What I didnt have time to say yesterday is that there is still huge misconceptions about mental illness - and depression is included in that. I think things reached fever pitch with it in Victorian times when women who had children outside of marriage or were unfaithful, or spoke out too much about something, were committed to assylums. These assylums were quite often brutal "prisons" in effect, whereby inpatients often were subject to systematic abuse. Therefore, it simply made people close down and want to hide anything that might put them there. This thought has perpetuated through history and is still there today. Alot of people that feel they are suffering mental illness do not want to admit it for fear of either being "locked up" or taken away from their family or their family taken away from them.
Of course, that is if they actually recognise that they are ill in the first place. The very nature of illness - in particular - depression, you dont actually realise that you are ill as such. Not for a long while anyway. The thoughts that you do have are so dark or peculiar you dont want to admit them.
That, on top with the very definition of mental illness - there is this wild stereotype that if you are mentally ill it means you run around naked with a bra on your head flapping your arms like a chicken or something. Which of course is not true. But, movie portrayals etc etc. We dont want to associate ourselves with that stereotype.
Finally, there is an innate feeling of failure that comes with depression - its part of the illness but it feels very real (in some cases the cause of depression can be linked with the feelings behind failure/sadness but it can work either way. But the kind of failure I am talking about is feeling that we have failed because we arent mentally strong enough to cope with what life throws at us (unlike some people seem to do), and therefore - we have failed ourselves and our families. Again - this is just not the case.
It took me a good long time to realise first of all that I had depression, and then quite a while longer to start admitting it to people. I realised after a while that there was no good reason for not mentioning it - it explained alot of things tbh. Especially now I am feeling much better. I will quite happily talk about it, and mention it in conversation with anyone - should the subject arise.
I wrote a piece on how depression feels so the people could understand it, particularly if they have never "been there". I like people to show it to other people, and to put my name to it. I am proud of it, and I am NOT ashamed to admit I had PND. Why should I be? The more I do it, hopefully others will do the same, and sooner or later, a trend will be set. Could take many many years, but what the hey......