Depression

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In another thread, someone asked a question that has got me thinking. The question was, should helping those less fortunate be part of therapy for those who are suffering from depression? I think that the answer to that question depends on the individual involved.

Viktor Frankl was a psychologist who survived the Nazi death camps, and wrote extensively on the subjects of depression and suicide. He advocated the idea that people who are committed to another person or to a cause of some kind are far more likely to survive depression. I agree with that 1000%. He also posed a challenge to those who felt that life wasn’t giving them what they wanted or needed: “Perhaps life expects something from us.” In my darkest moments, I have often paused and reflected on that statement: “Perhaps life expects something from us.”

Personally, I chafe a little bit at the suggestion that I should do more to help those less fortunate. I spend 50 odd hours a week taking care of my elderly mother: I have been spending a significant amount of time caring for both parents for years now. I don’t even know how many years. I feel like it is all I can do to meet my current commitments, and I am very reluctant to take on new commitments. But, assuming that I outlive my mother, as I probably will, then, when that sad day comes, I will have far more free time and energy. I think the point is, you have to live for someone or something other than yourself. Depending on your situation and your family obligations, that may or may not involve helping those less fortunate, but one way or another, you have to live for someone other than yourself. Personal fulfillment as the be all and end all of life might work just fine for those who aren’t prone to depression, but it doesn’t work at all for those who are.

One thing is for sure: our current mental health establishment doesn’t have a clue. From what I can tell, they are promoting the idea that everybody should be at least fairly happy all the time, and if you aren’t, then there is either something very wrong with your family or there is something very wrong with you, probably both. There is probably something very wrong with you because there was something very wrong with your family. And if you are considering suicide, then you are just plain nuts, according to the mental health establishment. But that same mental health establishment promotes a philosophy that sounds a lot like hedonism to me, and hedonism is bound to lead to suicide. If the whole point of life is happiness in this lifetime, then why shouldn’t I just end it all if life isn’t making me happy? If getting what you want is all that matters, then what are people supposed to do when they know that they will never get what they want? The mental health establishment cannot answer these questions. They cannot answer the obvious questions that their philosophy raises.

The lunatics are running the asylum.

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Published by Judy Campbell

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44 thoughts on “Depression”

  1. Great minds think alike, JaC; Frankl is a guiding light in Mac’s “Post-Traumatic Winning” program. In fact, the outreach to others is the facet of the whole thing that takes it beyond the ‘self-focus’ of “post-traumatic growth” or resilience frameworks. You’re on to something here…

    P.S. Even JBP talks about the importance of being “other/externally focused” a lot. I’ll be interested to read more.

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  2. I believe I was the person who suggested therapy for manic-depressives include a focus on helping the less fortunate.

    The Founding Brothers missed the mark with that line about the pursuit of happiness. Happiness comes from to one via the cosmos when it is not the end all and be all of our existence.

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    1. Agreed. Also, though, it is complicated. I haven’t been totally happy since I was 3 years old: I have never been totally unhappy either, even in my darkest moments. I don’t know what it’s like to be someone else, but for me, I am partly happy, partly unhappy, happy about some things, unhappy about others, and so on. And even when my depression was debilitating, I know that way, deep down inside, I was still so much happier than a woman like Hillary Clinton, who has never been debilitated by anything.

      Winston Churchill struggled with depression, and so have many of the saints canonized by the Catholic Church. It is possible to experience extreme joy and extreme pain at the same time, and sometimes the greater the pain is, the greater the joy is as well. The approach the mental health establishment takes toward emotions is simplistic to the point of being stupid. In too many cases, too many mental health professionals have way too much in common with Hillary Clinton: they are people who did well in school, and they think they are qualified to treat depression because they themselves have never been depressed a day in their lives. In many cases, they are far more troubled than those whom they seek to treat.

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  3. Pursuing smoking hot chix in less than bikinis, on the other hand, may lead one less disciplined and charismatic than yours truly to a state of happiness followed by the inevitable bankruptcy. Just sayen’ krap

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  4. I like your point JaC.

