Every person with mental illness is at a higher risk for everything than nearly anyone else, everything from accidents to cancer to diabetes to heart disease to pneumonia to suicide to … just everything. Homelessness, violence (victims of it more than perpetrators of it), arrest, abuse, sexual assault, you name it.
Again, I ask, why would anyone try to fake this?
Friends, when you see depression/anxiety/PTSD/bi-polar/schizophrenia/OCD/et cetera, I ask not that you intervene or try to fix it, but that you defend, support, and normalize. That’s it. We can’t fix it, no matter how much we want to, but if we let sufferers know that they are important, loved and have a valued place in our families and communities, it might ease their struggle somewhat. If we defend them from those who accuse them of being lazy fakers when they don’t have the strength to defend themselves it will ease their struggle significantly. If we normalize mental “illness” through sharing our own struggles and being loving and supportive of those around us who are in pain, the stigma will shatter and we will all be healthier and happier for it.