My depression is more depressing than your depression
On the disturbing trend for desiring mental illness
Dear Valued Reader, this is a longer post than normal, approximately 2800 words, but rest assured each one is more gripping than the last. Settle in, perhaps make a coffee and find a comfortable chair; or if you’re in the bathroom, let the family know everything is ok.
***
I loved depression. I really did. It was everything you would imagine it to be. I spent my days lolling about Parisian salons in a sullen stupor drinking absinthe and writing esoteric romantic verse while women swooned at my feet.
Oh, hold up, no I didn’t. That was the myth. In reality, I crawled out of bed on my hands and knees, made instant noodles, and cried at the latest episode of The OC (damn it Marissa, how could you?!). And when I poured an absinthe at my local French bakery they threw me out on my pomme de terre.
We don’t typically choose illness. Illness chooses us.
Which makes it both disturbing and baffling that many people (and young people in particular) are falling over themselves to choose not only depression, but myriad mental illnesses from bipolar to Dissociative Identity Disorder.
I use the word ‘choose’ deliberately. For although many legitimate cases of all conditions exist, they are becoming lost amongst a growing pile of carefully-printed emotional counterfeit.
In this excellent piece about the distressing mental health of adolescent girls,
describes one of his teenage patients who “...reported that being “normal” placed her at a social disadvantage and desired to be “depressed.”What kind of a crazy fucked up world do we live in when kids are feeling pressured to choose mental illness as a social fashion statement? What are we doing as adults to enable this? And what a shocking indictment of Achievement Society that our addiction to attention leads people to desire suffering.
Clinical depression chose me at random 20 years ago in my late teens as the side effect of an erroneous medical prescription (I was also taking a lot of pure Radiohead at the time which may have been a factor.)
Despite the psychologists and the CBT and the hypnotherapy, it has never left, but has mellowed significantly. While the chemical imbalance seems permanent, we have learned to co-exist like spouses in a worn-out marriage.
I wonder often about the person I might have been without it, almost certainly 6’4”, swarthy and dark, and not 5’11”, pale and ginger. For that reason alone, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
So with the advantage of 20 years’ bitter personal experience I can write that coveting a mental illness is unhealthy, dangerous, and should be about as desirable as a front-row ticket to the Somme.
Soldiers who escaped fighting at the front did not request shrapnel wounds on their return.
***
Depression is currently in the midst of a record-breaking tour, selling out around the world and smashing previous attendance records.
Between 2015-2020 the rates of depression in the US amongst 12-17 year olds increased from 12.7% to 16.9% and in 18-25 year olds from 10.3% to 17.2%
The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. (Gallup)
7.2% of the European Union’s population reports having chronic depression (Econostat)
Suicide is the fourth-leading cause of death amongst 15-29 year olds globally (WHO)
In a statement, depression’s management said they do not anticipate a dip in popularity any time soon.
***
A depressive episode comes by stealth.
One minute you’re floating light through the day, the next, lead weights press down on your shoulders and concrete blocks buckle your legs as if gravity has singled you out for special treatment.
There is often no warning and no obvious trigger. Depression doesn’t owe you an explanation, it just is.
Clinical depression is more than 24-hours of feeling a little glum. It is intense sadness + darkness + lethargy + The Smiths on repeat.
In my experience, it starts with the eyes, which begin to feel like I haven’t slept in a week. Then it creeps to the jaw, which sets in a tight, unsmiling position.
The sensation of weight arrives next, a heavy melancholy that wraps around your body like a dark blanket of doubt from head to toe. Have you ever dived into the sea and swum underwater for a time with your eyes closed? It’s a little like that disorienting and slow motion. Being very very hungover on red wine is also similar.
My eyes begin to weep for no reason and I find myself saying things like “oh I’m fine it’s just dirt or something” or “gosh the light is bright in here isn’t it where are my sunglasses? Yes I know it’s midnight.”
This is accompanied by general thoughts of fear, worthlessness, and despair at my life choices. I may turn down party invitations.
On a good day, that’s where it ends.
On a bad day, the weight becomes heavier, more dense. There is a soft thickness to depression, a suffocating force like being crushed by tonnes of black cotton wool. Your movement slows and exertion feels like crawling through thick mud.
The body and emotions take on a weary numbness, described by John Stuart Mill as “one of those moods when what is pleasure at other times, becomes insipid or indifferent.”
The sadness cranks up to 11. Think back to the most bereft you’ve ever felt, perhaps a period of deep grief or major disappointment, but now imagine you don’t know why you feel that way, imagine you can’t focus your sadness on any one thing and grab hold of it. The inability to pinpoint the ‘thing’ is one of depression’s real cruelties as it leaves you floundering and confused.
