The Wall_Spring 2023_Issue 9

Sofya Shmul , (she/her), LVI , explores the harmful affects of depression and therefore develop our empathy.This article aims to provide an outlook of the ways in which depression can affect a person’s day to day life, as well as what we, as both a collective and as individuals, can do to help.

Personal Relationships

You wake up one day and the world has lost its spark.Your bedsheets feel cold and uncomfortable, your head is spinning, and you just can’t think properly. You brush your teeth and wash your face, but the water doesn’t feel refreshing, rather, it feels disgusting on your skin.You comb your hair and some strands come out on the brush.You panic - this has never happened before.You look up to see yourself in the mirror, but it doesn’t feel like you’re looking at yourself. More like a figure or an imitation of the real you.You catch yourself thinking that today just doesn’t feel real. Except this isn’t the case for a third of adolescents, those suffering with symptoms of depression. For them, a bad day is a vicious circle - a battle for control over something that is destroying them from the inside. But what does it really mean to have depression? Although schools often educate pupils on the symptoms of depression, they never speak candidly and accurately about how those symptoms affect the daily lives of those suffering from it.This often results in positive messages of the school being translated into a stereotypical and harmful view of mental illness.The symptom of lacking motivation is interpreted as ‘lacking ambition’; fatigue as ‘laziness’ and the whole concept of depression as ‘just an excuse’. What can we do except encourage people to listen? After all, we can’t force them to respect others. The one thing we can do is understand This is just one bad day, right? Tomorrow everything will get better…

Some studies have found that over 60% of those with depression consider relationship problems to be the main cause of their illness - these include both platonic and romantic relationships. Why is it that something that should cause happiness sometimes brings so much pain and instability with somebody who is mentally ill? Although we usually think of ourselves as a good friend, we often overlook the differences of the way our words can be interpreted when they are directed towards someone with depression. Usually, we assume that we know how to handle somebody’s “mental breakdown” yet the definition of helping somebody is different for each person. Some will say:“I usually give them a hug and we watch a movie together”, others: “I let them speak to me and tell me how they feel”, and some say:“I leave them to think about their own feelings so that they can figure them out”. While all these solutions make perfect sense, we might forget that not every person is the same, especially a person with depression. Some people may prefer to talk to you about an issue, while others might want to be left alone. How can we tell what our friend needs in that moment? The answer is simple - communication.Asking your friend what you can do to help in a tense situation is the best thing that you can do without sending them into a spiral if you accidentally do the “wrong thing”. People with depression often struggle with feelings of loneliness and isolation, and a logical solution like “allowing them to digest the problem alone”, could end

Education Have you ever tried to study while being completely exhausted? There is only one word to describe this - useless.With depression being one of the most common mental health conditions documented on college campuses, affecting nearly 50% of students, it is no wonder that many find it difficult to get through exams or even graduate. Being depressed is often accompanied by a lack of sleep as well as constant exhaustion. It can feel like a constant cloud over someone’s thoughts, making it very difficult to concentrate in class and especially study independently outside of it. Although our education system often involves PSHE lessons about mental illness, it rarely provides any help about how to tackle the symptoms of it. If a student seems like they aren’t paying attention or not writing anything down, they will usually hear the phrase “stay behind after class” at some point in that lesson.Why is it that these behaviours are instantly treated as a lack of discipline or respect, when it could be caused by something that the student has no control over? Increased awareness about handling the behaviours of those suffering from depression could be a key in solving this issue - as most people are uneducated about how to help a friend or student when they are feeling particularly low at school.

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