For anyone who hasn't experienced depression within oneself or as the family member or close friend of someone who is living with it, it's impossible to know the depths of this horrible debilitating disease. Depression keeps you imprisoned within your mind, drains you of every ounce of life force energy you otherwise would have, and in cases of major depressive disorder, if not treated more likely than not will lead to self inflicted death.
It doesn't discriminate as we have seen over and over with people who, from the outside, look like they are living dream lives. Everyone was in shock when in 2014 Robin Williams took his life. How could one of the world's funniest men ever be so afflicted. Or last year when Chester Bennington of Linkin Park and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden both died of suicide within two months of each other. This week we are trying to come to grips with the self inflicted deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain.
Intertwined with depression is addiction because all the depressed person wants is to feel relief from insidious thoughts constantly running through their mind and relief from that is what they try to get any way they can. There is a reason that opiod overdose has become pandemic in the United States. It's not because everyone is ok within themselves.
Until mental illness is treated with the same medical urgency as cancer, heart disease, or even diabetes, we will keep losing our loved ones. We have to bring the conversation of depression and addiction much more into the open where it can be discussed without being looked down upon, where we can find hope and help for those suffering.