My Life With The Black-Eyed Dog
Like more than 16.1 million Americans, I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder. I was diagnosed with it in December 2014.
Like more than 16.1 million Americans, I suffer from Major Depressive Disorder. I was diagnosed with it in December 2014.
There were several factors driving my depression. Foremost was my work situation. I was working in the taproom of a popular Indianapolis brewery. I won’t say which one, but let’s just say if you were to look up track four on side two of Abbey Road, the answer would be very illuminating.
I left that job two months later. The details and story of that are best left for a future column.
And there was the general feeling of malaise and being an underachieving person. I was out of grad school, listless and living at home. I worked two jobs at two breweries and also served as a volunteer youth basketball coach for the local YMCA.
To use terminology popularized by my favorite podcast, Chapo Trap House — I was a “failson.” As Matt Christman, one of the show’s hosts, put it, a failson is a “white, middle-class, male, useless people — who have just enough family context to not be crushed by poverty.”
Prior to my diagnosis and being prescribed an SSRI, I experienced periods of depression, most notably my senior year of college, when my paternal grandfather died. I developed ulcers from stress and thought about killing myself on a nightly basis.
Per research published on June 7 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the rate of suicide has increased by 25 percent across the United States since 1999.
That’s a statistic that doesn’t surprise me all that much. Getting adequate mental health care can be a frustrating proposition, even if you have health insurance that covers it.
That was my experience with trying to obtain a therapist. The insurance website said one thing about what providers were covered and were open to patients. The website for said providers stated something else entirely.
And it wasn’t always clear from the site what area they covered, which is why, on two separate occasions, with two completely different insurance plans, two years apart, I sought the services of a provider who only worked with children.
That was in the depths of depressive episodes in the summer, so my mental acuity was already hobbled. But I still felt like an idiot and the experience was so frustrating, I gave up. Currently, I make use of Talkspace, an online and mobile therapy app. It’s pretty affordable and fits in to my busy schedule. And it’s been helpful.
The recent suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have highlighted that depression is something that impacts folks from many walks of life. It’s also sparked conversations about the need to reach out to folks and to let them know they can find help.
A nice sentiment, but doesn’t hold up to reality. When you’re depressed, you believe you’re a burden to your friends and family and that your problems aren’t worthy of their attention.
When people commit suicide, it’s often from a desire to end the pain, to no longer be a burden on friends and family.
We don’t denigrate people who succumb to cancer or other diseases; depression should be treated the same way. Sometimes it wins, sometimes it doesn’t. When your own brain turns against you, to be able to keep on keeping on, for however long after diagnosis, is a victory in and of itself.
Our era is one of increased isolation, social atomization, diminished opportunities and a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots. The question we should be considering is how might we build a society in which suicide doesn’t seem like the only option for ending tremendous pain.