    I’ve always admired the dedication of the two Bush First Ladies to illiteracy and spent time in both high school and college working with disadvantaged young girls on reading and writing. Interestingly, after I graduated from college and moved to NYC, I found it difficult to volunteer my time because, frankly, there was hostility toward a Caucasian working with African-Americans who were in greatest need at the time. (Somebody once accused me of trying to emulate the Great White Hope.) I wasn’t interested in other forms of charitable work because I’ve always believed that teaching a person to fish is far more valuable than providing them with a fish!

    I wasn’t experiencing any depression but I do know these activities enriched my life anyway and in those days, were both appreciated and effective.

    Good stuff here, JaC. Try writing a post that bores me for once! 🙂

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  5. I want to clarify something: an overall attitude of wanting to help other people, or at least, do them no harm, is crucial to surviving depression. I do not claim that it will cure depression. Also, people who are obviously severely depressed should not be nagged into doing volunteer work. At one point, my depression was severe enough that I was down to about 95 pounds. I had completely lost my appetite, and I just wasn’t eating. I looked like a skeleton. There were a few people who expressed concern about this, but in hindsight, I am astounded by the way most people reacted. Even when I was walking around like a skeleton, most people just heaped disapproval on me over the fact that I wasn’t working. Mental illness is confounding to everyone who has to deal with it, but you can almost never go wrong with kindness and a few hugs.

    A general attitude of wanting to serve others is part of a Christian life: this does not mean that everybody should be spending every spare minute doing volunteer work.

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  6. I don’t think you can force yourself to “just get out and volunteer!” when you’re depressed. It’s likeSylvia Plath wrote in The Bell Jar: you’ll carry your own fetid atmosphere with you wherever you go, and you’ll feel, “dissociated” from people around you. That’s the nature of the beast of depression. But I do think that when you have begun to,recover a bit, when you get back the minimal, basic sense of well-bring to imagine that you might not forever be depressed, any activity where you perform caring act for another person can be the first couple rungs of the ladder up. (Judy, as caregiver for your mom, you’re doing plenty of that!)

    When I was involved in volunteer adult literacy tutoring, one of our program’s coordinators told me about a tutor whose student wasn’t happy with her, so my friend the coordinator had to tell the volunteer tutor that our program wasn’t a good fit for her. The woman looked at my friend and said.”You have no idea what it’s like to know that there is nobody who cares whether you live or die.” That made and still makes me cry. This poor woman was being told she couldn’t even GIVE. End of the line. So that’s the other side of the question. I always felt that maybe she was trying to set her foot on the first rung of the ladder, and we pulled up the ladder . I pray she found something else.

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  7. ”You have no idea what it’s like to know that there is nobody who cares whether you live or die.” That made and still makes me cry.

    I felt the same way. This story occurred in junior year of high school with the delightful little girl I was tutoring from the Detroit ghetto. She started to do well in school and totally absorbed my message which was: “You need to ignore your surroundings and just listen to me.” We went over correct grammar and I had a mathematics prodigal friend pitch in as well.

    I knew she wasn’t receiving any Christmas presents so I put together a collection of my favorite books: Little Women, an entire set of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s work and a full set of Encyclopedia Britannica. She was thrilled but I was quickly off to college and hoped she was able to forge ahead.

    I will say this was some of the most gratifying work I ever did but I couldn’t follow up.

    At least I hope I planted a seed.

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  8. Whether it helps or not will only be revealed after research in a time based study, however, the premise seems intriguing and the trials alone will help a lot of the needy population, given that depression has become a common ailment. Personally, the idea seems groundbreaking, fixing two broken souls at the same time, simply by pairing them up together.

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    1. Especially because so many with mental health problems dont have a strong support system. Maybe this could be a way to help some of them develop more of a support system?

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  9. Hi Judy. Thanks for sharing your heart. If you spend up to 50 hours a week caring for your mother, you have nothing to feel guilty about – you have no more time left to take up voluntary jobs! I understand the suggestion, but in your case, it seems that you already have enough on your plate. Also, tending to others who are less fortunate can also have a reverse affect because their stories may depress you further or scare you into thinking their experiences could happen to you one day.

    Have you received any other good tips?

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    1. Hello, beatdepression776, and welcome! I think the most important thing I have learned is to not beat yourself up for being depressed-I used to do that when I was younger, but when I stopped beating myself up, I found that solved half the problem. It wasn’t a total cure, but it made life so much better.

