Raphael Wolf
EDUCATING the public and creating awareness about mental illness, especially depression, will encourage more sufferers to seek help.
This is the advice from Cassey Chambers, operations director of the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (Sadag) as it highlights depression during Mental Health Awareness Month.
“Depression is a real medical illness that requires real treatment, just like hypertension and diabetes,” said Chambers. “
It can also be genetic. If a family member had depression, you may be at a higher risk too.”
The illness can affect anyone, and if left untreated or undiagnosed, presents the risk of suicide, she said.
Depression is a “whole-body” illness, involving the body, mood and thoughts, and affecting the way one eats, sleeps, feels and thinks about oneself, she added.
A Sadag pamphlet on the illness reads: “It is not a sign of personal weakness or a condition that can be willed or wished away. People with a depression cannot merely ‘pull themselves together’ and get better.
Symptoms include persistent sadness, pessimism, guilt, worthlessness and helplessness. There is also insomnia, oversleeping, fatigue, thoughts about death or suicide and lack of concentration.
Claire Lino, a specialist in trauma, addiction, crisis, adolescent and child counselling, said she still lived with the illness after being diagnosed before and after her pregnancy nine years ago.
She was rediagnosed with severe anxiety and depression and started taking medication after a nervous breakdown and an attempted suicide five months ago, she said.
The illness is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain when the central nervous system and pituitary gland do not produce enough endorphins. “Often people are in denial or ashamed because of the stigma attached to it,” Lino said.
For free phone counselling, referrals to resources and information, call Sadag on 0800 212 223, SMS 31393, or visit www.sadag.org