An obituary in the local paper read, “After a gallant fight with depression, Daniel Deavers finally succumbed to suicide. This young father who loved his wife and his children is dead at age thirty-nine.” The obituary went on to talk of Daniel’s life and his accomplishments and touched briefly on his struggle with depression. Donations to the local mental health association were requested in place of flowers.
Depression had claimed another life. As virulent and elusive as cancer, depression takes lives daily. Many times the illness itself is hidden in death as it often is in life.
People ask, once they learn we write about depression, why we do it. Didn’t we have enough of depression when our husbands were themselves suffering from the illness? Don’t we want to forget about something that can . . . well . . . depress you?
To be truthful, writing about depression is painful. It dredges up memories we would prefer to leave buried. It recalls times we wish we had handled things better. It reminds of us times when we feared our husbands might not survive the illness. But that is only part of the story.
Writing about depression helps us remember that together we overcame a demon that could have devastated us, either physically or emotionally. In the writing, we realized how much we have grown through the experience. We have come to discover happier times together with our spouses, we’ve moved into a new stage of health and life, and we want to help others do the same.
We had begun to shed light on an issue that had long been ignored: the health and well-being of the caregiver of a depressed person. Comments that have been left on our website, www.depressedspouse.net, show us that we cannot NOT write about depression from the viewpoint of the caregiver.
“I am contacting you because of an ‘ah-ha’ moment,” commented one reader. “I recently purchased your book. I have a clinically depressed spouse and have been struggling with trying to find a way to help him while ignoring myself. . . . I really feel God has blessed me with [your book]. It is wonderful, and it is helping me so much already.”
Caregivers have told us that sometimes books are the only avenue they have to give themselves strength. However, few resources are available that are directed solely to the caregiver of a depressed person. We know. We’ve been there, and we understand the pain expressed in the comments from this reader:
“Your book brought me comfort and helped me see that the illness is what has caused most of this stress for so long. All the other books I’ve read talk about giving support to your depressed spouse, and, having been on the edge myself, I couldn’t do that at times, and therefore those books only increased my guilt. Bless you, as you give hope and comfort to many unsung heroes, who many times suffer alone.”
The door we opened in writing our first book about depression is one that many people need opened even wider. In Dancing in the Dark, we open the conversation beyond spouses to all the other relationships that are affected by depression. We address postpartum depression, as well as depression in aging relatives, in children, in partners of many loving relationships, and more. Recognizing that depression seeks to destroy anyone in its path, we understand that a whole host of people who love depressed individuals need support and survival skills just as much as the depressed people themselves do.
Depression has claimed enough victims. We cannot and will not allow its darkness to overcome the light of healing and love.
