Compassion, Solidarity, and Mental Health: Love in the Times of Depression
here is a new, rather heartening trend on Facebook. People post messages on their walls letting the world know that they are aware of mental health issues or suicidal tendencies (depending on the ‘week’ they are looking to commemorate), inviting their friends to come and talk to them in case they are going through an emotional or psychological crisis and need help and support of any kind, starting with a non-judgemental listener.
It is great to see the wave of support promised to you on Facebook. I believe many of them mean it too. But speaking from personal experience, for anyone going through depression or anxiety or any other mental health issue, it is often too much of an effort to just get through the day doing what is required of you.
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To make up your mind to seek out a compassionate listener, even from a crowd of friends, is a daunting prospect, let alone from objective strangers posing as friends on Facebook. It has to do with a host of insecurities stemming from your present state of mind as well as to the stigma people associate with mental health issues, that makes the fear of being judged, or mocked, or dismissed as an attention seeker a prime deterrent to approaching a purportedly supportive listener for a person suffering from mental health issues.
What is even more heartbreaking for such a person is that once they have found the courage to speak out about their problems to someone, the listener may just end up reacting with silence or by a change of topic. It has led me to realise that it is not so much that the friend in such situations does not care for the person concerned, than it is the fact that people have no idea how to respond to admissions of mental health, or how to talk to or treat a mental health patient in a practical situation.
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