Depression Talk

Mom got a frantic phone call this afternoon. Her friend of about twenty years was calling from the hospital, after a failed suicide attempt. Her friend had been increasingly isolating herself from others — even buying a house far away from everyone she knew — and Mom did tell her that she was concerned for her well being. Her friend has severe depression.

Mom’s friend asked my Mom to contact her relatives in Ohio to come visit her while she was in the hopsital. Mom did so, telling complete strangers that their family member near Philadelphia had once again tried to commit suicide by trying to jump off a house roof and had to be taken to the hospital in handcuffs.

(No, I don’t quite understand that, either, but I’m not sure I really want to know.)

Not Your Fault

Mom says she feels as if she should be doing more to help her friend in the hopsital, but really, there just isn’t anything she can do. When someone you cares for tries to commit suicide, you naturally feel some degree of guilt. Party of it is survivor’s guilt and part of it is just the confusion and upheaval that such news of a failed sucide attempt brings.

Also, you feel bad because the situation is totally out of your control. When someone you care for tries to commit suicide, it’s not your fault. It is your fault if you completely ignore them when they ask you for help during their recovery.

Signs of Suicide

Although Mom did talk to her friend about her isolation, the suicide attempt still seemed like a bolt from the blue. Mom’s friend did not act in a way that let her feelings of suicide show — except for choosing more and more to stay by herself, surrounded by people who didn’t know her at all.

What could Mom do — force her friend to get help when her friend didn’t want it, just because she moved far away and stayed home every night instead of going to the movies? So, if you think you should have done more to help your loved one who tries to commit suicide, take a deep breath.

You did all you could.

When you have depression, the last thing you feel like doing is sticking up for yourself in any way, shape or form. You don’t have the energy to engage in any confrontation. You probably want to do everything you can so you can quickly get back to bed. You also feel as if it would be hopeless to be assertive in any way, since the world sucks, so why bother?

It’s hard to argue with those powerful feelings, but you do have to bother. One little victory today can help prove to yourself that you can make your life better through your own actions.

The Rescue Fanatasy

Believe me, I still indulge in this fanatsy from time to time. In this fantasy, you are the best friend or lover of a perfect person who can right all of the wrongs in your life. Although many women have this fantasy, many men have it, too. There seems to be a collective fantasy in the world that some sudden scientific discovery will take care of global warming once and for all, without us having to lift a finger.

People with depression don’t have any kind of rescue fantasy because we are lazy. We have it because our depression constantly tells us that we are helpless and hopeless and therefore unable to rescue ourselves. After battling depression all of my life, I still have those thoughts of, “I’m useless,” going through my head. It’s not exactly a rousing battle call. Not many family crests have the logo “USELESS” emblazoned over them.

So, when you keep thinking that you are useless often enough, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You do become useless because you’re convinved that no matter what you do, you’ll fail at it, so what’s the point of trying?

Being a Bitch

I’ve left an abusive relationship. I run my own freelance business and have run into deadbeat clients more times than I’ve had hot showers. And I have major depression. In order to survive, I’ve learned to ignore the voices in my head and stick up for myself. I am then called a bitch. Well, sometimes you have to be a bitch in order to get things done.

In order to stick up for yourself, just do it immediately. Don’t stop to agonize if you’re going to offend anyone or if you’re going to mess up somehow. That’ll make you a victim every time. Once you get one victiory sticking up for yourself, you can draw on that happy memory for strength when you have to stick up for yourself the next time.

Hope this helps.

I live with my Mom but my Dad and my stepmother live in the next town. Dad takes me out for breakfast every couple of weeks. Mom and Dad divorced when I was 16, but both parents were homebodies. They didn’t take business trips, gave up vacations in order to send me to a good school and were basically “there” for me. I always kept in contact with Dad all through my life and now, at 38, I was bent over French Toast and mentioned, “I stayed up until one in the morning watching the election. Wasn’t it great?”

And then discovered that my Dad was and is a conservative Republican.

Whoopsie.

How Didn’t I Know?

After having more or less steady contact with my father for 38 years, you think I would’ve somehow picked up on the fact that he was Republican. But I didn’t. I went through these 38 years being absolutely positive that he was a liberal to moderate Democrat. Why did I assume that?

Part of it was probably due to Dad being somewhat quiet about subjects like religion or politics, although he could be incredibly argumentive about things like unions, saving the whales and helping the environment (of which he is all for). But mostly, I didn’t know because of my depression.

