Finding peace

Depression an insidious disease

David Kelley’s recent guest column on the realities of suicide touched me deeply. If he might be so kind, I shall prevail upon Mr. Kelley to consider that the answer to his dear brother’s suicide might very probably lie in that most insidious of brain diseases, clinical depression.

The unrelenting ravages upon the body and spirit take thousands of lives each year, not only by the taking of one’s own life, but by self-destructive behaviors that facilitate other illnesses and early death.

I do not fully understand this serious mental disease, but I do see my beautiful, brilliant, accomplished daughter struggle with it every day as she has for almost 20 years. Understanding and enlightenment might soften Mr. Kelley’s thoughts toward his brother if he considered him to have had an excruciatingly painful extended illness which had at last come to an end. Very much like the death of a hospice patient whose struggles finally cease, much to the sadness but also the relief of his family.

Or try to think of it, as the Epicurians and Stoics did and many primitive cultures still do, as an appropriate escape from physical illness or emotional pain. Or even, as the Roman Seneca said, as the ultimate act of a free man. That is the belief I have begrudgingly accepted as I consider the realities of this serious mental malady.

Clinical depression is a long misunderstood, misdiagnosed and often untreated brain illness. Because of the social stigma of it, many suffer alone and in silence until the psychic pain becomes so great that it can no longer be tolerated.

As devastated and heartsick as I would be if I were to find my daughter dead by her own hand, I would hope I could find peace in the belief that, just as in the case of the cancer patient who struggles nobly but finally wastes away and dies, my beloved daughter’s torment would now be over.

Grief never truly leaves us, so do grieve for your lost brother, Mr. Kelley. Keep him alive in your heart and memory. And try to find comfort, if not a measure of happiness, in the fact that your dear brother’s ordeal, whatever it might have been, is long over.

My daughter, Edie, urged me to write this letter—not as a rebuttal to Mr. Kelley’s thoughtful piece, but to perhaps provide a few insights that might soothe the hearts of loved ones left behind by those who have chosen to end their own lives.