Depression

Depression can be dark and disabling. It can drain your energy, your motivation and your ability to think clearly, your ability to move. It can make the most ordinary things, a shower, a meal, a reply to a text, feel like climbing a mountain.

Housework is piling up. The phone rings and you can’t answer it. You can’t even open the door for your Uber delivery. Someone suggests a walk around the block, and part of you wants to scream, because getting out of bed already took everything you had.

And one of the cruellest parts is this: you might know exactly what could help, and still feel completely unable to take the first step.

Depression doesn’t always look like sadness. For some people it’s numbness. Flatness. Irritability. A heavy fog. A sense of watching your own life from a long way away. Some people stop functioning altogether. Others keep going to work, raising children and smiling at the school gate while they quietly fall apart inside.

In the past year, 7.5% of Australians aged 16 to 85 experienced a mood disorder such as depression. Behind that number are millions of people who have been told to think positive, be grateful or get some exercise, when what they needed was someone to understand how hard this actually is.

Depression can be triggered by grief, trauma, hormones, illness, loneliness, exhaustion or a life that has slowly become too much. Sometimes it arrives with no obvious reason at all. Whatever brought you here, your experience is real.

Medication helps some people. Many others find it isn’t enough, or doesn’t help at all. That doesn’t mean you are beyond help. It means you deserve to keep exploring.