The Reality Called Depression

By Vani P Nair -

                            The Reality Called Depression


To most of the upstanding citizens of our society, depression is still an uninspired excuse given by delinquents and deadbeats to wash their hands of responsibilities. These empirically shaped mortals obsessed with productivity have a problem with wrapping their head around abstract illnesses. Even considering the possibility of its existence among their peers or within oneself is viewed as a betrayal of their carefully cultured misplaced convictions. Unless there are festering wounds, lethal cuts, exsanguination, detached limbs, misbehaving cells or at least a cytokine storm, one doesn’t qualify to be addressed as “sick”.

The community doesn’t make things easier for the depressed either. The well-meaning aunties in the neighborhood and opinionated uncles making unsolicited visits to your house fuel you on guilt trips that more often than not end with self-loathing and stronger pills. The overachieving friends and cousins provide a gentle reminder of your worthlessness, which on a normal day you would have shrugged off. And then, for good measure, there is the yawning gap in your CV, which holds the potential to engulf your future prospects in a single go. In short, on a good day, the world is hard on people in general, and the depressed in particular.

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