Depression

 Few days ago, I was hearing a conversation on the table next to mine in the office cafeteria. They were a noisy bunch of Gen Z’s. What caught my attention was their use of the term 'depressed'. They were actually using it to express the word “difficulty”. While talking about the load of assignment in their project a girl said,  'What is this? So much work!? It’s depressing!"

'Depression', I'm depressed'. They repeated it so very often. But in that group was another girl telling her to stop saying it because she's invalidating people who actually suffer from depression.

This is not an "only" example. We do see a lot of them. They just use this word to express “sadness” or “difficulty”. This is actually making life difficult for people who actually suffer from Medical Depressive Disorder (MDD). They get invalidated so hard because people now use it as a term that just signifies sadness. When they hear 'depression' the thing that comes into their mind is 'Oh, this person is just sad' or 'What a show off, I'm also sad, they're just overreacting' or the best of it - 'just be happy, chill karo yaar'.

Unlike what is generally believed, depression isn't actually sadness. Sadness is a temporary feeling. It may last for days or weeks but it doesn't actually affect you much. It is curable. It goes away after a while. You don't take medications for it.

Depression isn’t feeling sad, it’s “not feeling” at all. Being numb. Anxiety isn’t just shaking or worrying, it’s like you’re experiencing feelings clearly but the inner you is in conflict. Sometimes its more than that. General use of these words is bad.

Depression is a feeling that never leaves you. You just want to quit and end. It may stay with you for months and years. Once you fall into depression, you're prone to getting it again and again. It isn't curable. Medicines help you to some extent. I am invalidating those who feel sad. Sadness is not something fun to experience as well but depression is a whole new term. It's not an adjective or a type of mood. It's a whole as disorder.

You don’t feel like getting out of the bed in the morning. You may have work/tasks lined up to work on during the day, but you just don’t feel like it is worth getting up. Simple daily activities like bathing, shaving become “meaningless tasks”. Nothing excites you. If someone in the family gets a recognition. You feel good for that person but then internally you don’t feel a thing for yourself. It’s that bad.

And just because the term gets thrown around a lot, people tend to take it lightly. There can be a person, who just smiles a lot. Another person may laugh too much when he/she’s super anxious. A reflex action that a person cannot control and look so chill that when they talk about things, people don't realise it fast.

Often when someone is sent for evaluation of MDD, a small first look interview/evaluation is done by a junior doctor/counselor. If this trained professional is not empathetic, he/she can also say ' you're just acting, I'm pretty sure you have no problems at all'.

In such cases, the joke's on that professional because the very same doctors who sent to evaluate the patient are just shocked when they find out about how the patient’s mind works. It takes time to realise that this person isn't what he/she actually looks like from outside. He/She looks completely normal from the outside but deep inside, he/she's completely troubled and done for.

I hope that depression, anxiety, and going to a doctor for these issues becomes normal in Indian society. Because it’s like you tell someone about any of these issues, and people reply with “its nothing, just chill” which is totally wrong. No, one can chill when one is going through these issues. And I hope that people will use these kind of words carefully.