Nancy's Story of Depression

I wasn’t diagnosed for Depression until my early 40s, when a series of traumatic circumstances crashed me up to the hospital. Up until then I had lived my life as best I could but I couldn’t honestly say I’d been happy.

I began working full-time in the Public Service on graduating from university. I loathed the work itself but enjoyed the salary and the new friends I made. A few years later I went to teachers’ college and began teaching the following year. I was approx. 28 and it was 1986.

Teaching was hard work back then but over the next 26 years the whole career of teaching in high schools changed with the growth of the IT industry and Litigation and the way that governments have turned schools into business enterprises.
But teaching also was my ticket to overseas travel and I spent 9 years overseas living and working in 3 different countries spanning Muslim, Buddhist and Catholic religions. It enhanced my world perspective and I thoroughly recommend it.

However, as I said, my life wasn’t what I would have called happy. I’ve always felt that I somehow had a hole in my character, that I lived behind a glass wall. I couldn’t have named it but that was how I felt. I’ve read similar descriptions by others with depression.

When I was diagnosed with endogenous depression (aka Major or chronic) I felt somehow liberated. Both my parents were depressed people and I inherited their genes for it. But certainly it wasn’t spoken about in those days.

I was diagnosed and prescribed anti-depressants. They were a revelation because they levelled me out. A depressed person doesn’t necessarily want to be happy, just level. The lingering sadness lifts and life takes on a calm aspect. There is great solace in discovering that you are just feeling OK.
But I also began to note that our society has very little in the way of handling its depressed citizens. Our society and many others have little or no resources or funding for people who are suffering what feels like an allergy to the values and methods of today’s way of life.

Governments are financially devoted, not to the common wealth, but to the elitist gains of multi-nationals and the bottom line. The lack of compassion is starkly represented in the present-day arguments against granting asylum. Funding for public services like hospitals, schools, shelters and centres is slashed while the military budget increases. The message of what counts is clear – money and might.

Depression and anxiety, to me, seem to be normal and sane responses to an increasingly insane world. Consumerism is a barren religion, wealth an empty cathedral. Today’s society pushes people to extremes to reach the bottom line and cannot cope with those who fall through the gaps in the threadbare net. I would correlate the rise of depression with the rise of fiscal policy insanity and the general attitude that it’s ok.

Article by Nancy