I dream a better future

*

"We must recognise that the suffering of one person or one nation is the suffering of humanity. That the happiness of one person or nation is the happiness of humanity. "

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

My journey with depression started when I was very young. I first tried to commit suicide at the age of six (I took six of my mother’s painkillers, sat down under a tree and waited. To my relief and disappointment nothing happened), had my first stomach pump at fourteen (by this time I figured out six pills was not enough), my first intravenous OD at twenty (my parents found me half dead in the garden and had me committed, first to a psychiatric ward and then to a state rehabilitation centre).

*

A few months before being committed into rehab I saw a therapist who introduced me to several visualisation meditations. One meditation I clearly remember. I went into a cave. In the cave was a book. In the book I wrote down what I truly wanted.

*

After coming out of rehab I went back to my therapist. I started exploring meditation and yoga. Although I still occasionally took drugs it interfered with my meditation. Eventually I stopped drugs, drinking, smoking and eating meat. Old friends were discarded. For a while I had no friends at all. I moved back with my parents and got several part time jobs. Then I made my first after drug friend, Helen.

After a while boredom motivated me to go back to college to study computers part time. The stress of wanting to be the best in my class resulted in anxiety attacks followed by intense crying bouts. After a program I was working on would not compile I started crying, ran out of class and sat in my car sobbing. I decided that I have given this my best shot. There was no reason for me not to drive to Hillbrow, get some drug and finish the process I started years ago.

Then I thought: “Why not ask the master at my martial art school for help? If he is not willing to help me I can still get drugs." I drove straight to his school. As luck would have it one of his students cancelled and he had time to see me. Over many sessions I recognized the effects my thoughts and emotions had on my life. I started cutting out negative thoughts. When they got too insistent I visualised a flower while chanting to myself: “It is not real, it is not real, it is not real.”

I made enormous transformations in my life. I felt like a new person. I left the old me behind. Once things started stabilising I went back to therapy to make peace with the me I left behind. Every day I open up more to the me I have always wanted to be. I gain more confidence in my ability to reshape my story. Life is sometimes filled with love, beauty and possibility and sometimes with self doubt, anxiety and the depression of disconnectedness.

I had a boyfriend who encouraged me to make a list of the things I want to do with my drug free future. I sat for hours but could not think of a single thing I believed myself capable of doing.

*
I’m sure those early therapists wondered if I was worth the effort. I gave them hardly any feedback. I was surly and non-responsive. Yet their words were the seeds from which a magic tree grew. I was able to climb into this tree and view a greater landscape.

But I still had tremendous opportunities. My obstacles were mainly within my own mind. Living in South Africa I am surrounded by thousands of people without my privilege. 
*
At my work there is a security guard who dreams of becoming a nurse. She needs 9000 rand which is about 1300 dollars. Access to this amount of money will change her life forever but earning only 1500 rand a month she can only dream.

Another security guard, guards a door leading out onto the stairs, look haggard with boredom at the end of each day.

*

A wonderful women called Lindi used to look after Florian's brother's son but wanted a better life and got a job as a cashier. She now gets paid less than 1000 rand a month, work 10 hours a day and is abused by her employer. When I ask what she would like to do she says she wants to go back to being a domestic worker. When I ask her if there is anything else she looks at me blankly.

I wish I knew how to change things.

I am going back to university this year to study psychology and politics. There are countless development programs in South Africa helping people to grow food and build shelters. I want to see these programs include treatment for mental illness and depression. Although investing money into feeding, clothing, housing and education is important they mean little to those suffering from mental anguish and depression.

In my future every one will learn to recognise the power of dreaming. Development projects will budget not only for places where therapy and healing can take place but also for the resources needed to staff and maintain them. People will be assisted to remember and realise their dreams. Life is filled with such incredible beauty and potential. It is the human right of everyone to experience this beauty.

I know this is not an easy task. I know that I may sound naïve. I know I have a lot to learn. That is why I'm starting with what I know. I will become aware of the best way to proceed as I grow and adjust my dream accordingly.

*

Below I include quotes below from recent studies:

“Of the 450 million people worldwide with mental health problems most live in developing countries. Mental and behavioural disorders affect one out of four people during their lives. Although treatment is not expensive, most people do not receive the treatments they need and governments on average allocate less than one percent of their health expenditure to mental health.

No health without mental health’, January 2005, Insights Health

“The elderly depressed are chronically undertreated, in large because we as a society see old age as depressing. The assumption that it is logical for old people to be miserable prevents us from ministering to that misery, leaving many people to live out their final days in unnecessary extreme emotional pain.”

“Depression and substance abuse form a cycle. People who are depressed abuse substances in a bid to free themselves of their depression. People who abuse substances disrupt their lives to the point that they become depressed by the difference.”

*

“Depression cuts across class boundaries but treatments do not. If you are way down at the bottom of the social ladder, the signs may be less immediately visible. For the miserable and oppressed poor, life has always been lousy and they have never felt great about it; they’ve never been able to get or hold down a decent job; they’ve never expected to accomplish anything much; and they have never entertained the idea that they have control over what happens to them. "

"There is a vast difference between simply having a difficult life and having a mood disorder, and though it is common to assume that depression is the natural result of such a life, the reality is frequently the other way around.

*

Afflicted by disabling depression, you fail to make anything of your life and remain stranded at the lowest echelon, overwhelmed by the very thought of helping yourself. Treating the depression of the depressed indigent often allows them to discover within themselves ambition, competence and pleasure."

The noonday demon – an anatomy of depression. Andrew Solomon

*

“Such mental pain is often worse than physical pain and it affects more people – not to mention their families. Thus when psychologists study how different types of disabilities affect a person’s subjective well being, they regularly find that mental illness is the single most powerful predictor of distress. "
*

"So everyone who cares about fairness and helping the disadvantaged should give high priority to the care of people with mental problems. Depression and anxiety prevent many people from working. Some lose their jobs; others who are already out of work lose the will or skill to get back to work.”

The depression report. A new deal for depression and anxiety disorders. The centre for Economic Performance’s Mental Health Policy Group – June 2006