An Inconvenient Truth: The Meaning of the Term "Depression"

I'll relate to you a conversation I heard in the hallway last week on my way to Health class:

(I'm just going to call these two Shaniqua and Giselle for the hell of it.)

Shaniqua: "Oh my God, I've been feeling really crappy lately!

Giselle: "That sucks. Why have you been feeling bad?"

Shaniqua: "I dunno. I think I'm clinically depressed or something."

Giselle: "Why do you think you're depressed?"

Shaniqua: "Well, my hermit crab (Yes, hermit crab) died a couple days ago, and my dad has really been cracking down on my grades. It's awful!"

Giselle: "That sucks, dude." 

Shaniqua: "Ugh, I'm so depressed right now! I'm going to go to lunch and eat away my feelings or something."

This conversation pissed me off more that you know. I know that Shaniqua meant her conversation with Giselle to be taken as a joke, but in all honesty, depression is not funny at all. 

People often use the term "depression" lightly. The consider it depression when you are sad about the cafeteria not having burritos in the morning, or not being able to go to your favorite after school club one day. While depressed is technically defined as a state of general unhappiness or despondency, the medical term depression is much more serious than that. People who are depressed can be unhappy for extraordinary long periods of time for no reason. They can become withdrawn, negative, irritable, constantly tired, and agitated. In the worst bouts of depression, people can have feelings and thoughts of worthlessness, hopelessness, self-hate, and even death or suicide. This medical condition is generally caused by a lack of the chemical serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that directly controls moods, especially moods of happiness, joy, or elation. Some people take pills to boost their serotonin levels, while others take other forms of medicine. Some even opt to try and deal with depression without medicine at all. Depression can be caused by many factors: death of a close friend or family member, low self-confidence, divorce, abuse, job loss, or even failing a class. Depression can even come about without any warning.

Activity of a depressed brain VS activity of a not depressed brain

So here's where we get to the part that rubs me completely the wrong way. It's not just people using the word "depression" lightly who irk me, it's also people who try to blame all their problems on depression when they really have no depression at all. How many times have you heard someone claim that they are depressed purely because they've had one bad day? How many times have they come to school the next day their normal happy selves? I'm guessing a lot. This has happened to me numerous times. In the case of one friend, I had to deal with her mood swings between "depressed" and elated every single day. She was in no way depressed; she would just complain about stupid things all day and then claim that they were making her sad and lonely. She was a social butterfly, had numerous friends, was totally happy and healthy at home, and had no problems at all.

Zero. 

Zip. 

Nada.

I'm utterly serious. There was no hidden story in the background. She was just bored with her life and decided to claim to be depressed to get attention and sympathy. I'm not just making this up, assuming, or making hasty judgements about her. She actually told me this.

My friend is not the only person I know who has faked depression in order to get sympathy. I've had countless friends try to get their parents and teachers to believe that they were depressed so that they could get a break from them. Some of these people would say that they were so "depressed" that they could just stop trying, and told everyone that they believe that everything was meaningless. They took a medical condition, faked being diagnosed with it, and then acted out being severely affected by it to get attention. Depression is one of those disorders that is especially hard to diagnose. If someone has shingles or meningitis, they need only go to the doctor's office and the doctor can prescribe them medicine because they can see the physical traces, and can gauge pain. Depression is a mental disease, and no one but you can feel what is going on in your brain. People can easily fake being depressed, same as any person can fake being happy. 

This cannot be tolerated. Not only are they messing with their friends', family's, and teachers' heads, but they are also contributing to more confusion about depression. It's absolutely unacceptable

Other things that annoy me about people's perception of depression are the stereotypes associated with depression. People think that men and women who have been diagnosed with depression are always sad, and they they always are negative and down in the dumps about everything. Another common stereotype is that they can't have fun or be funny. All of these are completely false. Just because someone is depressed doesn't mean that they can't be happy or laugh or be fun. They just have trouble with becoming sad and getting out of that sadness.

People have tried to diagnose me as depressed for a while. My seventh grade teacher asked me to my face if I was depressed, then proceeded to ask my mom about it. My brother constantly tells me that I look and act depressed all the time. My mom even wanted to have me tested for depression because she thought that my low-self confidence and desire to stay in the background was due to depression about my appearance. I know for a fact that I am not depressed. I have my bad days like anyone else, but I can get out of that sadness easily. I need time to recover, but I know how to get out. I know people who can't get out. My best friend Brian has been diagnosed as depressed for about three years. He comes to school every day, he jokes around, he smiles, and he laughs like the rest of us, but underneath that facade he has trouble staying happy. He's not always sad, but he becomes despondent for no reason, or over little bad things that had happened that day, and then he can't become happy again. His depression has a lot of side-effects: He has extremely low self-confidence, he can't sleep, he has difficulty concentrating in class, and he can become withdrawn easily. Some days it's not easy being around him because he's so far into his hole of pity that he can't see out of it. He's an extraordinary, wonderful, amazing person, but his depression keeps him from seeing that.

My best friend

I don't mean for this post to be an ode to my best friend, but he is one of the reasons that depression became such an important issue to me. We as a society see depression as a taboo. We tell those suffering from it to keep it in the dark and to hide it away so that "normal" people don't have to see it. If we don't see it as a taboo, we distort the meaning of depression and use it too lightly or in the wrong connotation. We need to show that just because someone has depression doesn't mean that they are always unhappy, and we also need to show that pretending to be depressed is not okay. Clinical depression needs to be brought out of the dark, just as our definition of depression needs to be.

-Emily of the Horvath