Handling Depression

Two of my friends living miles apart are presently going through a similar harrowing situation. Their young children have witnessed a close friend commit suicide for no apparent reason. The kids are in a state of shock, cry incessantly, need to be sedated and even faint in school/college. The school authorities, parents, relatives and friends like us have absolutely no idea how we can assist them face this situation.

This is a common story in our country where the large population, poverty levels and social backwardness has so many horror stories that the new urban issues and the help that is needed to face them are largely ignored. Many of us have gone to government hospitals to meet doctors and felt embarrassed at our injury as when one walks through the large number of critically ill, poor patients. However this does not mean a person who has gone through a terrible injury, an accident, a mastectomy, a bereavement, separation, and retrenchment does not have emotional despair that should be ignored. In insulated, nuclear families where everyone is busy one cannot find people with whom one can share one’s sorrow and who can be the crutch to one’s recovery.

One can treat this as the ranting of a self indulgent person or recognize that there are moments in most people’s life when one walks on a tightrope between giving up and succumbing to despair and fighting back. A person can either turn bitter, hard and distrust society or retain faith. Not everyone can recover singularly but most often people do not know who they can speak to for help, even if one is ready to pay for it. The only people who remarkably surface in such situations are religious sects who want you to join their society. Even internet search does not yield obvious results.

We are still a reticent race and do not speak easily to strangers about our inner thoughts and feelings. Our elders feel uncomfortable discussing delicate subjects and prefer to disappear from the horizon rather than take the bull by the horn. In social situations people don’t really want to have morose people in their parties, they want successful beautiful people who are full of mirth. One needs strength to listen to a person who is low, for like the “Dementors” in the Harry Potter series, they tend to absorb happiness and strength.

This is where social networking has played a very important role. Childhood friends are usually the ones who lend an ear to pain. Sometimes strangers with similar emotional quotients help each other. What an individual needs at such a juncture is not to be isolated but to be able to reach out to at least one other being on a daily basis to recover.