You Get A Little Self Obsessed

With any type of depression, it’s very hard to get the big picture of things. You make assumptions and assume that there can’t be any change to those assumptions. This is one reason why people with depression often don’t go get help — because they are convinced that they can’t be helped.

When I look back on my political inclinations, I just assumed I got them from my parents. They pushed me in one direction and then let me go and I chose to keep toddling down the path of a liberal Democrat. Because depression makes you a tad self-obssessed, you just assume that everyone in your inner circle has the same opinions you do.

In Conclusion

When you have depression — or go to breakfast with a parent — don’t take anything for granted. You’ll still probably put your foot in your mouth, but don’t take anything personally. After a few minutes of staring over the food plates, we laughed, had a bit of a talk and laughed some more.

If you don’t like the image of Keith Olbermann here, trust me — I could’ve picked something worse. Count your blessings. Yes, I’m still being vistied by Dream Keith and probably will so until the guys I usually have erotic dreams about decide to put a stop to it.

Are Erotic Dreams Normal?

You could have an ice-cold shower right before falling asleep and you probably will wind up having an erotic dream. This doesn’t mean that you are going crazy or are any more sicko than the next person. It is because your nerves have fired in your genetalia. This normally happens when you are asleep. It seems to be the brain’s way of exercising your sexual organs to keep it in shape for the real thing.

This also seems to happen with the fight and flight response, where your brain exercizes your body’s chemical mechanisms to deal with various dream dangers. Perhaps it’s like a fire drill just to make sure everything knows where to go in case of an emergency. But this can produce some pretty horrifying dreams.

And then sometimes you get both systems firing together, making erotic nightmares or nightmarish erotic dreams. Even in the dream, the more you try to fight it, the weirder and more peverted the dream tends to get.

What If The Dreams Are Better Than Real Life?

The problem that I have with erotic dreams is that they are often a lot more interesting, vivid and pleasureable than real life. This can make me feel hopeless, despondent and not wanting to ever get out of bed. I have had one therapist suggest that the Prozac is stimulating some intense dreams, but I’ve had a rich and weird dream life since the womb, so I doubt it’s the Prozac.

It could be the depression. When you’re battling depression, there’s always a little voice in the back of your head saying, “It shouldn’t be like this. It could’ve all been so much better had you not made so many mistakes.” When you wake up from a really good dream (erotic or not, Keith Olbermann included or not), it is as if you got a taste of freedom and then were slammed into a prison cell again.

Try to celebrate your imagination rather than make comparisons between your waking life and your real one. Try to savor the moment to find the pleasures there in front of you rather than overlook everything that doesn’t exactly match your dreams.

And eat a lot of chocolate.

On a highly publicised telvision ad for Chantix (to help you quit smoking), one of the side effects noted is “unsusal dreams”. Aren’t dreams supposed to be unusual? For me, a dream that is indistinquishable from reality is a very bad dream indeed. But more and more, antidepresants are being noted for producing strange dreams, including very vivid erotic dreams.

I Hope You Aren’t Eating Now

I’ve been on Prozac for five years now, but I’ve had nightmares and strange dreams from the womb. In fact, my first memory is of a nightmare. But sometimes I think my mind gets a little more into the weird area of dreamland, partially die to my depression.

For example, when I have an erotic dream, it’s usually about Peter Gabriel. He’s a rock star with blue eyes and so this is what I consider a normal erotic dream for me to be. Hell, that’s what I consider a normal erotic dream for anyone to be, but I get very looks when I mention that in public.

But not last night. Oh no. Peter’s not going to be too happy with me.

I’ve been following the Presidential election campaign closely these last three weeks (Yes, I voted for Obama) and have been watching MSNBC a lot. So my erotic dream was about Keith Olbermann (pictured).

And damn it if it wasn’t one of the best dreams in my entire life. Don’t worry — that’s all the details I’ll give. But, I swear, I’m never going to watch MSNBC again without drooling.

Should We Call The Men In The Nice White Coats?

I’m telling you all this not because I’ll enjoy being ridiculed later on. But that I can’t be the only one. I think everyone winds up having a really nice erotic dream about someone they normally wouldn’t think X-rated thoughts over. This can suddenly happen to people taking a new medication for the first time, particularly anti-depressants and anti-convulsants.

When you take many kinds of medication that work on yoru brain chemistry, you will have a tendency to either sleep more, sleep deeper and sleep better. This is great for your body. It also means you will be getting in the REM cycles you need and this means more dreaming. So, if you begin remebering your erotic dreams, the good news is that your body is probably getting enough sleep.

