The Vital Signs of Depression

In my experience of practice work so far, depression is a primary reason for many clients starting a course of counselling or psychotherapy. And according to this article, which outlines the signs and symptoms of the condition, 15% of the population have experienced it.

There are still huge cultural myths surrounding depression, though, and a huge social stigma associated with any form of mental health label. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is the way in which we ourselves overlook or reason away our depressed feelings, avoiding seeking or asking for help with something that can be significantly alleviated if treated properly and promptly.

As Luisa Dilner identifies in her article, the symptoms that a person may experience could be contradictory in nature – such as insomnia coupled with tiredness and low energy – and there are always opportunities for people to associate their feelings with something else going on in their life; true depression is distinct from a period of feeling a bit down, or a process of grief or bereavement, for example.

Whilst this may partly account for why people don’t immediately make their own diagnosis, there is also an element in which people themselves reject a diagnosis of depression – ‘I’m not that sort of person’ is a common assumption, as though somehow the type of person we are (or the type of person we consider ourselves to be) might make us invulnerable to a mental health condition. More than one client I have worked with has received a diagnosis from a doctor, and is coming to counselling to get rid of it – not to be cured of their depression (whatever that might mean) but simply to lose the diagnosis.

My feeling is that we have a duty to ourselves to recognise emotional changes incongruent with events in our lives, and to identify persistent patterns of behaviour which may fit a depressive template, and also to be alert to symptoms exhibited in others.

I’m currently reading a biography of the writer and comedian Spike Milligan, who became notorious (in part) for his manic depressive episodes, and although the biographer writes very clearly about Milligan’s mental states with the benefit of hindsight, I’m astonished how little response those around him offered at the time: there are mentions of colleagues recognising his ‘tempers’ and how he would hide away in an office for days, but there seemed to be little or no suggestion at the time that anything could be done about it. (There is mention of Milligan consulting a hypnotherapist for his insomnia, but no acknowledgement – here at least – that the insomnia would have been a symptom of a wider condition.)

Today the treatment for various forms of depression may still seem antiquated or insufficient, but compared to what was on offer to sufferers barely fifty years ago it is a massive improvement, and contrary to what may be commonly perceived, antidepressants are not the only means of tackling it. Perhaps this thought alone could be key to shifting some of the social and cultural myths and stigmatised portrayals of depression and mental health as a whole.

www.wayforwardcounselling.co.uk