Hi, my name is Conor and I suffer from depression ("Hi Conor"). Since I was twelve years old, I've been through seven therapists, two psychiatrists, and four different medications. Sometimes it worked pretty well and I was able to feel good for a while, but usually the lows came more than the highs. On a scale from open weeping to jumping for joy, the best I could usually hope for was to plateau at "meh" for a stretch of time. The effects can vary depending on the person, but the more common threads are a loss of interest in things you enjoy, lethargy, irritability, and anti-social behavior. I’m one of the lucky ones who got a helping of everything, but the most persistent symptom is crippling self-doubt. It's an insidious little voice in the back of my mind that causes me to second guess everything I do. The little voice has a catch phrase, which is "Why bother?" Why bother cleaning your room? Nobody is going to see it. Why bother going to work? You hate it there anyway. Why bother talking to that girl? She's just going to reject you. Depression wants me to stay home, to stop putting myself out there and taking risks. It wants me to stay in my masochistic little cocoon of self-pity. I’ve lost touch with friends, ruined relationships, and otherwise been a nasty son of a b!*#! to a lot of people because of my inability to deal with my own brain. It causes me to overthink and jump to conclusions. Always imagining the worst case scenario gets old, and the only really effective way to handle it is the last thing a depressed person wants to do – talk about it. I can talk to a therapist about my depression and anxiety because they understand it. The problem is a lot of people don't, and as sufferers will know, those ill-informed people can be the ones closest to us, making it all the more difficult to get support from those we rely on the most.

There's no quicker way to piss off somebody suffering from depression than by saying "Just get over it. Suck it up. Let it go." People with little to no knowledge or experience with it may think that there’s no such thing as depression, that people just need to pull up their boot straps and move on. They may say “What do you have to be depressed about?” Though many people do have a reason, there doesn’t need to be one. Me, I grew up a white, straight cis male in a middle-class suburb. I’ve never had any major trauma and my family is wonderful, yet still I find myself laying awake at night going over all the reasons why I’m worthless. Depression is irrational. Depression doesn’t care who you are or what your story is. It isn’t a “my girlfriend broke up with me,” kind of gloom. It’s a mental disorder, a chemical deficiency, a pattern of thinking that leads to very dark places. There isn’t a sad switch that you can turn off like with a healthy brain. If I could choose to just “get over it," don’t you think I would? That’s where I think the most damaging stigma lies. Depressed people surrounded by this mentality may start to believe it and never seek treatment, and that sinister negativity just festers like dirty dishes in the sink.

The Anxiety and Depression Association of America estimates that at any given moment, 3 to 5 percent of adults in the U.S. are suffering from depression. Some stats say it’s even higher, close to 7 percent. That’s anywhere from 9 to 20 million people, and of those, maybe half will seek treatment. Considering that around 42,000 people commit suicide every year, how many of those might have been prevented if the people in their lives got them help instead of dismissing or ignoring their depression? How many of them might’ve been prevented if the individual had the courage to admit they were depressed instead of just pasting on a happy face and pushing it all down? When you tell a depressed person to suck it up, you’re perpetuating a dangerous and antiquated idea that mental disorders are made up or insignificant or easily fixed. You feed into their negativity by essentially telling them that it's all their fault. "You're not mentally ill, you're just doing this to yourself." Depressed people can't help it, and convincing them that they're to blame for everything will do nothing but deepen the feeling of hopelessness. Cutting off those support lines by being dismissive is detrimental. Fighting depression is hard, and making somebody do it alone because you choose to ignore it is cruel. There is no easy fix. It takes years, or maybe even a lifetime of work to overcome. Even then, the pathways in your brain may be abandoned, but they’re still there. There are still pitfalls that can undo years of work and therapy. Some people never get that far. For their sake, listen to them, keep an eye out for the signs, and for God’s sake, take them seriously.