Depression sufferers should speak out

By GAIL GRIFFITH
KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- I should have known better.
In 2005, I published a book about teen depression. I wanted to write a thoroughly engaging portrait of a family (my own) in crisis, struggling to come to terms with a quotidian ailment that affects roughly one in four adolescents during the pratfall from childhood to adulthood.
I was delusional enough to think my book would naturally draw an audience of parents, educators and practitioners, all jumping up and down to figure out how we get to the bottom of this scourge of teen suicide.
Wrong! The reality was, at book readings I saw people come and go, checking me out to make sure I didn't have tendrils of snakes for hair, and to assure themselves that I appeared "normal."
Of the people I spoke to afterward, almost all wanted to relay stories of losing a child to depression and suicide. And, just when I thought I'd heard the worst story about a child who died by his or her own hand, there was another, in a different city, by a different means, more horrific than the one before.
These families were wrecked; they looked to any opportunity to talk to someone about their loss. They deserved my attention . . . and they broke my heart. I had discovered an ugly truth: Most American families are loath to acknowledge a "sick" child if the disease is depression; the stigma is pervasive to the point of paralysis.
In the interest of full disclosure, I suffer from depression, just as a person suffers from seasonal allergies. And I know this disease from the perspective of someone who lives with it every day, as well as from the vantage point of a mother whose teenager suffered a brutal bout of depression that nearly ended his young life.
Bold activism
Breast cancer survivors don't whisper, they shout. Prostate cancer has its vocal champions in the form of celebrities who are brazen enough to discuss their erectile dysfunction on television. And thanks to the bold activism of the early HIV/AIDS survivors, HIV/AIDS has become so common a public health topic that ads for treatment pop-up on buses and subway cars all over the country.
But even within the community of believers -- people who understand and live with brain illnesses -- we have let the stigma get the best of our rage, to the detriment of the people who need our help most: our children.
It's confounding that in this day and age we do a decent job of teaching kids about the hazards of unprotected sex and the risk of sexually transmitted diseases, but not mental illness.
While the messages range from "practice abstinence" to "take precautions," young people today are well aware of the risk factors of STDs. We also teach them how to examine themselves for breast and testicular cancer.
But the chances teens will contract AIDS or cancer is miniscule compared to their risk for depression. And tragically, only a handful of school districts incorporate mental health education into their curricula.
When one stacks up the dollars spent on research and treatment for depression, bipolar illness, and schizophrenia against the funds available for cancer, heart disease or diabetes, it's a sorry equation.
Monies spent on research for HIV/AIDS amount to eighty-five times the amount spent on research into suicide prevention and yet every year thousands more people die by suicide than from AIDS, prostate cancer, or Parkinson's disease.
Borrowing the powerful HIV/AIDS community's message, silence all too often equals death for the unluckiest of us who suffer from a mental illness.
Given that the stigma of mental illness is so deeply rooted, we are in for a long and wrenching slog to redress this crisis. We can shorten that journey by lifting our voices unflinchingly and urgently -- for the sake of our children and ourselves.
Gail Griffith is the author of "Will's Choice: A Suicidal Teen, a Desperate Mother, and a Chronicle of Recovery" (HarperCollins, May 2005). Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.