Depression-Shaming Kills

I started watching a new Netflix show: a murder mystery, which are my favorite kind. But pretty soon it became clear that the answer to the mystery involved how doctors prescribe too many pills and pharma is evil and suddenly we’re all medicated into a zombie stupor and depressed people could use a nature walk. You might think that’s just one character in the show, but no, this theme appears with the threads of at least three or four characters.

I had to stop watching. Because depression-shaming kills.

I’ve had depression for a while though I resisted medication for many years because I was afraid of losing myself, of not having my mind as sharp as it needs to be to work towards enlightenment. I wanted to be stronger than my mind, to control my brain with meditation like a good Hindu.

That attitude and that fear came very close to killing me. When I was pregnant my depression got suddenly much worse. The thing about clinical depression is that it doesn’t make any sense. My life circumstances were (and are) perfect and wonderful, but depression attacked my brain, my senses. I fought it so hard with everything I had but I could feel that I was losing.

It was going to take a miracle to save me because I had zero fight left in me, not even for my baby. It’s really scary to look back on that time and remember how bad it was. How close I came to losing everything.

And then I tried the medication because it was that or die. To my surprise, the clouds lifted and I felt more like myself than I had in months. The medication didn’t make me a zombie, it allowed me to be me, it cleared my mind.

So people who don’t know what it’s like to have clinical depression can shove it. Let people manage their health and get the medications that can help. Shaming depression medication puts people’s lives in danger. Those same people could be living happy and fulfilling lives with only small bouts of the blues if you didn’t make them scared to get help.