Calgary Herald

As it turns out, people who feel desperate do desperate things.

- Karin Klassen,

Today, on this most beautiful Alberta fall day, someone will go home to find the person they most love in this world, dead of something selfinflic­ted.

This devastatin­g scene will play out close to 500 times this year in this province alone, maybe more with the bad economy. That’s the highest suicide rate in the country.

Anyone can join this club, and they do — across genders, cultures and ages — but the victim will probably be male, because they’re almost four times as likely to call it a day on their life, and with probably just 40 to 60 years spent on this Earth. Teenagers are also tragically welcome; it’s the most likely way they’ll leave their families behind to keep their rooms just as they were left, the day they “left.” In obituary terms, this is known as “died suddenly.”

As it turns out, people who feel desperate do desperate things.

Today is National Depression Screening Day, and the Calgary Counsellin­g Centre has provided an online link for you to take a free, anonymous screening test for this mental health issue that more than half a million people are treated for in Alberta every year.

Lest you think it’s just you, that’s 16 per cent of the population stepping forward, with an estimated three times that figure still huddling under the clouds. The test is available until Oct. 11 at calgarycou­nselling.com. While it’s not a diagnosis, this test could be a snapshot of how your symptoms may add up to a darkness that you might not even see inside yourself.

You don’t have to live in this fog; depression ( and anxiety) are the most fixable of mood disorders, accounting for nearly 80 per cent of all mental health diagnoses. You are definitely not alone; no stigma applies.

Depression is a great equalizer; statistica­lly, it hits almost everyone at some point in their lives. Depression can be situationa­l ( got fired), genetic ( runs in families), environmen­tal ( crappy childhood); it can be a byproduct of a medication, or trickery orchestrat­ed by alcohol and recreation­al drugs.

Those pesky hormones play a part, as your brain may be accidental­ly but diligently and persistent­ly directing you to the wrong head space.

Take the test. Take it as a measure of your own state of mind, take it so you can recognize the signs in yourself and others; take it at the dinner table with your family, friends and roommates. Take it on your laptop, desktop, tablet or cellphone. If you’re concerned about the results, which are immediate, call the Calgary Counsellin­g Centre at 403- 691- 5991, or Access Mental Health at 403- 943- 1500.

If you have suicidal thoughts, call the Distress Centre at 403- 266- 4357 ( HELP), or if you need to, go to the emergency department of any hospital, or the Sheldon M. Chumir Centre downtown — or call 911.

Please tack this column on your workplace bulletin board. Email it. Tweet it, post it on Facebook. If you don’t like the way I’ve approached the topic, you’ll hear this message on radio, TV, social media and in pamphlets available all over the place.

Send it any which way you like to your teenagers at university across the country, and to your senior parents whom you probably don’t call as much as they would like you to. Send it to that friend who hunkers down, drinks too much red wine, pulls the blinds and doesn’t return calls when she’s blue.

If your teenage son listens to music all the time in the basement alone with the door closed, or if your daughter just got dumped by Romeo, sit down with them and make them take this test. Heck, even if they don’t and they haven’t, run it by them anyway to alert them to the symptoms for future reference.

Most people whose family member does something catastroph­ic say later they had no idea the pain was so real, the issue so critical. Sometimes, depressed people are the life of the party.

Today is such a beautiful Alberta fall day. Let’s try to make sure everyone sees it that way.

Take the test. Take it as a measure of your own state of mind, take it so you can recognize the signs in yourself and others.

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