A significant crisis that although now more recognized with greater and safer treatment options, remains a hard, cold killer if not treated effectively. Major depressive disorder.

Considering the not-so-distant past, people either suffered in silence or an end hurried their way before anybody had time to digest what was happening.

Spouses felt ashamed to be living with the dirty secret they had; diagnosed mental illness. Either for themselves or for their partners.

Nobody was to acknowledge or discuss it.

Almost as if giving the weighty monster that this kind of depression is, too much attention, would only breathe new bite into its bark. The opposite was true. We know that now and there’s a lot of support strategies and therapies designed to assist sufferers.

One of the big steps to recovery or management at least, depending on the specific disorder, was soon recognized as that illusive ‘acknowledgement.’

NEW TERMS.

When we get a flat tyre or run out of oil in our vehicles and the red-light signal alerts us on the dash, what do we do?

Certainly, if we try to keep driving by ignoring the issue, we end up in a worse situation. For many sufferers in those earlier years, turning a blind eye because of social inadequacy and ignorance, did exactly that.

It exasperated the sufferers struggle and suicide all too often seemed like the only open door. For those that learned early on that mental illness can be likened to how any other part of the body can become sick, acknowledgement resulted in acceptance. And it was this curb that gave way to a better pathway.

Acceptance didn’t mean it was to become a form of cure, and anybody who believed this would have been sorely disappointed, but it meant allowing for the fact the brain had become ill. That’s it.

After that repairs could get underway and renewal.

While some sufferers have been able to completely turn their lives around and do so today, others continue to struggle in fight of tug-o-war, requiring ongoing supportive and specially prescribed medications and therapy.

Real Life Experience continued.

When ‘D’ decided to finally confide in a family friend of his mother’s, believing he had solid confidence against disclosure, the friend somehow determined the revelation as reflective upon them instead rather then thinking about how they might help.

This friend took it upon themselves to advertise the fact to an entire group of members in attendance at a religious faith strengthening assemble.

You might wonder that this was done so others could support ‘D’.

To the contrary. People then treated ‘D’ as though he was contagious and a weak thread within the assembled group that were so intent on strengthening themselves.

For somebody experiencing this kind of rejection and isolation on top of the isolation already internally harbored because of mental illness, it was a death warrant. ‘D’’s wife left him along with their teenage daughter and only two months later, ‘D’ drove to the top of a lookout and tried to end his life.

The thing about this example is that ‘D’ had suffered from M.D.D for many years. But it was when he learned to accept it as something he needed to manage, rather then be cured of, he did better.

Acceptance is never easy nor is it simple, so we don’t want to have it that there lies the answer. It is just one snippet of the overall answer and what treatments help one person may not be the same for somebody else.

‘D’ did better by way of his own acceptance yes, but it was the non-acceptance of others that shattered him from a place where he believed acceptance really mattered.

And that brings us to a different place.

In the example above what is clear at the end of the day is that ‘Ds’ version of what acceptance meant remained misconstrued. Not in the way he experienced rejection. That was real. But in his perception of what changes he made within himself as automatically equaling what he could now expect from others.

Think about that some more.

Read more and continue in part two.