Depression: the Hidden Disease

Depression: The Hidden Disease

2009

Depression: The Hidden Disease

Depression has no respect of persons. One would be surprised to know that even the late esteemed President of The United States Abraham Lincoln suffered from depression. J. Sheck (2005) writes of Lincoln:

When Abraham Lincoln came to the stage of the 1860 state Republican convention in Decatur, Illinois, the crowd roared in approval. According to an early account, ‘the roof was literally cheered off the building.’ Fifty-one years old, Lincoln was at the peak of his political career, with momentum that would soon sweep him to the nomination of the national party and then to the White House. Yet to the convention audience Lincoln didn't seem euphoric, or triumphant or even pleased. On the contrary, said a man named Johnson, observing from the convention floor, ‘I then thought him to be one of the most diffident and worst plagued men I ever saw”. (p. 2)

Thompson (1995) defines depression as the result of certain biologic and social forces that, in a complex setting, act detrimentally on the person’s nervous system function. The depressed activity in turn adversely changes the person’s behavior, feeling tones, and thoughts (p. 8). Whether it is President Lincoln, Ernest Hemmingway, a businessman, an actress, a student, or even a bus driver, depression can strike anyone. Although it is a common belief that major depression is a temporary emotion and one should be able to “snap out of it,” it is a real and overlooked medical disease that requires cognitive therapy and medication because of one’s neurological imbalance, social state, and physical changes.

There are some that believe major depression is nothing more than a temporary emotion or a feeling. Briggin (2005) argues, "If we stand back and look at depression, it has few of the characteristics of a disease. If, for example, you lose your job or your lover rejects you and you become depressed, would your depression not...