The final coup de grace arrives in the form of feeling utterly alone. This is the part that gets people.
A haze settles over your perception and you have the sense of being half-sedated. You perceive the world and what’s going on but it’s an out-of-body experience, observed from a distance.
Everything and everyone seems futile and irrelevant. The pit of your stomach churns, the weight becomes unbearable, the dark becomes darker, the eyes of every stranger carry a damning judgement, you ache to scream but nothing comes out, you Google ‘the most painless way to kill yourself’ because you can’t imagine carrying on but you also can’t imagine not carrying on, and then, at the last minute, if you’re lucky, just as it becomes too much to bear, the wave breaks and crashes over your head and washes you up on the shore soaking and exhausted but alive.
Until next time.
Trust me kids. You do not want this.
***
History has recorded numerous bouts of collective mental illness, such as the Dancing Plague of 1518, the Writing Tremor Epidemic of 1892, and the 2019 Ed Sheeran stadium tour.
The difference between then and now is that the causes of historical mass hysteria were mysterious and unexplained. The root causes of today’s epidemic are not only known, they are designed.
In my amateur sociological opinion, mental illness as a status symbol can be traced to a narcissistic culture borne out of the smartphone and social media. These platforms gamify validation and equate online visibility with social worth. As competition for attention increases, so the price to pay for attracting said attention becomes higher. Go big or go home, or in this case, go sad or go home.
In his book, ‘Non-Things’, philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes the smartphone’s hold over us:
“It is not we who use the smartphone, the smartphone uses us…We are at the mercy of this digital informant, beneath the surface of which various actors steer and distract us…The smartphone is also a pornophone: we voluntarily expose ourselves. The smartphone functions like a mobile confessional box…We are constantly asked to share our opinions, preferences, needs, and desires - even to tell the stories of our lives…”
Via the smartphone and social media, young people are exposed to a constant drumbeat of messaging to “open up online and share your problems”, an issue well-articulated by
in her latest post.(This is why my daughter won’t be allowed a mobile phone until she’s at least 29 and even then I’ll be asking the convent’s Mother Superior to restrict access.)
What began with selfies evolved into video confessions then into fake displays of ‘vulnerability’ then toxic positivity and self-care before arriving finally at the apex of self-obsession: performative mental health issues.
I give thanks daily at the altar of the Nokia 3310 that social-media-enabled smartphones did not exist during my teenage years. The most angst my device could generate was when I failed to beat my high score at Snake.
Today however, problems both real and imagined are a form of social currency.
In one corner is the patient described by Dr McFillin, for whom life may well be fine but their reserves of problems are low. As a teenager, all you want is to fit in. So what’s a problem-poor kid to do? Make them up.
In the other, the manipulative social narcissist, those running the professional counterfeiting operations, fully in it for the clout.
Authentic depression is a selfish condition. It forces you inward, it compels you to become engrossed and lost in yourself and your own mind. That’s heroin for the narcissist. “You mean, if I just say I’m depressed, I can focus on myself ALL THE TIME? And everyone will feel sorry for me? And I might even go viral? Where do I sign?!”
Then, lost somewhere amongst the noise, quietly, tragically, float the genuine sufferers who are barely seen or heard at all.
***
An important difference between social media depression and the real thing is that genuine depression is very often a private affair.
Those I’ve known who struggle with it in a real, life-altering way tend to do all they can to hide the fact. It’s estimated that 60% of people with depression don’t seek professional help. Why? Confusion, fear, not wanting to be a burden, many reasons…but the last thing they are likely to do is film it for TikTok. To this day, only a very small circle of close friends and family have any idea what I went through.
Now, I’m not saying it’s healthy to keep it to yourself, I’m just saying it’s a trait.
Nor am I saying that everyone who posts about their depression on social media is making it up. There is undoubtedly a generational divide regarding the willingness to bare your soul online. Although I don’t relate to it, I see how it could be cathartic, how it could alleviate loneliness, and how it could appear as if a network of people exist in the digital ether who understand and care how you feel.
However, just as a functioning alcoholic doesn’t wander the streets reeking of gin, depressives don’t tend to mope about in public. They are often the most outwardly positive people in the room. This is, in fact, the person to worry most about, the one quick to laugh, but with tired eyes and an easy smile, a smile that evaporates the moment they turn away.
These are the subtle warning signs a hashtag will never capture.
***
As adults, we have an obligation toward young people to not completely fuck them up. As regards mental health, we are, I hate to say, not tracking well.
