TIME OUT:Carers require equal attention and support, writes MARIE MURRAY
DEPRESSION depletes those who suffer from it. The weight of it, the lack of energy, the light gone out of life drains happiness away. There is anxiety and emptiness. There is loss of everything that was once enjoyed. There are feelings of failure, social withdrawal and loneliness, listlessness and isolation, and those terrible twin emotions of helplessness and hopelessness. Everything seems to be pointless including living.
Often there are physical pains, headaches, stomach aches, the exhaustion of disturbed sleep, feelings of being unwell, of a body in too much misery with a mind that is racing in never-ending circles of despair.
Depression is a serious illness that requires immediate medical assessment and all the love, care and supports that family and friends can give. It is a time when the person who is depressed needs to lean on others, needs the shelter of support, the protection of understanding that they have only temporarily mislaid rather than lost forever their former selves. They need to know that they will be okay again and that the world will be a more amicable place to which they can return.
But there is another group who require equal attention and support. They are the people who live with those who are depressed, whose risk of becoming depressed themselves is high and whose sense of helplessness and incapacity to help the person they love is often immense. It is usually an unarticulated distress, a despair that dare not speak, a fearful vigil with sorrow and a silent suffering.
Living with someone who is depressed brings its own osmosis of emotions, its own particular depression and depletion and its own unique response. There is the lethal combination of compassion and anger. There is empathy and guilt. The life of carers may become as suspended as the person with depression, one of collusion in pretending all is well when it is not, of covering up or of surrendering one’s own wishes to the needs of another until everyone is equally depressed.
Witnessing the suffering of someone who is depressed, worrying about how to respond, or feigning false gaiety in a sunken heart is difficult. Choosing words carefully in case they anger or distress, absorbing stress or blame, denying disappointment, frustration and distress: living life this way takes its toll on carers.
Clinically, the emotions of love, anger, irritation, fear and guilt emerge most often in those who live with those who are depressed. They love the person who is depressed. They are angry at their inability to help, guilty when they feel happy and fearful when they are angry that they will push the person who is depressed into self-harm.
Living with someone who is depressed requires caring for two people: the person who is depressed and oneself. Both need equal attention. Both deserve it.
People who are depressed are burdened by self-loathing and shame if they feel they are a burden to another. This can push sufferers into the false belief that life would be better for everyone if they were gone. This is never so. This idea must be discussed and dismissed. It is the greatest fear of carers.
Caring for someone who is depressed is done best by ensuring that the person gets help, by not colluding with pretence that all is fine, but by commitment to assist, by continuing friendships, work and social activities and by not entertaining personal blame or guilt.
We help most when we resource ourselves. As in an aircraft one puts one’s own oxygen mask on first before attending to another, so with depression, the first help to give the person you love is help for yourself so that you can help and not giving up until the “oxygen” of intervention is secured for you both.
Depression is a treatable disorder. It is not a life sentence. It is not a death sentence. It must not be either. It is something to be recognised, admitted, understood, treated and attended to.
Clinical psychologist Marie Murray is director of psychology and of the Student Counselling Services in UCD