Reasons to Stay Alive

Lesson 1- Depression: Fact or Myth?

Depression is real and it is quite the killer. It is not merely a sensation where one feels sad; it is, in fact, a pressure that can suffocate the life out you. There is no hope or no future as if you are stuck in a dark tunnel where you can’t seem to find your way out. You cannot see the light which would guide you home. You cannot really explain depression to someone who hasn’t really experienced it. When you are depressed you feel alone, and that no one is going through quite what you are going through.

We often don’t feel like talking about our depression. We fear further isolation or stigmatization associated with being open about depression. People judge and that is a scary thing for a depressed person. However, the contrary is quite true. Words connect us humans to one other, whether written or verbal. Therefore, speaking about depression to people, and writing about it, helps connect us to each other, and to our true selves.

Depression cannot be quantified the way pain is relative and varies from person to person. Every mind is different and unique so trying to generalize feelings often lead to erroneous concepts. However, that does not mean that writing or reading about depression is not helpful. One can always relate or find resemblance of other’s experience to one’s own.

There are innumerable ways to relieve oneself of the constant pain, the choking heart-wrenching pain that never seems to leave. The stigma around depression complicates it, but we need to push beyond that wall and liberate ourselves from the paralysing grip of depression. The truth is that time heals. No matter what you go through today, no matter how many times you fall and life kicks you over and over again, time will heal all the pain and liberate us only if we hold to the things in life that matter to us the most. 

Lesson 2- How Common is Depression?

Suicide is a leading cause of death around the world. The World Health Organization estimates that it kills more people than stomach cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, colon cancer, breast cancer, and Alzheimer’s. Such figures make depression one of the deadliest diseases in the planet. It kills more people than most other forms of violence like warfare, terrorism, domestic abuse, assault, gun crime. Suicide is the leading cause of death among men under the age of thirty-five. Suicide rates vary widely depending on where you are in the world. For instance, you are twenty-seven times more likely to kill yourself in Greenland than