My Turn
by Daniel T. Lukasik         

Over 340 million people suffer from major clinical depression worldwide, 20 million alone in this country. By the year 2020, the World Health Organization estimates that depression will be the second leading cause of disability worldwide—second only to heart disease. The annual economic impact on our national economy has been estimated to be over 40 billion dollars. Depression is not just a problem in our country. It’s a five alarm fire.

I have suffered from depression for some years. I believe that there is still a tremendous stigma attached to depression despite the billions of dollars of research which has shown that depression is a serious medical illness. One troubling study found that 54% of Americans think depression is due to a “moral weakness”. I have been told, “just get over it”, “suck it up” or “go on a vacation.” Yet, all these statements—and I had thought them myself at one time or another—fell on depression’s deaf ears.

Depression affects every area of one’s life—physically, mentally and spiritually. When it first hit me at age 40, I was profoundly tired; it felt like wet cement running through my veins and I had difficulty concentrating. I originally thought I had some kind of virus.

A visit to my family doctor and a referral to a psychiatrist revealed that I was suffering from major clinical depression and needed to be put on medication. This was a lonely and troubling experience for me. I didn’t want to go on medication and feared what it meant: I asked myself, “Am I crazy?” I learned over time that I wasn’t crazy. That for once in my life, I needed to ask for help—something men in particular have trouble doing. It was in learning to ask for help that I began my path to recovery.

My next visit was to a psychologist. I quickly learned that depression was not only a disease of the body, but also of our minds and how we think about and perceive our lives. Just taking a pill would not cure my depression. I needed to examine and confront the self-defeating thoughts and emotions that fueled my depression. My therapist called such maladaptive thoughts, “crooked thinking”.  I had to replace such unhealthy thoughts with ones that would encourage me and teach me that I was a worthy person.

Finally, there was the spiritual dimension. One of my favorite readings from the Bible is the Twenty-Third Psalm. It says, “though I walk the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are by my side.” Depression feels like one is walking through “the valley of the shadow of death”—and doing so alone. People who have never been through depression can’t imagine just how much pain the depressed person is in; why someone who is in such a state would ever contemplate suicide. Yet, the pain can run so deep that one feels death would be preferable alternative. It was at these moments, when depression had knocked me to my knees, that I cried out to God. I pleaded, “I can’t handle this anymore. You take over.” And He did. He sent help in the form of friends, professionals and a renewed relationship with Him. He would stand by my side and I would no longer fear the “evil” of depression. I could walk out into the sunshine from valley of shadows.

People who have never experienced depression—but care about someone who suffers from it—often ask me what they can do. My first response is that they can Catch a depressed mood the way you catch a cold?  Not exactly . . . but similar.  Can other people really be a source of the rising rate of depression in the United States?  The scientific evidence suggests the answer is yes.  Our social lives play a huge role in how we think and feel.  After all, none of us are immune to the influence of others, for better or worse.  How we react to others, and vice-versa, even has a measurable biological impact on our brain chemistry, as our newest brain research shows us.  The evidence is rapidly mounting that depression is about much more than just an individual’s “bad chemistry.”  Thinking of depression as a brain disease is proving to be too one-dimensional a perspective.