Overcome the Stigma of Depression

by Christa A. Banister on Wednesday, October 01, 2008

This article is courtesy of HomeLife magazine
After graduating from college, 25-year-old Gina Morgan seemed to have everything going for her. She landed her dream job as a newspaper reporter near her much-beloved Missouri hometown. She married Carl, the man of her dreams. She went to church whenever the doors were open and even taught a Sunday school class.
Yet before long, "everything was falling apart," Morgan confesses. "But I just kept saying I was fine."
One day a co-worker pulled her aside and told Morgan she was exhibiting classic signs of depression. Although Morgan was convinced her co-worker was nuts, a fight with her husband later that night almost cost her something valuable - her marriage - as she packed her bags and was prepared to move back in with her mom.
Noticing how out of character her reaction to their fight was, Morgan made an appointment with a therapist, just to see if there was any validity to her co-worker's claims about depression.
"Instead of asking me how I felt, she asked me if I was [experiencing] certain things," Morgan recalls.
"For the first time, I really felt I wasn't losing my mind. In retrospect, I find it funny that one of the first signs I had of depression was the inability to make decisions. One of the biggest fights Carl and I had was that I couldn't decide what to fix for dinner. Or if we went out and I had to chose from a menu, I absolutely couldn't do it."
Morgan did decide, however, that she no longer wanted to pay the bills (something she says she "hadn't exactly informed my husband about"). She also was sleeping all the time and had no interest in doing anything.
"I would come home from work, take a shower, and go to bed by 6 p.m. Then I would oversleep the next morning if Carl wasn't there to wake me."
At her worst point, Morgan considered driving her car into the lake.
But like many who struggle with depression, Morgan was still able to put on a happy face and minister at church because she knew that's what people expected.

Overcoming stigmas

According to statistics reported by WebMD, more than 18 million people in the United States battle depression, but archaic thinking still permeates the subject. Author Marion Duckworth writes candidly about her journey to healing in Naked on God's Doorstep (Multnomah). "I fell into the category of Christians who think that Christians shouldn't have to seek psychological help," Duckworth admits.
"Yet with things I'd gone through in my past, including having a father who was mentally ill, I didn't address [those issues] until I hit my 40s. I knew something was wrong, but I hadn't put the pieces together. I was always using accomplishments to make myself feel better. As a Christian in ministry, there's always the need to live up to expectations. You're the one that provides the help; you don't go for help."
As for her father, Duckworth used to believe he'd chosen to become ill. "Plenty of people told me he didn't have a mental illness, he just chose to give in."
"Fortunately, in the last couple of decades, Christians have come to realize that we are complicated creatures," Duckworth says. "We each have a mind, emotions, and a spirit - and a mind can become ill."

Healing steps

Many who are depressed self-medicate through alcohol or illegal drugs. Morgan drowned her sorrows in caffeine. In fact, she drank so much coffee and Diet Coke that she landed in the emergency room for dehydration. But through the constant, patient support of her husband, regular visits to her therapist, and prescribed medicine, Morgan began to notice a difference, although not immediately.
"The first time I went to the therapist, I figured she'd fix me in one session," Morgan says with a laugh. "But it took talking through past issues to begin the healing process. And as a result ... my relationship with God started to improve."
For Duckworth, it was the realization that God truly loved her, something she reaffirmed through a Bible study that led her on the path to healing.
"We were studying Ephesians, where God talks about how He chose to make us His own," Duckworth recalls. "He makes us holy so we can live in His presence forever, and His grace overflows to us. The verbs in these passages came to life in me. God's love became real and tangible, and He enabled me to cultivate my gifts. I always felt constrained writing for publications, but I took a class and joined a writer's organization, so He kind of walked me through the whole process. Then gradually, as I began to tell my story, other people wanted to talk to me. God turned it into something productive and turned the situation around for me."
Duckworth encourages those who aren't part of a Bible study to "do what I did not do."
"Go to a Christian counselor. Find someone to talk it out with. [Depend on] members of the body of Christ. We need ministers and those who are schooled in particular areas in our lives. Journaling also helped me. It's great to discover what you're thinking and put the pieces together on paper. I think the Holy Spirit uses that process to reveal things."

Light at the end of the journey

If you've ever heard Chonda Pierce's redemptive brand of stand-up comedy, then you already know she's a funny woman. But in what seems like the ultimate irony, Chonda spent months in emergency rooms before being diagnosed as clinically depressed.
"My emotions were so numb, it was as if an Out of Order sign had been thumb-tacked across my heart," she recalls in her memoir, Laughing in the Dark: A Comedian's Journey through Depression (Howard). She's the first to admit she's not a counselor but feels that by sharing the intimate details about her journey, she might help others experiencing their own dark moments.
"I know 132 shades of gray, but I also know that life doesn't have to be gray forever," Pierce says. "There was light at the end of my journey."