Depression

The death of Robin Williams on 11 August 2014, shocked the world.  He was an extremely talented actor who was known to have suffered from depression for some years.  At 63 years of age, he decided to take his own life by hanging himself - his personal suffering had come to an end.  But what is depression?  We've all heard people say, or indeed have said it ourselves, "I'm depressed" when what is really meant is "I am fed up because I have had a row/failed an exam/lost my job/etc".  The ups and downs of life are common and natural.  That's not depression.  True depression results in a low mood and other symptoms, day after day, week after week, month after month.

I don't think I have ever suffered from depression, but I do know someone who did and also committed suicide at the age of 63 - my brother Gordon.  He didn't hang himself but instead jumped off Beachy Head, a chalk headland in Southern England.  No one witnessed the event and his body, washed up on the beach, was not discovered for some time and could only be identified from his dental records.

I remember it well and I am ashamed to say that my immediate reaction was anger.  How could he be so selfish and leave behind him so many loved ones, including his wife, a son and a daughter?  It was many years after the event, when in my own mind I started piecing together snippets of information from family and my own recollection of my brother's behaviour during the latter years of his life, that I realised he was probably suffering from depression.  Did that make me feel guilty?  No, not really.  It's easy to think I could have done this, I could have done that,....  I have learnt that an individual life is a complex part of an even more complex organic system and cause-and-effect analyses of human behaviour rarely expose the roots of systemic problems.

So there we have it, two men with very different backgrounds and lifestyles who in the end suffered from depression and the only way each could find to solve his problems, was to end his life.  I now believe I am beginning to understand depression, an understanding that was totally lacking when my brother died.  I think the illness is extremely well defined by the words of the American psychologist, Rollo May:

"Depression is the inability to construct a future."

RIP Gordon and Robin.