The only bad news is that you’ve been having strange erotic dreams all the time — you just haven’t been able to remember them until now.

Nighty-night.

Although it’s usually the voters who wind up feeling blue, there have been many politicians who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or major depression. Until the 1990’s, no politician who actually wanted to stay in office could admit to being depressed. The stigma of metal illness and insanity would doom that politician to a career change. Depression or melancholia was something kept very private.

It seems we insitictively look to the physcially perfect in order to be our leaders - and depression also falls into the “imperfect” category. In some ancient cultures, if a sitting king or chief was discovered to have a physical flaw — even due to age — he was not only removed from power but often executed.

Abraham Lincoln

He didn’t wear black all the time as a fashion statement. We only have his letters, writings and doctor’s notes to go on, but many experts agree that Abraham Lincoln, generally considered America’s greatest President, had major depression. Going through the Civil War and the death of a beloved son intensified his already strong depression. How he managed to get out of bed every day and eventually run the country is nothing short of a miracle.

Winston Churchill

It is thought that England’s most famous Prime Minister suffered from bipolar disorder (called manic depression in England). Churchill wrote a lot about … well, just about everything, and so scholars got more than just a peek into Churchill’s moods and thoughts. He apparantly called his down states “the Black Dog”.

Senator Thomas Eagleton

I hear you saying “Who?” His biggest claim to fame was, in 1972, being the Vice Presidential Canidate to George McGovern — for a mere 18 days. Then, it was discovered that he had clinical depression so severe that in the past he needed shock therapy. What happened to Eagleton happened to any politician discovered to have depression — he was dropped like a hot potato.

Lawton Chiles

Although admitting he had depression and was on Prozac, he was still elected a two-term govenor of Florida. He died while in office in 1998 and is remembered fondly by many Floridians to this day. In many obituaries about him, there is only a passing reference to his depression, if that. He was known for championing health care reform.

In her best-selling memoir Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, hysterical author Elizabeth Wurtzel wrote about how much she hated jokes about depression and Prozac. Her reasoning is that making jokes about depression “trivialized” the matter. Depression, no matter what it’s mutation, can be an incredibly painful and often lethal condition.

Which is exactly why we should joke about depression all that we can. Humor, meet Elizabeth Wurtzel. Elizabeth Wurztel, meet Humor.

Remember Humor?

One of the symptoms of depression is that it robs you of your sense of humor. This is probably why Elizabeth Wurtzel is so upset about depression or Prozac jokes. It’s because she can’t find much of ANYTHING funny, let alone her own condition. The same thing happens to me when my depression takes hold of me by the throat. Suddenly, everything in life is incredibly serious and monumental, even very trivial things like spilling your drink or waking up five minutes late.

Your whole sense of perspective is thrown off when you have depression. You feel exactly like the old line from a stand-up comdey act: “I’m a piece of crap the whole universe revolves around.”

Laughter: The Best Medicine

In fact, if it wasn’t for depression, we might not have a lot of comedians. Making fun of themselves, even how miserable they found life to be, was fodder for their jokes. Not only that, it was a great way to deal with their depression. By laughing at something scary, we take away some of it’s power to scare us. When we aren’t so blinded by fear, we can get a much better perspective of ourselves and our world.

Making fun of depression has pretty much been a career for some comedians like Woody Allen and Richard Lewis.

Granted, not all comedians with depression found the relief they needed from making people laugh. The late great Richard Jeni was one. He was a brilliant comedian and a contemporary of Bill Hicks when he committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2007.

But laughter and humor helps jolt you out of the ruts your thinking can get into. Cultures from all over had sacred clowns which helped make fun of anything serious. Just as the Iroquois needed the Society of False Faces, we need comedians willing to make depression jokes today.

People with depression often are far more sensitive to picking up the unspoken emotions of others. Even if they live alone, they can often pick up the vibe of the nieghborhood, or sense how people really feel just from talking to them on the phone. So, things were a wee bit tense around the Greater Philadelphia area (where I live) this past couple of weeks because the Phillies were in the World Series.

How I Did My Part

I do my part for Philadelphia sports teams by not watching them. I haven’t watched a single second of the Phillies 2008 season — and they wind up winning the World Series. Of course, that doesn’t explain why they won the World Series in 1980 and I watched nearly every game. (Yes — I am old). However, this is Philadelphia. Logic need not apply as to why the Phillies have a good or bad season.

