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Why do it? Because depression kills, like diabetes, cancers or heart disease. The medications and understanding we have today are light-years better than when my mother killed herself in 1968. We would be much more medically correct, not politically, to remember the person doesn’t kill himself or herself; the disease does. For those of us left behind, it still hurts. This is a repeated Healthful Hint, but its message cannot be heard too often.
A while back I went to the memorial service for a fine person who had a terrible disease that killed him, endogenous depression. In our eyes, the person took his own life. But he had a disease that can be an insurmountable burden and can make every aspect of living inexplicably intolerable to that person.
The word endogenous (en-DAH-gen-us) means born within. This kind of depression as disease is still poorly understood. There is enough evidence to suggest that a person suffering from it has some sort of abnormality in biochemistry of thought or feeling. He or she cannot help it. There also is strong evidence of an inherited pattern of the disease in many families.
If you do not have the disease or have not known someone with it, you may have difficulty fathoming the depths of despair it causes for its sufferer. It creates a hollowness that is so dark it defies verbal expression. To the victim it is as much a mystery as to those around him or her. The feeling simply takes over without warning. It makes the person feel so blue that every task seems completely pointless, hopeless and fruitless. The person feels frustrated because no activity seems to alleviate the feeling when the disease is at its height — or depth.
Most of us have had blue feelings, some of them very severe, caused by such problems as death of a loved one, job loss, etc. Then, however, we at least have a hope that the effect of the problem, as well as the feeling, will pass in time. A person with endogenous depression sometimes will feel so much mental pain from living, despite all treatments, or caring and loving relatives and friends that dying looks like inviting relief.
Do not fault someone who commits suicide because of this disease. He or she is trying to find peace. Do not, on the other hand, give up trying to help such a person either, unless you sense yourself being dragged down further than you can handle. This can happen, too. Heart attacks, cancers or kidney failures may kill their victims.
For some with endogenous depression, the disease can be the cause of their death, and neither you nor the victim can help it.
No one should bear any guilt.
