Many people
confuse mood disorders for bad moods. As a result of this confusion, people
give counterproductive advice to patients with mood disorders. They tell
sufferers of Major Depressive Disorder to ‘count your blessings’ or ‘chose to
be happy.’ They tell sufferers of anxiety disorders to ‘just relax’ or ‘stop
being a coward.’ ‘Can’t you see that
your unhappiness isn't helping you?’ these confused people ask.
All these
comments and questions come from a desire to help, a wellspring of genuinely
good intentions.
But we all
know how the road to hell is paved.
The problem
is that mood disorders are not just temporary bursts of unhappiness, as so many
people seem to think. They are instead real health problems with biological
underpinnings.
Telling a
depressed person to ‘count your blessings’ is like telling someone with cancer
to ‘eat more fruits and vegetables.’ It won’t hurt, but it is too little too
late. Just like eating a healthy diet will help a person avoid getting cancer,
taking a positive attitude might help someone avoid becoming depressed. But
once the disease has started, those preventative habits are just too little,
too late. Haphazard changes, applied without medical supervision, are not
enough to cure serious diseases.
A
depression patient needs help from qualified medical professionals just as much
as a cancer patient does. If you advise someone to try to treat their own
medical problems, you are indirectly harming them. Every day that person waits
to seek medical attention will make their recovery that much slower and more
difficult.
Much of
this sort of advice is actually more directly harmful. Advice like ‘snap out of
it,’ ‘stop being a coward,’ and ‘just chose to be happy,’ accuses disease
victims of causing his or her own illness. It’s just as illogical as saying
‘just chose to stop having cancer’ or ‘just regulate your own blood insulin
levels!’ But it’s much more harmful because when people are suffering from mood
disorders, they are especially vulnerable to criticism. Depression victims are
prone to feeling guilty and ashamed of themselves. Anxiety victims are prone to
feeling afraid that people judge and hate them. These accusations actually make
the problem worse.
So what should
you do when confronted with someone who is suffering from a mood disorder?
The
simplest answer is to ask yourself, before you open your mouth, if you would
say the same thing to someone who had cancer. ‘Just snap out of it’ is nothing
anyone would say to a cancer patient. ‘You should really have a doctor check
that out’ is exactly what one should say to a friend who just found a tumor,
and also what one should say to a friend who is starting to experience
inexplicable negative emotions. ‘You should just try harder to get over it’ is
nothing anyone would say to a cancer victim. ‘You will survive this, and I will
be here to support you all the way,’ is both classic line from cancer awareness
campaigns, and also exactly what someone with a mood disorder most desperately
wants to hear. I know that last part from personal experience.
If there is
any doubt in your mind about what you should say, you can always fall back on
the truth: Mood disorders are confusing. Only trained medical professionals can
offer useful advice about how to treat a mood disorder. The one piece of advice
that can never go wrong is, “I don’t know, ask a doctor!”
