My first experience with depression occurred when I was 15 years old. It was a cold night in February. My dad had stopped on a New Jersey highway to assist some people that had a flat tire. It wasn’t uncommon for him to help people, especially being a people person and mechanic. But, it was a bit odd that he would stop on the side of the highway at night, something that he told us to never do.
As fate would have it, a drunk driver that had just finished a shift swerved across the highway hitting him as he changed the flat tire. At home, his wife, two daughters and one year old son would be sleeping in a house located in a warm and friendly neighborhood of South Bound Brook, New Jersey.
Early on a Saturday morning, I heard a loud knock at the door. Jumping out of my bunk bed, I ran down the stairs and opened the door expecting it to be my dad. Instead, it was a policeman. The expression on his face looked terrified. I could tell that something was seriously wrong. He asked, “Is there an adult here?”
My mother had been soundly sleeping in her room. I went back upstairs. I could feel a heavy weight on my shoulders as fear crept over me. “Ma, there’s a cop at the door.” I gathered my brother and sister and we all went downstairs.
My mother walked to the door. After verifying my mother’s identity the policeman said, “Ma’am, it’s with great sorrow that I have to deliver this news. Your husband was hit by a drunk driver. He was taken to the hospital, but they failed to resuscitate him.” The wail that came out of my mother was the most painful cry I’ve ever heard in my life. With that wail, every future plans that my dad had for his family died with him. The dream to own a house, to have more children, to own a business.
Those of us left behind would go through several years of depression. It affected everything we were involved in. We moved to a small trailer in the rural area of Texas and while life went on for others, we suffered daily. During that time, we pursued our faith even more. Today, while the pain has numbed, there are still days when an overwhelming sense of grief just takes over.
As I got older, I realized that my family is not the only one who lost someone so dear to them. In fact, I could see at my corporate job or my volunteer organizations, even in the churches and amongst my inner circle, people were dealing with all kinds of issues and many of them were suffering from depression.
More than 264 million people suffer from depression. On average, about 800,000 die at the hands of suicide resorting from depression, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). It’s a real serious problem.
A person with depression “experiences depressed mood, loss of interest and enjoyment, and reduced energy leading to diminished activity for at least two weeks. Many people with depression also suffer from anxiety symptoms, disturbed sleep and appetite, and may have feelings of guilt or low self-worth, poor concentration and even symptoms that cannot be explained by a medical diagnosis,” states the WHO website.
There’s many ways to confront depression. You don’t have to suffer in silence. There’s different forms of therapy that people can seek for help. Some therapies include behavioral activation, interpersonal psychotherapy, psychodynamic therapy, supportive counseling, problem-solving therapy and social skills training, as a report from Everyday Health breaks down.
Other ways to deal with depression is to get an accountability partner, someone that you can count on to be there when you need to talk or do something to quell your emotions. It’s also essential that those who suffer from depression establish healthy habits, such as regular fitness exercises, well-balanced diets, spiritual or religious practice, massages, picking up new hobbies and finding things that make you laugh.
Lastly, another way to reduce pressure and stress is to eliminate the triggers in your life that make you feel bad, takes your energy or lowers your self-esteem. The places, people and things that cause you stress or bring you to a low place mentally should be reduced or avoided altogether. Sometimes, these elements can be the very stressors that make you revert back to a depressive state.
In order to get mentally healthy, you may need to ditch the guy that constantly calls you stupid or stop frequent visits to places that remind you of sad times. Instead, replace these things with the aforementioned good habits.
Depression and anxiety are not jokes and it affects so many people that it can no longer be considered a taboo mental illness imposed only on the weak. Your long-suffering mother, strong best friend or usually optimistic boyfriend can all succumb to this struggle, so check on them and have some understanding.
