Cancer cannot fit into a neat little box of metaphor and positivity. The realities of cancer are messier than we’d like to imagine. This illness is outside of moral and psychological justifications, with pain outside the parameters of the English language. People may try to fathom precisely what it’s like to experience cancer, but they falter. No matter your religious or philosophical beliefs, most believe that cancer is not your fault and is beyond your control.
Unfortunately, people try to fit mental illnesses, such as depression, into a neat little box of metaphor and positivity. The other day I found a video on Facebook that claimed that it’s message could completely change your outlook on your own mental illness, and by extension, cure it. The man in the video likened depression to a cloud in the sky. If you choose to dwell on the cloud, you are allowing it to take ahold of your life. The man went onto explain how you are not the cloud, but the sky. By this logic, he asserted the depression can be boiled down to this: if you are depressed and want to become happy, you can use the power of positive thinking along with the realization that it is not you central to your identity.
While the internalization of this metaphor may remedy the every day negativity in response to life’s ups and downs, it will not cure the chemical imbalances the cause depression. These metaphors are may be empowering on the surface, but are also deeply unrealistic and trivializing. No metaphor can encompass a universal experience with mental illness, in the same way that no metaphor can capture every human life. Mental illness is a serious, caused by the reduction of certain neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine. This imbalance makes it nearly impossible to get out of bed in the morning, causes constant thoughts of death and suicide and a generates a complete disinterest in past interests. Clinical depression is not just wanting to die sometimes, or feeling a little anxious about events in you're life, that is an ordinary sadness coupled with life's challenges.
This sentiment is echoed by the speaker who asserts (by his metaphor) that depression itself is rather common. He likens mental illness to every day emotional problems that can be solved quite easily with a shift in philosophy. This thought actually echoes a serious problem with our society: an intolerance of sadness and by extension an over diagnosis of depression.
According to Ramin Mojtabai of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 5,639 participants were diagnosed in a non-hospital setting (by a clinician). All of these participants were evaluated according to symptoms listed in the DSM. Only 38.4-percent of participants who had been diagnosed with depression actually met the criteria for MDD.
These statistics are people who, by many standards, seem to have a legitimate diagnosis for depression, as opposed to the all too frequent “self diagnosis.” This over-diagnosis, perpetuated by clinicians and patients alike, is also echoed by society. I have noticed that people use the words “sadness” and “depression” interchangeably. While this is correct according to the thesaurus, it’s practical use attaches a medical association with the word. You would never call someone with mild mood swings bipolar as that would be disrespectful for people who are actually bipolar.
Real clinical depression cannot disappear instantly or be dismissed by a mere metaphor. Being educated about mental illness like learning about how to be empathetic cancer companion. Physical and mental illnesses and their sufferers experiences with them are vastly different but they all teach the art of empathy.