There is ample literature covering these issues in far more depth than is possible in this post. A summary, however, would include the over-therapizing (if that’s not a word it is now) of our everyday lives, the need to diagnose every personality quirk, the need to orchestrate every interaction, the urge to control amplified by our cultural emphasis on measurement and achievement, and the latent fear that seems to bubble under the skin of every parent.
What are we all so afraid of?
We mid-life adults live in a strange contradiction of nostalgic freedom and contemporary paranoia.
Social media is full of posts waxing lyrical about growing up in the ‘80s and how joyous it was to spend long days unsupervised, out of contact, returning home only at sunset for dinner. Ask the same people if they’d allow their kids to do that and it’s ’no fucking way!’. Instead, our children are driven through scripted, monitored, and highly-controlled lives, after which they’re sent out into the world and castigated when they can’t cope.
We adults are also not immune to the self-obsession and over-sharing promoted by social media.
Is there anything more devastatingly cringe than a mid-life ‘influencer’? (rhetorical question). Are so many of us really in need of ‘healing’ or are we being self-indulgent? Are so many of our ‘inner childs’ really crying or are we simply lost up our collective arse?
Given this is what our children see and hear, why are we surprised when they adopt these behaviours? Our words become their words, our neuroses become their neuroses, our addictions become their addictions.
***
While recognising this is a complicated and emotional situation, I believe there are steps we can take to improve the situation for ourselves and younger generations.
The first is the most obvious: reduce not just how often we use smartphones, but the way we use them.
Teenage and young adult users who spend the most time on Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms were shown to have a substantially (from 13 to 66 percent) higher rate of reported depression than those who spent the least time.
While I understand that separating a teenager from their smartphone is about as easy as separating Alex Jones from a conspiracy theory, we can reframe what the device is for.
Reframing is a well-known approach for breaking bad habits. One option, for example, is to reframe the smartphone as a tool for active creativity or learning. Discourage online confessionals and social media doom-scrolling, and encourage the incremental embrace of music, chess,
, or whatever your person is into.Personally, CBT and psychotherapy didn’t help my depression, but exercise and music did. Identifying a way to lose yourself in flow and lift your gaze from your navel does wonders. Bonus points if a smartphone isn’t part of this at all, but we must deal in reality.
The second: recognise normal emotional reactions in young people as normal emotional reactions and resist labelling them as medical conditions.
‘Name it to tame it’ was a technique coined by Dr. Dan Siegal of UCLA to help parents teach kids to manage their emotions. I’d like to propose version 2.0 as ‘Name it to blame it’, whereby a psychiatric condition is now the root cause of every negative emotional state we encounter.
Similar to how a bad experience now equals ‘trauma’, momentary sadness is now Depression, nervous energy before an exam must be Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and a supermarket tantrum means Anger Management Issues.
To look at my son, one minute he tells me I’m the ‘meanest Dad ever’, the next ‘I’m the best Dad ever’; one minute he makes socially inappropriate noises with his armpit, the next he assumes the identity of a fictitious knight named Sir Fartalot (I’m not saying he’s a sophisticated kid).
Applying the diagnosis-first approach to his behaviour could indicate he’s a schizophrenic bi-polar devil child with hallucinatory tendencies. However, I’m pretty sure it’s because he’s seven.
Research shows there is over-diagnosis of conditions such as ADHD, and the prevalence of a diagnosis must surely contribute to social groups identifying around a conditions and making it desirable.
My theory, as is a theme in these posts, is of our need for control. We are so trained to have information at our fingertips, so trained to have what we want on demand, that we simply must have immediate explanations and understand ‘why’ we are, even when it’s something as nebulous and fuzzy as emotion.
Which brings me to the final, and perhaps most important point: that we need to, as Ozzy Osbourne of Nirvana once sang, Let It Be.
Life is lived largely in the grey and though we try hard to make it black and white, no diagnosis will achieve such alchemy.
Allow certain things to be as they are, let the chips fall where they may, both for ourselves and our children. I don’t mean throw up our hands in despair and abandon ourselves to fate, but understand it’s not healthy to micro-manage the life out of life.
On occasion, when feeling low, I found it perversely helpful to remind myself that ultimately we all exist on a big rock hurtling around a star that will one day explode. At a universal level, we are all wildly out of control and yet no-one I know is in therapy for that. There’s nothing like a healthy dose of cosmic fatalism to put things in perspective.
By accepting these circumstances, we can, to paraphrase Renton in Trainspotting, ‘choose life’. Or we can choose an over-medicated, over-therapised, and over-anxious future for ourselves and our kids.
Now that’s a depressing thought.
Oh Ana one of life’s great moral questions! My wife and I are debating this also. I really wish we had an answer 😬
Troll? I would never 😂