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      1. Oh that’s great Judy. I’m glad you have learnt to accept that it is what it is at that moment in time. It’s like a vicious circle whn people get annoyed with themselves for their condition. Because as I know you know, that then leads you into further depression. I wish you all the best in overcoming this nasty beast. There is hope at the end of the dark tunnel. Thanks for your quick response. (Sharon)

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  11. And it seems we have L1 talking about this and the homeless all of a sudden and only by coincidence por supuesto.

    This is where the cutting edge come to get there latest groovy ideas man.

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      2. Funny story: when I was in college, I was hanging out with a couple of guys one night. It was very late, and they were drunk and loud. A girl who lived in the house came out and just started screaming at them to shut up and let her sleep. Feminists won’t like this, but these guys, who were and as far as I know, still are, woke leftists, responded by laughing in her face. One of them looked at us and said, “The wrath of Sarah (not her real name) is upon us.” And it was so funny, he kept saying it, and we were in stitches laughing. I felt kind of guilty for laughing at another girl, but not guilty enough to stop. It was just so funny. The thing is, that place was essentially a frat house: if she wanted peace and quiet, she never should have lived there in the first place. Also, I am 100% certain that they would have gone quiet if she had asked nicely, but immediately screaming at them was not the way for her to accomplish her goal.

        Anyway, the whole point of this is, no one would ever laugh at Simon the way we laughed at Sarah. No one would ever laugh about the wrath of Simon. 🙂

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  13. I understand what you are saying, and I believe for some people that would help. For me my depression was made worse by the fact that I was responsible for everything in my home, i felt a huge responsibility for everyone around me and this just made me feel worse. on most days I just wanted to disappear and run away from all of my duties and responsibilities.

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    1. Hello, Abichica, and welcome! It sounds like you were feeling very overwhelmed. We all need a break sometimes, and there is nothing wrong with taking one. I don’t know the details of your situation, but am wondering, would it have been possible to leave the kids with your Mom or your husband for a few days or a week, and just take a vacation? .There is often nothing wrong with running away from duties for a short period of time, as long as you come back 🙂

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      1. funny thing is im doing everything for everyone yet I have no kids and im not married..Im taking care of my sister’s kids (she lives in a different city by herself)..im the unofficial maid,i cook for everyone,clean, take care of the kids and the worst thing is my mum is used to it and makes me feel guilty if i wanna j take care of the yard,the dogs..and i feel like im treated like this because I am the unemployed black sheep of the family… i need to find my own space..

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      2. Yes, You definitely need to find your own space! It sounds like you are between a rock and a hard place. With your current responsibilities, how are you supposed to hold down a job and support yourself? But, if you were to tell your sister to find someone else to take care of her kids, and to tell your mother to find someone else to take care of her house, I am thinking that they probably would not be happy about it. They ought to appreciate the sacrifices you are making and the work you are doing, but they don’t. That puts you in an extremely difficult position, especially because I am sure that you love your neices and nephews very much. The way your sister and your mother are treating you is wrong.

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      5. I don’t know what the answer is for you. I have also spent a great deal of time being the unemployed black sheep of the family, and I know how difficult it is to be looked down on by those closest to you. At one point, I was down to about 100 pounds-I am 5’5, I was a skeleton, but very few people expressed any concern. All I received was disapproval over the fact that I wasn’t working. One time, I was so out of it that I arrived at a family event with my hair in tangles. No concern was displayed by anyone: they just shunned me. I still have to deal with these people, and it is very difficult, but what I have found is that it becomes easier when I don’t take them personally. I have come to the painful conclusion that is something very wrong with many of my family members. That doesn’t solve every problem, but when I don’t take them personally, it makes it much easier for me to stay sane.

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      6. yes, I have also come to that same conclusion..its really their own problems and mentality that makes them shun, instead of being understanding and supportive

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    2. The reason I suggest this is because I did it once. I was feeling very overwhelmed, and had reached a point where I couldn’t cope anymore. Lucky for me, my late husband was a very wise man: He ordered me to go on vacation for a week. We had no money, so I didn’t actually go anywhere, but he did everything for an entire week, and for that week, I was responsible for absolutely nothing. I just rested, and relaxed and listened to music. By the end of that week, I was brand new, and ready to take on the world.

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