“Still crazy after all these years”*

(* with apologies to Paul Simon)

That’s what people would have called me some years ago.  But nowadays they say I have a mental illness.  And since there is more and more emphasis on recognizing mental health and removing the stigma associated with it, I thought it was a good time to tell my own story.

It all seemed to start just before Christmas 1989.  I had had problems with Christmas for a few years, but that year it seemed worse.  And it didn’t go away after Christmas like it usually did.  I was morose, argumentative and upset with myself.  After a few months of this, which was showing no signs of getting any better, my wife finally got me to our family doctor.  He listened to us for over an hour and then pronounced the diagnosis . . . I probably had clinical depression.  That was certainly the last thing I expected to hear. He prescribed anti-depressants and referred me to a psychiatrist.  So began a journey to find some sort of cure, still unaware that there is no “cure”, only ways of trying to live a normal life.  Even after being accepted by a psychiatrist who confirmed the diagnosis, it would be years before I found some degree of normalcy, and even that proved tenuous.  

The first chore was to find a drug regime that worked.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  Different drugs, each with their own side effects, had to be tried.  Combinations were attempted, again with mixed results.  Dosages were adjusted.  It is no easy task to change anti-depressants.  You don’t just stop one and start the other.  You have to wean yourself off one drug which usually takes three or more weeks before you start the next which the takes a week or more to become effective.  In the meantime, you have once again become depressed.  I went through this several times over the next ten or twelve years.  Sometime after 2000, we finally came upon a combination that seemed to work.  It has only had to be adjusted once since then.

So what is depression really like?  It can be the worst feeling you ever experienced.  They say that everyone’s experience is different.  In my case I experienced feelings of sadness, listlessness, self-loathing, unwillingness to socialize, being argumentative, paranoia and fear.  Night after night I would wake up in the wee small hours with what my psychiatrist called the night terrors where you feel panicky and fearful of some vague worry.  During the day, I would be anxious over the simplest task.  I would try to make it through a week of work, only to have a meltdown every weekend which often resulted in serious arguments with my wife.  I felt terrible many times, but for some reason I persevered and never missed a day of work because of depression.  This was my first civilian job and I didn’t want to jeopardize it.  But I did make one mistake.  At one point, I revealed to my manager the nature of my problem. Although he said he understood and promised confidentiality, he nonetheless informed all of the senior managers of my problem.  From then on I was stigmatized in that workplace, even although I worked diligently for that company for several years thereafter.    

There were other results that inhibited life in those years.  I found out from experience that volunteering was a risky business.  Several time I tried, but sooner or later, I would have a bad turn and not be able to carry out my responsibilities.  To this day, I am not comfortable in volunteering for anything long term.

Depression is hardest on the family.  It was my wife who got me to a doctor, saw me through the worst times, and is the best bellwether of my moods.  It did take a toll on her and on my children.  One son worries whether there is a genetic disposition to depression, and unfortunately there are indications that there is.

What causes depression?  According to doctors, it is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain that affects the areas that control emotion. Anti-depressant drugs try to compensate for that imbalance.  They do not “cure” depression.

I moved on from that first company in 2000 at a time when my symptoms were getting better.  We weren’t all the way there yet, that would come a year or two later.  Meanwhile I managed to forge a fairly successful career as a consultant and later as a project manager for another company.  In the latter job, once I was sure that the management group had faith in me, I once again revealed the fact that I suffered from depression.  I did this in order to sensitize these managers, who were scattered across the country, to be aware of any apparent mental health problems with their people.  They had no problem with knowing this fact and their trust never wavered, a refreshing change.

Finally, a drug combination was found that seemed to offer some sort of stability to my life.  Except for one upward adjustment in dosage, I have been on it ever since and life has been somewhat more normal.  Not perfect, mind you, but better.  What is the effect of these drugs?  Other than offering normalcy, the do have the effect of limiting your emotional responses.  Whereas you do not suffer much downward emotion, you also do not experience really high emotion.  You seem to live in an emotionally narrow band.

I finally found an answer to why I became depressed three years ago while pursuing a claim from Veterans’ Affairs.  Their in-house specialist spent two hours with me and decided that I really didn’t have much of a problem. I appealed this finding and found a clinical psychologist who spent twelve sessions with me and diagnosed that my depression was caused by the trauma of the explosion and fire aboard HMCS Kootenay in October 1969 where I was one of the officers.  In 2010, I had written a book about the incident, We Are as One, and the psychologist found this ample evidence of the cause.  

So it looked like I had finally overcome the depression with the help of medication and understanding the reason why.  But it turned out not to be that simple.  About two years ago, I had a relapse.  I became angry and argumentative, and almost got into a fight at the fitness club where I go.  That night I refused to go to bed and lay awake all night on the couch giving the most serious thoughts I had ever had about suicide.  I was convinced that the world would be better if I wasn’t here.  I thought of three or four different ways the suicide could be accomplished.  I was close.  And then in the early hours of the morning the most amazing thing happened.  My dog, Only (really, that’s her name), came over and cozied up to me asking to be petted, as she frequently does, and I realized that this animal would miss me, for all my problems and faults, and I couldn’t bear to leave her.  The next day I found another psychologist thanks to Veterans’ Affairs and I have been in treatment with him ever since.  It is just an example that clinical depression never goes away.

There are a couple of things I have learned about depression over the years:

 - you never really cure depression.  You learn to manage it either through medication or therapy;

 - one big mistake people make when they are diagnosed with depression and are given medication to manage it, is to assume that when they feel better, they think they are cured and refuse to continue the medication; and

 - the most dangerous time for someone suffering from depression is not when they feel their worst, but shortly after they start medication.  When they feel their worst, they have no will to do anything, but shortly after they start medication and are just starting on the upswing, they feel energized enough to actually take action, such as suicide.

Statistically, there should be a number of you who have been affected by mental illness, whether yourselves or someone close to them.  To you, I can only hope that you have overcome the problem and are able to live a normal life.  To those who have had no such experience, I can only say that I hope that this exposé will make you more tolerant of those of us who have been affected by such problems.  Those who are afflicted by these problems need understanding, not stigmatization.