The Night Air

Mom and I watched MSNBC while the game went on last night about a half hour away from where we live. Just before 10pm, the fireworks started. Mom said, “The Phillies!” but she has trouble walking now, so she switched the channels while I went outside with my dog, Pony.

Out in the night air, even over the fireworks, Pony barking and car honkings, were cheers. It wasn’t just my neighborhood yelling, it wasn’t just the town next door yelling — it was the whole city of Philadelphia yelling, too. It was great to loose myself in the moment when most of the area was finally happy rather than our usual shade of miserable. A couple of years ago, Philadelphia was voted “America’s Most Depressed City”. Not this year, baby.

The Moral Of The Story

If you have any type of depression, it can be too intense of an experience to follow a sports team. If it gives you happiness, then by all means go for it. But for some people like me, I get too personally involved. Suddenly, if my team isn’t winning, then the sky is falling. Part of this I think is because I can pick up on the emotions of all other fans when they are disappointed.

So, I stopped following sports teams. But if you have depression and your town’s sports team does well, go outside and join the parade or listen to the cheers in the biting cold night. It sure beats shock therapy.

One of the biggest things that can intensify symptoms of depression is the thought that everything is pointless because we’re all going to die. Even more fun is the thought that the universe will eventually die. That means nothing is lasting and therefore everything we do will evenutally become meaningless because it will all fade into oblivion.

Don’t Ignore It

If you start talking about death and how everything is pointless, everyone around you either assumes you are going to commit suicide or they tell you to think about something else. Although many people who do commit suicide (or try to) do talk about death beforehand, they usually talk about the act of death itself, such as “What do think is less painful? Drowning or a gunshot to the head?”

But you do need to look at the fact that you are going to die, whether you have been diagnosed with depression or not. If you keep pushing it away, it becomes part of the Great Unknown and can become far more frightening than it really needs to be. True, no one knows for sure or has 100% proof of what happens to your consciousness and sense of self after you die. You could come back in another body, you could go to an invisible place or you could dissolve into nothingness.

Either of these happenings are really not that bad, once you really think long and hard about them. Studies show that at the moment of death, the body relseases a lot of happy drugs (endorphines) into the system. Everyone may wind up shuffling off of this mortal coil high as a kite. The next life could be a prolonged happy hallucination that seemingly stretches to infinity. That’s not such a bad fate.

In The Meantime

In the meantime, life is like attending a concert with your favorite singer. Sure, there’s a heck of a long wait before the singer comes on and you have to sit through opening acts, but at least, eventually, the singer shows up and performs a great gig. It would be silly wasting that opportunity dreading the moment when the singer takes his final bow and leaves the stage. You want to get as much enjoyment of the concert as you can while you’re there.

Hope this helps.

Just as you don’t want to drink alcohol when your depression symptoms are really kicking up, it’s also not adivesable to watch a really depressing movie. You really don’t need anything to intensify your symptoms. Granted, some depressives can watch a depressing movie and not feel any worse, they usually feel any better, either. If you are experincing one of those setbacks where one more thing is going to push you over the edge, then avoid watching depressing movies.

What Constitutes A Depressing Movie?

Granted, you probably have a different definition of what a really depressing movie is. When I refer to a depressing movie, I’m talking abut a movie where you really get to know and pull for the good duys and it looks like they’re going to save the day and then they loose big time. Critics usually refer to these movies as “gritty slices of reality” but they are as depressing as the current economic crisis.

The List

Here we go. Brace yourself. I’m only keeping this to five because I know that when depression symptoms flare up it can be hard to concentrate.

• 5) Birdy (1984) Peter Gabriel’s soundtrack is much more inspiring than the film. Peter describes this as a “very special film”, but I’m not sure if he was being sarcastic. (As in, “You’re being sent to the special education classes.”) This is one of those films where at the end, you shake your head and say, “What the hell just happened?”
• 4) Sophie’s Choice (1982) Granted, any movie involving a Nazi concentration camp should give you a clue that this isn’t going to be a day at the beach. Although incredibly beautiful to look at and has great acting, the ending makes you wonder if everything in life is pointless.
• 3) Platoon (1986) Ditto. What’s even more depressing is that last week on MSNBC, director Oliver Stone commented, “I made three movies about the Vietnam War and it didn’t stop us from doing it again in Iraq.”
• 2) Dances With Wolves (1990) I used to be in an abusive realtionship. Knowing full well I was part Native American, my partner forced me to watch this movie. It was either that or get beat up. I think I would’ve been better off getting beaten up. Thankfully, I finally wised up and left him.
• 1) Brazil (1985). Wanting to watch this movie voluntarily more than once in a lifetime is a definite sign that you may be thinking suicidal thoughts.

