Don’t hide your depression (why some people hide it and why you shouldn’t)

According to a WHO report, more than 300 million people across the world have suffered from depression
at some point of their life. In US alone, 10.3 million adults experienced an episode that resulted in severe
impairment in the past year. All these horrifying stats and yet depression is a taboo. You can’t talk about
it for the kind of negative connotations associated with it. Most people barely display empathy towards
the victims of depression. But it’s about time, people must speak for it is the only way to break the taboo
now. Following are some reasons why you must not hide your depression.

 Smiling out on depression is not nice – most victims would laughingly ignore the symptoms of
depression. Primarily because the moment you open up about it to your acquaintances, barely
anyone would suggest you to take serious medical advice. Ignoring your depression may lead to
serious consequences like panic attacks and other mental illnesses. So it’s better to seek medical
advice.
 Case of hidden depression – not being able to seek expert advice on depression may enable the
victim to reconcile with themselves and ignoring it altogether. Depression not realized may make
the situation dangerous manifolds. It enhances the likelihood of suicide. Not being able to express
your feelings builds up and may reinforce the victim towards self-harming.
 Opening yourself up is the key – many a people are not comfortable about opening up to a
therapist. It’s all right. Happens with the best of us. You can count on your close family member,
friends or colleagues to express. Sometimes venting out about how you feel to people you can
relate to is the best therapy you need. So don’t fall back.
 The curse that self-pity is – when you are not being able to enunciate in words about how you
feel, you are deem to fall into the abyss of self-pity. Only thing it does is aggravate the situation.
It gives you the very notion that you are not steering your life and have no control over the
situation you’re in. it is always better to seek help via conversing with people you know and love.
 People help – although it is a fact that issues like depression is only but a taboo in these times we
live but it is also true that as soon as the people who know you happen to know about the kind of
pain you are going through, they will always feel sympathy for you. Most will empathize with you
by lending an ear. So all you need to do is not conceal your depression but speak up about it.

We cannot ask everybody in the world to just shake off their taboos regarding depression overnight. Steps
would have to be taken for that and most effective steps would be those to be taken by the victims
themselves. It is the victims who need to take the little steps of opening up to the very people they feel
comfortable around with. Also, people on the other end need to be better listeners, and display nothing
but empathy. It is only baby steps like such that will enable us to step into a world where a victim of
depression would not have to conceal their depression but be more vocal about it.