Text: Shu Xia Mike Yuan
When I hear or see on the news that a celebrity ended his life due to depression , I wonder, is depression really that terrible?
When more ordinary people in our lives suffer from depression for many years, they are often ignored. It wasn’t until someone knew that my friend suffered from mild depression and needed medication to relieve it, that I was surprised to discover that, It turns out that there are people around me who rely on medication to treat depression.
Moreover, some patients with depression have reached the age of middle school students. This is why some students choose to end their lives on the rooftop, which makes me have a new understanding of depression.
I am very troubled. I don’t know when or where depression has become a major problem for modern people, especially people in cities. What exactly makes depression a major “urban disease”? We have to understand the past and present of depression and explore the science and superstition behind it.
So is depression a mental illness or a neurosis? How was it discovered? Can it be cured? There are countless reasons in my mind. Is depression really so scary?
I have to mention "The Empire of Depression" written by Jonathan Sadowski. He is a professor of history of medicine at Case Western Reserve University. His research interests for many years include psychiatry, epidemiology, clinical psychiatry, Medical anthropology, history of mental illness treatment, history of depression, and more.
This is a history book about depression, which provides us with a grand and brand-new perspective that spans thousands of years. It also causes us to think deeply about depression, trying to uncover the truth about depression and help us A deeper understanding of depression can help us get out of the haze of depression. By sorting out the ancient and modern historical context of depression, we will interpret depression from the perspectives of concepts, theories, treatments, and current conditions.
How terrible is depression? Let’s take a look at how celebrities in history ended their lives, such as Hemingway, San Mao, Ruan Lingyu , Heath Ledger , Leslie Cheung , Haizi , Chen Baolian, Li Enzhu, Chen Baiqiang, Qiao Renliang and others all chose to commit suicide and end their young lives. Depression has become "the world's number one psychological killer."
What exactly is depression?
In medicine, depression is one of the most common mental illnesses, characterized by continuous and long-term low mood, loss of interest, etc.
. Being in a low mood and being unhappy with reality, being depressed and depressed for a long time, from being unhappy at the beginning to being devastated at the end, feeling inferior, miserable, pessimistic, and world-weary, feeling like you are torturing yourself in despair every day of your life, being negative, Avoidance, and eventually even suicidal tendencies and behaviors. It is also accompanied by somatization symptoms: chest tightness and shortness of breath. I just want to lie in bed every day and don't want to move anything. There is a clear sense of anxiety. In more serious cases, schizophrenia symptoms such as auditory hallucinations, persecutory delusions, and multiple personalities may occur.
Depression also has an onset time. Each episode lasts for at least 2 weeks, a year, or even several years. Most cases have a tendency to relapse. And ending one's own life is one of the most serious consequences for patients with depression. And the means of ending one's own way are sometimes particularly cruel.
When I saw these definitions and symptoms, I began to wonder if I also suffered from depression.
However, depression does not only harm ourselves, sometimes it also causes lasting harm to the loved ones around us.
Many mothers are prone to suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth. Because of the examples of my classmates, I pay special attention to my wife's developments in this regard. I was afraid that she would suffer from postpartum depression, but during the confinement period she would still be in a bad mood, unhappy, and even have the urge to divorce. Due to the long-term nature of depression, never say that it has been many years since you gave birth and you still haven’t adjusted your mentality. This is really hurtful.
All we can do when dealing with depressed relatives is to understand, because we cannot imagine what kind of damage they will experience when they are tortured by depression. If the relatives around them do not understand, then the damage will be double. But family members themselves are also among the victims of depression.
The feeling of being unloved in the world is really despairing. There is no hope for the future, and there is a threshold that cannot be jumped. In the end, patients with depression will end their lives, and even worse, the lives of innocent people will also end.
The pathogenesis of depression is still unknown, but people's understanding of depression is also constantly updated. Getting sick is not a terrible thing, but what is terrible is that the disease cannot be treated, especially understanding treatment from family members.
No matter what, we must pay attention to the harm caused by depression, and we must also dare to face the challenges that depression brings to us.
Life is sometimes difficult. Perhaps we cannot avoid the harm caused to us by the entire environment, but what we can do is to fundamentally understand the causes and principles of depression.
What Jonathan's "The Empire of Depression" can tell us is that this empire is still expanding today. If we don't face up to this phenomenon, the number of "subjects" under the rule of the Depression Empire will only increase, and the more they become more extreme. But the author tells us the expansion history of this empire, and also tells us the "law of survival" of the depressed empire. It's up to us whether we dare to rise up.
We must dare to say to this emperor of the depression empire: Go to hell with your depression, my fate is up to me and not up to you.
