This is actually a post I had in my head for at least one year or even more. Especially during the summer months, there were so many news about people - some of them famous therefore in the news - that committed suicide, following years of deep depression. Reading about such famous cases was not unique knowledge to me. From a very early age, I had in my close family, people that suffered - and rarely did anything but suffering - from various mental health issues. My direct contact with mental health continued later in life when it happened to count friends and boyfriend coping with various issues, especially depression.
In most cases I knew, therapy and getting professional support was always considered the last resort (unless happy pills were provided). If ever. Some of the people I knew ended up committing suicide, or living an almost vegetative life with irregular outbursts of life at the beginning of the medication.
My post for Mental Health Awareness Month will have a different spin. Instead of focusing on the people suffering directly of the mental health problems, I will talk a bit more about those living the same life with the patients.
How can you explain the frustration of a child whose mother cannot be able to react to his or her emotional needs because too depressed or heavy medicated and unable to do anything but sleep deep for days and hardly utter a word? How can you explain to your little child why his or her father is switching from deep sadness to unlimited enthusiasm for every single thing? What might the best reaction be when you need the help of your best friend and she is way too deep into her own anxieties to even notice that you are alive any more?
In most cases, as the persons suffering of depression do not disclose openly about their issues, the loving ones are unable to understand what is going on, if they are wrong and why, and especially what they can do to help. Because, help, continous help, love help, is what people going through heavy depressions, anxieties and mental health issues need. But because no one really tell you what it is all about, you end up either running away from your friends, partners and even parents, because you feel yourself isolated and unjustly targeted by the silence.
Mental health problems are often covered in deep silence. Silence about what is going on, what can be done and why. Silence that often means shame because often, there is a cultural stigma associated with such a deep suffering. You - and most often people around you, including first grade relatives - are unhappy and frustrated and develop intolerance towards anything that has to do with being 'not normal'. You want to be surrounded by happy, emotionally healthy people, open, talkative and again, happy. This is how the society projects often the perfect, normal, socially-acceptable way of life.
Such an attitude might be normal too and no one shall be feel guilty for making choices. But if you really want to stay with someone that is going through mental hardship and help, you need to start by asking first and foremost the advice of a specialist. Why you, in the first place, should go to a therapist, instead of the person who really suffers yet refuses to start a treatment? Only a specialist can help you to deal with such cases, eventually by convincing your beloved one to start a therapy him or herself. You need to understand yourself first how you can be gentle and open your heart to the problems of the other person, understanding the pain and going over the suffering and, sometimes, the bad reactions and poisonous words, too.
This might not always work and for many of us, the weight of dealing with such issues is too heavy. It is human and the one who leaves should not be accused. Those who want to stay, need to know what to do to try improving the situation. Therefore, they need help, compassion and understanding. Love might not always save, but knowledge can save. Can save lives too.
