You readers are an extension of me. You are my riches. I welcome your comments to the blog and I welcome your guest blogs.
Today I share a guest blog from Jay Brubaker, father of two, graduate of Bluffton University, former social worker, now an attorney and of course a coffee buddy. His blog, as he says, is motivated by a sharing at church. One of our friends told of the suicide of a colleague. Jay’s reflections mean much to me since I too have had to manage depression throughout my life.
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I suffer from depression. It’s hard to explain how hard it is to write that simple sentence in a forum where I do not know who will read it. My reluctance certainly has a lot to do with my own journey in coming to grips this disease, but it has also been reinforced by many messages I have received from people around me and by society as a whole. Despite the significant progress that has been made from the time when people with mental illness were locked up in “asylums” and cutting edge treatment involved surgically destroying part of a person’s brain, mental illness still carries a stigma with it.
I still have vivid memories of the pastoral figure I reached out to in my teens telling me that killing myself would be the worst possible sin I could commit, and if I did this that I would spend eternity in a special section of hell where all my earthly problems would be magnified tenfold.
More recent, if much less dramatic, situations have also reinforced the stigma that I learned early on. On my State Bar application, I was required to disclose any mental illness. During the follow up interview to determine my fitness to be an attorney, I was questioned about my treatment. No questions were asked about my physical health. In my personal life, well-meaning and caring people close to me have informed me that my disease is something that is all in my head, and therefore I should just be able to move past it. On the job front, a good friend of mine was asked to take a “personality profile” as part of a job interview process, an assessment that turned out to be mental health diagnostic tool rather than the Myers-Briggs style personality indicator she expected. Although this is not necessarily unique to mental illness, multiple insurance companies have informed me that the word “depression” in my medical history renders me uninsurable. Each of these incidents, some more overtly than others, has reinforced the message that my illness is one that I should not readily talk about; that my disease is something that should be hidden away.
A few weeks ago, another friend informed me that a colleague of his had committed suicide. As is often the case, those around him could not believe it. He seemed to those around him to be happy and full of life, the last person anyone would expect to suffer from depression. As I have learned more about my own mental health, I have come to view suicide as a fatal result of the disease of depression, not the ultimate sin I was originally told it was. Like many other potentially fatal diseases, such a result can potentially be avoided with proper intervention and management of the disease. I have no way of knowing, but I can’t help wondering if this person had similar experiences which discouraged him or her from speaking about the disease, from seeking assistance. I can’t help wondering if it would have lessened the stigma, if he would have felt any less alone, if he had heard someone else admit, “I have depression.”
Jay Brubaker














