Hiding depression

Far too often, many people grappling with the debilitating condition are afraid to acknowledge it out of fear or shame |

If you spent any time on social media recently, you no doubt saw hundreds — nay, thousands — of people reflecting on the recent suicides of US designer Kate Spade and American celebrity chef and author Anthony Bourdain. Some wondered what could have motivated these two wildly successful people to take their own lives. Others noted that we can never know someone else’s pain — and that, in any case, just because someone leads a seemingly blessed life doesn’t mean she or he can’t suffer from depression.

Then there was the category that hit me the hardest: people who had suffered from depression and decided that now was the right time to tell their own stories.

Such stories — or rather, the accumulation of such stories — convey a brutal truth: Depression is far more commonplace than you might think. And people you would never expect to suffer from depression do.

A stigma hard to shake off

These stories also speak to the stigma that still attaches to depression. Untreated depression can cost people their marriages, their jobs, their friends — and yes, their lives. Yet far too often, people who suffer from depression are afraid to acknowledge it, out of fear or shame.

The decision to come out of the depression closet usually comes after a great deal of hesitation — and as part of a conscious effort to say out loud that depression is a medical condition, not a character flaw. Stigmatising it isn’t just counterproductive, it’s dangerous.

I know these feelings because I’ve had them myself over the last few years, as I’ve gone back and forth over whether to tell my own story of depression. Like those others who have come forth after the deaths of Spade and Bourdain, had I been willing to acknowledge my disease, I might have avoided those mistakes and maintained a decent relationship with my boss. Answer — finally — is yes. So here goes.

Twelve years ago, when I was 54 and living a seemingly blessed life, I decided to divorce. That decision, though the right one for me, consumed me with guilt and caused me to spiral into a paralysing depression, something I’d never before experienced. I lost all interest in everything; my brain became a never-ending loop of crazed and dark thoughts. I could barely get out of bed. My work, which had always been so central to my life, felt meaningless. At Thanksgiving that year, I was so paralysed I could barely speak to my own children. It was the only time in my life I had suicidal impulses.

I got through that first depression with the help of a psychologist, some anxiety medication and my soon-tobe ex-wife, who despite everything helped coax me back to health. Because depression had never been part of my make-up, my working assumption was that it was a one-off. It was the result, I assumed, of my being traumatised at the thought of divorcing a good person with whom I had raised three children and shared a life for over 30 years.

But I was wrong. Somehow that episode triggered something, or changed something, in my brain.

Three years later, I had a second bout of depression. And then a third a few years after that. And a fourth.

In between I would have long stretches of normality, as well as shorter stretches of what I now realise was mild mania — hypomania, it’s called — during which I would feel invincible. Deep into middle age, I had become bipolar.

Sense of shame

Except that I resisted that diagnosis with every fibre of my being. Partly it was because I was terrified at the idea of having to take [medication]. But it was also because I was ashamed. Why? I can’t really say. But that feeling was real, and it was powerful.

Because these subsequent depressions were not as severe as the first, I decided to push through them. I went to work as if nothing were wrong.

My most recent bout of depression came two years ago. This time I decided to acknowledge that I was depressed, though I assumed I would try to push through it once again.

But I was acting erratically in the office, and to his everlasting credit, my boss wasn’t willing to look the other way.

He insisted I go on sick leave so I could improve at home, with the help of my family and without the pressures of work.

Which I did. That was the summer when I finally accepted I had become bipolar, agreed to let my doctor prescribe medication and began telling friends I suffered from depression. When I returned to the office after a two-month leave and colleagues asked me where I had gone, I gave them an answer I had never given before: I’d been depressed, I said, and I needed the time off to get better.

The stigma of depression prevented me, like so many others, from telling people who needed to know that I was sick. Had I been willing to acknowledge my disease, I might have avoided those mistakes and maintained a decent relationship with my boss. By trying to hide my depression, I harmed my career and an institution that mattered a great deal to me.

Depressed people would be told to shake it off, or to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” That attitude has been fading as people come to understand that depression is an illness, and that one can’t shake it off any more than someone with cancer can shake it off.

Had I been willing to acknowledge my disease, I might have avoided those mistakes. By trying to hide my depression, I harmed my career and an institution that mattered a great deal to me.