Depression

Daphne Merkin, a contributing writer for the NY Times Magazine, describes her ongoing battle with clinical depression.

Her poignant description highlights the dilemma of someone who suffers from mental illness. Unlike physical illness

severe depression, much as it might be treated as an illness, didn’t send out clear signals for others to pick up on; it did its deadly dismantling work under cover of normalcy. The psychological pain was agonizing, but there was no way of proving it, no bleeding wounds to point to. How much simpler it would be all around if you could put your mind in a cast, like a broken ankle, and elicit murmurings of sympathy from other people instead of skepticism (“You can’t really be feeling as bad as all that”) and in some cases outright hostility (“Maybe if you stopped thinking about yourself so much . . . ”).

Ms. Merkin's dark memoir of her hospitalization doesn't lend one to hope that there are ways of overcoming depression. Her years of therapy include psychoanalysis but I wonder if the more proven methods of treating depression had been tried, including cognitive behavior therapy.

Yes, there are those who suffer from intractable depression and bravely live day-to-day with the monster lurking in the shadows. Let us hope that the majority of sufferers seek the best treatment available and are able to choose wellness and life.