Getting Assistance Not Embarrassing

The child is hit by a car and terribly injured. He recovers, but the recovery is long, frustrating and exhausting. For the mother, the adrenaline kicked in at the moment of the accident. Nervous energy carried her through the hospital vigils, the surgeries, the trips to physical therapy.

Slowly, the crisis eased. The child grew strong once more. The joy should have returned, but instead depression visited the mother.

Her child lived, why the feelings of overwhelming worthlessness and despair? Later, the mother learned that depression often works like that. It waits until the crisis has moved on and then it settles in, sometimes months or years later, a cloud so dark and black it feels permanent.

Tipper Gore was a mother who experienced a son’s near death and then a deep depression. The vice president’s wife told USA Today a few weeks ago about her struggle with clinical depression and her successful journey back to mental health. This admission by the vice president’s wife created little stir. Many newspapers, including this one, didn’t even carry the story.

This shows how far our country has come in recognizing that clinical depression, and other mental illnesses, happen in families. Happen in all families, no matter how good, how edcuated, how wealthy, how caring.

Contrast the almost ho-hum reaction to Tipper Gore’s news with the fanfare that accompanied the announcement in 1972 that vicepresidential nominee Sen. Thomas Eagleton had undergone treatment for depression. He was off the Democratic ticket within days.

So what happened in the 27 years between announcements? A lot. In the 1970s, dozens of formally taboo topics started climbing down from family attics.

Cancer was called by its name. Alcohol and drug addictions were admitted to and treated. Spousal and child abuse were no longer as easily hidden away or lied about. By the 1990s, some feel we’ve become too open about these former family secrets. Cheap talk shows have made parodies out of pain, and it can be irritating and downright embarrassing at times.

But the excess is a small price to pay for the openness, because the openness leads to recovery. Gore’s message - and the message from other depression sufferers, including journalist Mike Wallace and author William Styron - is this: Depression, when you’re in it, feels like being locked in a suffocating room with no doors to the outside world. But doors exist - therapy, support groups, medication.

Trying to tough it our rarely works and can lead to suicide and other kinds of violence.

So it’s important for people to talk about the depression to someone, anyone, and ask for help. For these courageous ones, the light of life will shine once more.