Never once, during any of my bouts of depression, had I been inclined or able to pick up a telephone and ask a friend for help. It wasn't in me.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the struggle of reaching out for help during times of depression.
Kay Redfield Jamison's quote elucidates the profound challenge that individuals with depression face when it comes to asking for support. Often, the weight of their emotional state prevents them from seeking help, highlighting the isolation and internal battle that accompanies mental health struggles.
In practice
This quote could be used in a mental health awareness campaign to emphasize the importance of reaching out for help.
No pill can help me deal with the problem of not wanting to take pills; likewise, no amount of psychotherapy alone can prevent my manias and depressions. I need both. It is an odd thing, owing life to pills, one's own quirks and tenacities, and this unique, strange, and ultimately profound relationship called psychotherapy
Mood disorders are terribly painful illnesses, and they are isolating illnesses. And they make people feel terrible about themselves when, in fact, they can be treated.
When people are suicidal, their thinking is paralyzed, their options appear spare or nonexistent, their mood is despairing, and hopelessness permeates their entire mental domain. The future cannot be separated from the present, and the present is painful beyond solace. ‘This is my last experiment,’ wrote a young chemist in his suicide note. ‘If there is any eternal torment worse than mine I’ll have to be shown.
When public figures remain silent about depression, there is a cost to the rest of society. Silence contributes to the misperception that successful people do not get depressed, and it keeps the public from seeing that treatment allows many individuals to return to competitive professional lives.
Because I teach and write about depression and bipolar illness, I am often asked what is the most important factor in treating bipolar disorder. My answer is competence. Empathy is important, but competence is essential.
I decided early in graduate school that I needed to do something about my moods. It quickly came down to a choice between seeing a psychiatrist or buying a horse. Since almost everyone I knew was seeing a psychiatrist, and since I had an absolute belief that I should be able to handle my own problems, I naturally bought a horse.
I wasn't creative when I was depressed. When my depression got treated, I was creative again.
People in the world can never imagine the length of days to those in asylums. They seemed never ending, and we welcomed any event that might give us something to think about as well as talk of.
When I look at the patients that I've cared for with mental illness, I know that many of them took years to come forward and tell somebody that they were in pain and that they needed help.
Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.
Years of depression have robbed me of that—well, that give, that elasticity that everyone else calls perspective.
How come every other organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy, except the brain?
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