A headline in the Daily Mirror grabs my attention this morning: “The anti-depressant Zoloft could CURE ebola. A reason to be cheerful?” Well, anything that can potentially cure ebola is bound to be good news and if an anti-depressant drug does the trick, hooray for that! I don’t have an issue with the story but I do have a very big issue with the headline. In a classic example of lazy journalism, the Mirror suggests that depression is about not being cheerful. Here we go again.
I do not know how many times I have felt the need to point out that depression is not a simple matter of not feeling cheerful. It’s the same ignorant comment that we had from the Sun’s resident hate-monger Katie Hopkins. Pull yourself together and cheer up, there’s nothing wrong with you.
Every time there’s a step forward with the issue of mental illness, the media ensures there are at least two steps back. Whether it is the coverage of “Bonkers Bruno” when the boxer Frank Bruno tragically found himself sectioned, or the assertion from the red tops, in the fall out from the Germanwings disaster, that no one with depression should ever fly an aeroplane because, one assumes, that person would deliberately fly the plane into the Alps.
Things are getting better with the understanding of mental health, I keep hearing, but are they? I am grateful for the reaction to me coming out with my own demons, but I am not convinced that this is the same across society.
Why is it that depression is met with such disdain by much of society and the media? If you rang in sick at work with cancer, no one would question that, but what if you rang in sick with severe clinical depression or because you were suffering from panic attacks? Politicians come out with fine words about improving mental health care, but it’s only words, really.
Is there anyone in the media that can get their heads around the simple truth that depression is an illness, it’s a mental illness. Depression is not what I feel after Bristol Rovers lose or when the Tories win a general election: that’s just me being fed up and pissed off. So if an existing anti-depressant drug can help the fight agains ebola that’s all well and good, but it won’t help a depressive to get better.
