I went to see a doctor to discuss my options to deal with depression and anxiety. I assumed we would talk about what was going on with me, what treatments I am currently using, and what we can implement to improve my situation. Instead, I filled out a 10 question quiz, and that was about as far as we got. I thought that that was an awful and impersonal way to diagnose anyone with anything, and I felt like maybe my current emotional state wasn’t real or related to depression because my symptoms weren’t all on a one page quiz. I started analyzing my mind a bit closer to find any sort of symptom that could be even remotely related to depression, so I would know my feelings were validated. Analyzing myself in this way made me feel even worse, as I felt so desperate to get the help I knew I needed, and to be taken seriously about it. Even so, I felt like my medical and therapy options were quite limited. Andrew Solomon, in a TED Talk titled “Overcoming Depression” says “I hope that fifty years hence, people will hear about [our] treatments, and be appalled that anyone endured such primitive science.” Our crude forms of help with Western mental health workers are aptly pointed out by people of Rwanda, as Solomon continues to say, “They [the mental health workers] didn’t take people out into the sunshine where you begin to feel better, they didn’t include drumming or music to get peoples blood going, they didn’t involve the whole community, [and] they didn’t externalize the depression as an invasive spirit. Instead what they did, was they took people one at a time, into dingy little rooms, and had them talk for an hour about bad things that had happened to them.”
While counselling can be an incredibly effective form of helping people overcome mental illnesses, it’s rather limiting. If we can realize that every person learns in a different fashion, then why is it not also acknowledged that different people require different forms of help? How can my mental illness be properly diagnosed from a few standardized questions in a quiz?
I will not stop seeking help. I will continue to see multiple doctors to figure out the best route to positive mental health, and to seek out different and possibly unconventional treatments. If you feel you are suffering from absolutely anything, then you must fight through the current blocks in the system. You must get help in whatever way works, as “if you say that you have depression, and standing on your head for twenty minutes every day makes you feel better, then it’s worked, because depression is an illness of how you feel. And if you feel better, then you are effectively not depressed anymore.” Watch this TED Talk if you’re feeling uninspired by the way you’re currently dealing with things:
Written by Taryn Nowak-Stoppel