If you know of any other movies those with depression should avoid, feel free to comment below.

I nearly dropped my tea when I read this. As readers of any of my blogs know I lived many years in south England before moving back to the land of my birth — the suburbs of Philadelphia. I met many UK natives and naturalized citizens with mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, major depression and bipolar disorder. They all seemed to have nothing but derision and scorn for talk therapy but seemed more than eager to try any new medication that came along.

I guess they pulled one over on me and whoever was listening, because the British Association for Counsellling and And Psychotherapy claim that UK citizens prefer talk therapy or cognitive behaviorial therapy than they do taking any kind of medications. Granted, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy may have a vested interest to crow about this as loud as they can, even though they are not a business guild but a charity. Which leads to the inevitable question –

How Reliable Can This Study Be?

Although the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy are the publishers of the study, Counselling in primary care: a systematic review of the evidence, they don’t appear to be the folks who funded the study. There doesn’t seem to be any major pharmaceutical company or profession with a vested interest funding the study.

BUT (and yes, it’s a big but) the British government has just invested a whopping 170 million pounds over three years into funding a government program called Improving Access to Psychological Therapies. Although I do beleive that both medication and therapy helped me and can helps lots of other folks with major depression or post-natal depression, I do grit my teeth to see whenever I see that money may somehow be the sole motive of a depression treatment study. The reason I grit my teeth is that I know someone will point at the study and say, “Money is invloved, therefore the study is worthless and therefore let’s let those with depression tough it out on their own so we can fight more wars.”

The Study Itself

The study was done by Andrew Hill, Alison Prettle and Peter Jenkins from the University of Salford. They study also contains contributions by Claire Hulme from the University of Leeds. They claim that 24% of their patients wanted only counselling while only 15% wanted counselling. However, the majority of patients (61%) was far more sensible and wanted both.

Talk therapy definitely is not on the way out – in the UK, at least.

Go to school. Hate it. Get a job. Hate it. Pay the bills. Hate it. Then perhaps have a few years of retirement where you finally have time for what you want to do, but can’t because of the problems of an aging body. So, you spend 99.9% doing what you don’t want to do and .01% of what you do want to do.

Is this all there is to life? No wonder there are so many people with major depression. And if you already have major depression or are on the down cycle of bipolar disorder, then looking at everyday life and back over your own life and the life of your parents can make you want to curl up under the covers and never some back out.

There Is More To Life

Although it might sound incredible, there is far more to life than holding down a steady job and making a lot of money. But if you have major depression (or any other type of depression), you won’t be able to see all of the other ingredients that up the minnestrone soup of life. This is because the depression is like an eyelash across your eyeball — it hurts so that you can’t see much of anything.

So, first off, you need to try and get better. Leave the heavy “meaning of life” questions for later. The more you try and find them now, the more of a hole you’ll dig yourself into. When you have depression, you can’t sleep well and are more prone to illnesses and can’t concentrate. You need to let yourself have the luxury of taking the time to get better before you can start butting neads with Christopher Hitchens and/or the Dalai Lama.

It Finds You

Finding some sort of point to life — even finding a job that doesn’t want to make you vomit — takes a long time to find. Some people are born knowing exactly what they want to do in life and then there’s the other 99% of us. If you get your health in order, and then tend to making sure you get enough food and a roof over your head, the heavy duty questions of life seem to answer themselves.

One day, you stumble upon what you want to do with your life, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with money. Maybe it’s doing charity work or pursuing creative arts (which don’t pay well, believe me). Somehow, it finds you when you’re not really looking to hard for it.

Hope this helps.

First, an electronic magnetic device was approved for headache treatment and now there’s a big fuss in the blogosphere about using a similar kind of magnetic doo-hickey for treatment of clinical depression. It’s been approved by the U.S Federal Drug Administration for depressives. So, what’s this thing supposed to treat next? The common cold? The war in Iraq?

What Is It?

The super-duper name for it is Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? The good news is that thee doesn’t seem to be any negative side effects. The bad news is that it can’t possibly work in the long term. Short term, yes — but not long term.

Granted, I’m not a doctor nor a therapist. I do, however, have a brain and use it regularly(despite my many years in Christian education). Magnetic therapy does seem to help people and animals for some sports-related aches and pains, and does have some traditional folk healing properties (including migraine treatment) — but nowhere in myth, folk healing or even urban legends have there been any indications that magnets help depression or melancholia.

