Fellow Tufts students and honored Tufts alumni, I find myself required by Evan Wecksell's Feb. 8 op−ed "How to beat ‘depression'" to come out of the Depression Closet. I, Christine O'Brien, Class of 2011, had to come back from my year abroad in London a semester early because of depression. Yes, my friends, I know I told those of you who know me that it was severe bronchitis. That was because of people like Mr. Wecksell, who often, regrettably, leap to conclusions without knowing all the facts.
I find it difficult to concur with Mr. Wecksell's assessment of my illness as merely a feeling or a "funk," having experienced it firsthand. I have had a complete personality change since beginning college. I'm irritable, rude and sometimes completely lacking a sense of humor. Less visibly, I can be insecure, lacking confidence and completely convinced that I am worthless. I spent most of the last year convinced that I had no friends and that those that I considered friends were only tolerating me and actually found me irritating and mean.
Here, this has been seen as my personality, but in high school I was completely different. I smiled all the time and had a wonderful, if cynical, sense of humor. I had many very good friends and a wonderful family, and was secure in my belief that I was high in their esteem. Far from being irritable, I was easy−going, laughing at deliberate attempts to make me angry, and always believing the best of anyone around me, including strangers. I was always confident that a great future lay in front of me, that I was ready to face it, and that any obstacles were only fleeting barriers. In other words, I used to be happy.
This summer, I cried almost every day. I became convinced that my lack of a summer job in a summer filled with general unemployment, particularly student unemployment, foreshadowed a future of the same. I distanced myself from my friends, many of whom didn't even realize I was unhappy, as I became convinced that they disliked me or were at the least annoyed by me. My family, at least, knew that something was wrong, after I slept and cried through three different vacations and all five months of my summer break. We tried treating it as anything from anemia to late−onset teenage angst before it was finally diagnosed in September as what we had been subconsciously denying — depression. We started treatment and I went to London, hoping that the summer brush with depression would end with a combination of medication and a change in situation.
To some degree, it did. I found myself believing that I had good friends, and even, eventually, dating a wonderful guy. For the first month there, it was wonderful — the best I had felt in years. As the work picked up, though, I began having panic attacks. I was wringing my hands, hyperventilating, shouting and crying any time there was even a little bit of work to be done — even though the assignments barely counted and all my credits would transfer as pass−fail. I was exhausted, but I couldn't sleep at night. Eventually, I reverted to my summer habit of napping during the day. Some afternoons, I would nap for several hours, and then I would go to bed at 10 p.m. that evening. When at the end of November I had a six−hour−long panic attack, a total breakdown, I realized something had to change. That's why I'm back at Tufts now, taking three courses and attempting to minimize stress while undergoing treatment.
No situational change helped this depression. It began over a year ago, and the change in situation never helped it. My summer should have been extremely relaxing and pleasant. Instead, it was miserable. My Christmas break was much the same, made even more stressful as I tried to keep my depression a secret from my extended family. After all, with the way our society reacts to people with mental illnesses, who knew what they would think of me? Unhappy as I was, I realized that this misery I was experiencing went above and beyond any situation in which I found myself. Most frustratingly, I knew that I should be happy. No matter how hard I tried, though, it didn't work.
If this still doesn't refute Mr. Wecksell's argument well enough for you, look beyond the emotional symptoms. In all of high school, I napped maybe five times. The past year, I have had to take a nap almost every day. I'm always cold and always tired. Even after a nap, I wake up feeling as though I hiked a mile. Even now, when I am doing much better, I still have to lay down for about an hour every day. Before, this was behavior I only ever saw when I was sick. Now it seems proof that I still am.
If you have received nothing else from this story, I hope you have learned this: Depression is real, and anyone can have it. Most of my family and almost all of my friends still have no idea that I am depressed. These people who know me so well still haven't noticed. Anyone can be depressed. Anyone can have a mental illness. Before you call depression an emotion instead of disease, look around you. Approximately one in four Americans have a mental illness. That means that, in all likelihood, someone you know is suffering in silence.
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Christine O'Brien is a junior majoring in economics and history.
