BBC Radio 4 2016-04-22

BBC Radio 4 2016-04-22

Good Morning,

I only became aware that this is Depression Awareness Week whilst reading a piece in the paper yesterday. Seeing the article my initial instinct was to read about something else - the Queen's birthday, Victoria Wood, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare. Anything but that.

For people who have never experienced depression it's not easy to understand or sympathise with; its invisibility can also make it seem less deserving of our attention than more tangible afflictions. It's hard to see and hard to describe. It's also difficult to discuss. Which is perhaps why giving it a dedicated week to understand it better is so helpful.

In its less severe manifestation, depression affects 1 in 4 people in this country. A statistic I found doubtful until I counted the people I knew taking nuerochemical medication or pursuing behavioural therapy - and that was just the ones who have talked about it. Many of the articles about Victoria Wood referred to the comedienne's struggle with a low grade depression in which she said just getting up in the morning was an ordeal.

Considering its ubiquity depression remains relatively misunderstood. But we do know some things: it can affect anyone. The politician, the comedian, the person sitting next to you. Or You. It's not always obvious. Sometimes the cheerful person who's trying to lift everyone's spirits is the one whose own spirit is broken. We know that depression is more than sadness. And that telling someone to pull themself together is terrible advice when the self is the very thing that's been pulled apart. We know too that for some the worst can pass - but that telling them this doesn't help.

Those who suffer serious depression sometimes talk of the total absence of emotion and feeling which makes it very hard for them to describe it. Art can help here. Shakespeare's fragmentation of the self in Hamlet's to be or not to be soliloquy, Munch's great existential scream, Plath's bell jar all give form and expression to something that's opaque and elusive. One writer described depression as wanting to vomit but not having a mouth. Sometimes the shocking and extreme description is necessary if we are to hear the scream and reach into the pit.

Few people will get through life without experiencing a sense of personal powerlessness, or a loss of meaning or enthusiasm for life, even despair. People of faith also acknowledge that life can seem cruel and pointless if there is no sense of hope. We hear it in Ecclesiastes when the writer loathes his life and considers it meaningless and when the psalmist cries 'My God My God, why have you forsaken me?' These laments do not in themselves constitute depression but they are connected.

At its best awareness creates a kind of solidarity through sympathy. By engaging in this Depression Awareness Week perhaps we can express that solidarity and offer some hope to the person who feels none.