The Placebo Effect

Although the makers of this doo-hickey, Neuronetics, Inc., claim they have done clinical testing with 164 deressives proving the benefits of TMS to patients with major depression, I can’t help but wonder what the time period of these tests were. The placebo effect will inevitably last for the first few months. This is because if you believe it, it will come. If you believe a new doo-hickey will help cure you, you will feel cured. The mind is an incredibly powerful thing. It can be duped for bad reasons as well as for good reasons.

However, major depression is a life-long affliction which has to be battled every single darn day. It’s not merely a problem of brain chemicstry, but ingrained thinking habits learned over years. If major depression was only a physcial problem, then it should have been wiped out as soon as Prozac and his kin hit the market.

The thing about TMS that I distrust is that there isn’t any mention of treating the long-ingrained learned helplessness apparant in many with major depression. Also, how much is this thing? That’s GOT to be depressing!

It’s hard to have a “normal” day when you have depression. You are either having the best day ever or you’re having the worst day ever. One of the problems many people with any type of depression face is these swings in perception. With major depression, you tend to swing from horrible to terrible while with bipolar disorder, the swings are a little more dramatic. This extreme in perception can make people with depression not get any help for depression.

“What’s The Point?”

Because you feel so bad, you feel as if you are the only person in the world that has ever had depression as bad as you. You are positive that you’re a unique case that your doctor has never seen before and therefore will not be able to help you in any way, shape or form. So, what’s the point of trying to get any help if there’s no help out there to be had?

This viewpoint is nonsense, but not at the time when you are going through it. You are positive that you have been cursed with the worst life a human being could possibly have. If anyone urges you to go to a doctor or even take any medication the doctor prescribes, you are positive that they are wrong. This isn’t an arrogant feeling or a paranoid feeling. It’s a feeling so strong and so centered within yourself, just like the knowledge of whether you are standing up or not.

Spotting This Behavior

You do need to see your doctor if you have depression. You do need to take the medication prescribed. You also need to heed other advice such as getting regular exercise, getting regular sleep and learning non-chemical ways of dealing with stress such as with yoga, medication or watching the birdies fly by.

Medication can take a couple of weeks in order to make any noticeable change in your thoughts and perceptions. I remember when I first was prescribed fluoxetine (generic Prozac). I was really groggy for two weeks, and then things began to change. I also had a regular appetite for the first time in years.

While waiting for the medication to kick in, you can use your logic to spot extreme thinking. Every time you start to think, “Nobody can help me” or something like that, say, “Stop. That’s just the depression talking. I can be helped.”

For more inforamtion about spotting please check out Recovery, International’s website or the books of Dr. Abraham A. Low.

Murder, mayhem, monsters — you wouldn’t normally prescribe books dealing in those subject matters to people with various types of depression. But horror books can certainly help lift the spirits of many people with major depression. Not only are they distracting and entertaining, but they also reinforce the notion that all bad guys loose … well, loose some bits of themsleves, anyway.

Books and Not Movies

Although some people with depression can find horror movies relaxing (especially the bad ones where everything is obviously fake), I find horror movies to be too intense. Also, I feel a little less in control of how I want the story to come at me with a movie than with a book. A book I can hold in my hands and imagine what I want to imagine.

A movie — even on tape or DVD — throws a bunch of images at you without much warning. You can be so caught up in the story that you don’t realize that there is a remote control with a STOP button sitting right next to you. With a movie or DVD, you’re more willing to let the story take over — even to the point where you ignore phone calls and your bladder screaming at you that you have to go potty. With a book, you have a better sense of perspective that “it’s just a story” and you can put it down and pick it up again any time you like.

What Stephen King Said

People have often ask Stephen King why he writes “just” horror or fantasy books when he has the storytelling ability to succeed in any genre he wants. King has gone to great length expalining not only the craft of writing, the great tradition of the horror genre but also why he just plain likes writing scary stories. Check out Danse Macabre and On Writing for details.

King points out that horror stories tend to be the most moralistic genre around, loaded with traditional family values or whatever the prevailing culture’s values are. The horror is partially in distorting what you hold to be good and true. In a usual horror story, or even a cautionary tale about the bogeyman to kids, bad behavior gets punished and good more or less prevails.

This is a lesson that can bring great comfort to those with depression. Perhaps Stephen King books should be studied just as much as serotonin in future clinical trials.