Mental Illness: Maladies of the Soul
By Marisa Schneider
“If there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man’s heart”.
-Robert Burton
Depression conjures up different images for different people. According to the Mental Health Awareness posters taped to pharmacy windows, it’s a head buried in both hands, a single tear streaming down a flawless cheek or a body that sits in darkness against a wall, knees held tightly to chest. These images are often accompanied by letters in bold, seemingly streaming from a person’s head, which scream ‘hopelessness’, ‘despair’, ‘fatigue’, ‘anxiety’, and whilst campaigns aim to end the stigma of mental health illness, unless you have experienced it, it is indefinable. These stereotypical depictions of mental illness, whilst not wholly wrong, are incomplete much to the detriment of those who suffer from it.
Standing in the queue outside a local pharmacy, I found the image of a woman depicted in a ‘Recognise the symptoms of Depression’ display poster rather out of place with its content. Pulling the eye to the centre of the poster was the figure of a woman, sitting, back arched, with one leg pulled up to her chest as she rested her cheek upon knee, the other stretched out in a straight line. Her hair was shining almond, tightly held back in a perfect bun, her eyes clear apart from the prop of tears falling from eyes to chin as she sat in a balletesque poise of Depression. It was reminiscent of the Hollywood actresses you often see in movies that wake up in the morning with hair still styled, lips well defined, stained red and pouty, eyelashes long and curled at the ends, with skin akin to that of porcelain with a tint of rose on cheeks. Under the poster was a display of women’s fragrances, pink and green bottles tangled in paper flowers and green glitter. How odd, I thought, that’s not at all what mental illness looks like, but by the same token that’s not to say that sufferers do not wear masks of normality or perfect, tightly held buns and flawless skin, but I began to contemplate how one might describe it and how the language we use to define it may help in identifying its anatomy. Andrew Solomon, who spoke for TEDTalks on his experience with Depression and Anxiety, was right when he said that “we know depression through metaphors. Emily Dickinson was able to convey it in language, Goya in an image. Half the purpose of art is to describe such iconic states”.
Doctor’s waiting rooms are crowded with information leaflets and posters on the many ailments that can affect the body. From cardiovascular disease to asthma, symptoms are specific, easy to understand, involve particular organs and when you’re ill, you can point to parts of the body and offer a list on how it is you’re suffering. You can say, I feel a pain here, feel nauseous, my chest tight, breaths short and shallow, but the language of sufferers in their description of mental illness is oft poetic and melodic in a manner remnant of a spiritual cause and medical reference books seem to be insufficient or entirely lacking of the symptomatology of mental illness. It is felt far beyond the physical, much like an assault upon the soul, a savagery by some unseen thing. Depression personified is a dark figure and in its grip, attempts at escape are futile. It is sinking sand, it is a heavy heart which anchors itself in the pit of your stomach, where it lies and writhes in acidic torment and sometimes it’s just nothing, sometimes it’s just feeling empty. It is unquantifiable and at odds with medical science upon which degrees of quantifiable presets of illness rest. It is entirely subjective and suicide is often not the will to die but to find peace, when one can only offer the explanation of I’m just tired.
There is very little that is known for certain about mental illness and what is unknown is left hidden in the corner, like a misbehaving child, and so the solution comes in blister packs with black box warnings. We swallow pills to not feel the ineffable and consequently suffer from side effects that are no less barbaric than a hammer to the temple. And every month you stand in queues for your bag of Duloxetine, Olanzepine, Xanax, among others, with side effects that range from affecting one’s memory — with proven associations to the early onset of Alzheimer’s — anorexia, weight gain, eventual liver and/or kidney dysfunction, night sweats, nightmares, and oh, HIGH RISK OF SUICIDE, while posters show an elegance to the depravity suffered, above promotions on perfumes.
This is not to say that medications are not helpful and are often much needed when you find your body leaning, heavy, over the proverbial cliff’s edge, but rather that it is not a long term solution and much like placing a band aid on a festering wound, does little to fight the infection. Consequently, we are often willing to do anything to rid ourselves of the continual suffering of mental illness. Some undergo shock therapy, tribal exorcisms, or the hallucinogenic effects of Peyote, LSD and Ketamine in the hopes that spiritual transcendence confined by the sober mind might alleviate symptoms for what might very well be an existential problem. Lately, I lean towards the latter.
Before pharmaceutical giants offered sufferers with a cure much akin to that of a chemical lobotomy, ancient notions on the origin of mental illness ranged from being a spiritual affliction to a sickness of the mind and body. However, there is no room in contemporary medicine for overlap. If we are the sum of mind, body and soul, then why is the soul almost always entirely left out?
Without A Name
It’s a feeling unlike any other.
One which is quick and without warning,
When all traces of joy just disappear,
Like ash, when too heavy, falls from the tip of a cigarette,
Its long corpse of ashes outlining grey and black on the ground.
You can blow it ever so softly or tread on it with a heavy boot,
But either way its smudge remains.
A stain which lies next to a thousand others on the ground.
And you knew it would come, and you know it’ll come again and again.
And so the fleeting joys of my life, like a lit cigarette, dance around in the dark
From my hand to my mouth till that spark,
Like a firefly in the night,
Goes out.
And the feeling returns again,
Without a name.
