Imagine a day without sunrise and everything still. Now imagine that happening every single day. I believe that doesn’t bring a pleasant picture in your mind. Well, this is not even close to how depression feels like.
Depression is often confused with words like “grief “, “frustration ” or maybe “worry”. When you ask a person who has been through these storms of emotional struggles, you will get to know that feeling depressed is much worse than what these words reflect . Someone very wise said and I quote “you cannot understand the pain unless you get bruised yourself”.
You must be wondering why the hell am I discussing depression in my very first post. For the reason that no one else does. You cannot solve a problem unless you discuss it. Depression is an illness and the first aid is discussing it with someone.
The feeling of deep hollowness and a constant fear of nothingness is like sitting in the dark, losing yourself completely and mistrusting your very own guts to find a hope. It doesn’t always lead to the feeling of death, but to the feeling of not to live anymore.
You guys would be stunned to know that our country, India is the most depressed country in the entire world,followed by China and US. No one in our country bothers to meddle into such issues. They term it as “abnormal” and in so many years it has become a social stigma. They are embarrassed to discuss their feelings because they fear people would judge and would not pay any heed.
Aren’t we just way too bothered about what others would feel than what we are going through presently. None of you would deny that we lack basic human-like mind to understand the practicality and sensitivity of the situation. We are sympathetic, but never have we tried to be empathetic.
Millions and thousands of our kind are losing their lives simply because of our derth of emotional intelligence. There are so many less psychologists, therapists and psychiatrists than what is actually required. Our country spends less than 10% on mental health organisations and treatment centres.
So the very first step we can take to curb this crisis, is to just be simply be aware of the grave situation depression leads to. We need to understand the depth of grief and loneliness the person feels. Let us show some support to them and let them know that it is absolutely okay to feel this way. The least we can do is to give them the mental assurance that they are not alone in this journey, all of us are together in this and we will get through this.