Females, minorities, GLBTers -- lots of students feel slighted at times simply because of who they are. They are fortunate, however, that they are able to form communities, come together and celebrate what makes them unique and speak out against those who marginalize them. Sometimes it's the only triumph they have amidst continual frustration.
There's no such thing as a depressed community at Dartmouth, however, unless you count the support groups that meet each term at Dick's House, where counselors ask pointed questions, and students mumble answers to the floor and shuffle out at the end of the hour hoping never to see any of these other people who know about all their problems ever again.
In a time and place where celebrating diversity is advanced as a universal good, depressed people are so ashamed that they can't even bear to relate to others suffering from the same problems they are.
I never met Daryl Richmond '04. But I'm writing this for him, because all of us who've felt what he felt and tried desperately to keep it to ourselves lost a member of our community last month -- just like his family and just like Dartmouth.
Daryl, like anyone else, was responsible for his actions and was wrestling with an intensely personal problem that went far beyond any individual relationship with those who knew him. I don't for a moment believe that his experience here -- with any one particular person or in general -- contributed in any way to his emotional state or its ultimate outcome. I do, however, want to express some of the frustrations of this fragmented population that have never been voiced, in the interests of creating a more supportive environment for students who struggle as Daryl and others have.
This is not the place to go into the reasons why depression evokes such a powerful reaction in others. The primary reason -- I hope -- is simply the paralysis of concerned friends with good intentions who feel they can't help or don't know how. Exaggerated ideas or beliefs, the fact that it is an invisible ailment and the fear that it might result in increased demands of time and effort -- all of these are equally important in making depression a decidedly uncomfortable topic.
By equal measure, depressed people are not easy customers either: depression's status as a highly personal illness and the fact that depressed people often don't feel worthy of help or support frequently leads to resistance on their part. These factors all contribute to a dynamic in which both parties are left in markedly awkward, debilitating positions -- with those in the know feeling threatened, helpless and disturbed and the depressed person feeling inadequate, unsupported and alone.
I can't speak very well for the people who lost sleep on my account. I can say, for my part, that I have never felt as judged or looked down upon as when I've revealed that I was depressed. I talked to five other students in preparation for this article and they confirmed my experiences of friends who abruptly stopped associating with me upon finding out, gradually phased me out of their lives without ever saying why and regarded me as a failure because I couldn't seamlessly adjust every second of every day.
The students I talked to added stories of friends and roommates invalidating their feelings by explaining why depression doesn't exist and screaming at them to get over it. I once met with my dean and was explicitly told not to say a word about my problems to my friends, and was warned that if I was 'disrupting' anyone's life that I would likely be forced on medical leave with little or no questions asked.
I'm medication-free and counselor-free now and haven't had a major depressive episode in over a year, yet hardly a day goes by when I don't run into someone who only identifies me by how they knew me to be last year -- and even hearing about it in the past tense makes my new friends visibly upset.
Just two weeks ago a friend responded to a blitz in which I'd mentioned I'd gotten an extension on a paper by asking, "Why, try to kill yourself again?"
This is not an insignificant problem. With estimates running as high as one-third of all students being depressed at some point during their four years here, it is unlikely that anyone will leave without knowing someone or suffering themselves. I think it is absurd that no one is moving to open a dialogue and eradicate the conditions that make depression an unpleasant subject for all who come into contact with it.
Instead, it continues to be swept under the rug and relegated to an embarrassment that should only be whispered about in a psychiatrist's office. Depressed students should not feel compelled to misrepresent themselves to others for fear of alienating themselves, and, likewise,hj acquaintances of depressed students should not feel threatened or upset because someone they know is depressed.
Read about depression and become familiar and comfortable with it. An exceptional website is membres.lycos.fr/healingdepression/suicidehelp -- especially in its description of how to support someone who is depressed without taking his or her problems on yourself.
Whether you knew Daryl or not, and whether you've felt the pain that he must have felt, there's not a more admirable gesture you can make than to take the time to acknowledge that his struggles were real and support him by learning more about this illness.
