Wrote in Response
to Brian Head Welch's comment about Chester Bennington's suicide. Written in emotion. Please excuse mistakes.
By
Rebecca Basley
My
heart is very heavy today. Not only am I mourning the loss of a very
talented musician who lost his life to a horrible “disease”
called depression that caused him to take his own life. I also have
had to witness the backlash. The backlash of people who feel they
have a right to judge him and his decisions and to see how this
attack is affecting people, especially young people who like Chester
and like myself, live with mental illness.
First
off, not all of us experience mental illness the same way. Just
because your fight with mental illness never resulted in your desire
to take your life doesn’t mean that this is the same for everyone
else. For whatever reason, you had the wherewithal to fight off the
tendency toward suicide does NOT give you the right to judge someone
who has.
According
to the CDC, 20-25% of Americans are affected by depression every
year. The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill states that only
one on half of this number will receive treatment for it. So what
is Depression? It's just the person being dramatic and sad right?
That is so wrong! Depression is actually a medical condition.
There is an actual chemical imbalance in the brain usually of the
chemicals norepinephrine or serotonin, when there isn't enough of
these chemicals helping send messages through the brains nervous
system. Depression can be the result. This causes us not to have
the same thoughts as a “normal person”. We lose the ability to
see a happy future, remember a happy past or remember what the word
“happy” even means. We lose the ability to realize we have a
treatable illness (even if we have been in therapy and had successful
treatment in the past) and or emotions and physical pain becomes
unbearable.
We
don't want to die. We just want to pain to end. I have heard it
called ultimately the perfect storm. The right set of factors
falling into place at the right time. It makes many of us feel we
are sitting on a ticking time bomb and it is only a matter of time
until depression will get us as well. We don't want it to. We
fight like hell so it don't but it is always in the back of some of
our minds that it will indeed be our end.
our
medication, our counseling, our support system, our faith (which is
not always Christian) is what keeps most of us going. However, even
in seeking help we are condemned for “being drug addicts” and
told we don't need medication to stop “being sad”, to get “over
it” “stop being dramatic”. We lose insurance and have to quit
medication with little warning as well. It is so much easier to
condemn than learn the facts. It's so much easier to ignore the
problem than to work toward a solution.
But
why should you the healthy average person perhaps reading this be
worried about “the crazy people of society?” Well here is some
statistics for you. Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in
the United States. Every 13 minutes a person in the United States
lose their lives to suicide.
There
are also the people who attempt suicide and are lucky enough to
survive the attempt. I am in thankfully in that category, having
survived two attempts seriously enough to land me in the hospital.
At both times, I can take tell you I felt I had no one and no reason
to live. I felt it was just a logical choice to die. I did not want
to be here, I did not want to go through this miserable experience
any more. In my case, I had even lost the ability to see colors, and
I truly saw life as just one gray blob that I moved through from one
day to the next. This was my experience. I was 15 the first time
and 19 the second time. I join the number of an estimated quarter of
a million people who attempt suicide every year and are lucky enough
to survive and get help to live another day.
The
good news is 80 to 90% of the people who get treated for depression
through medication and therapy are treated successfully. That does
not mean it happens over night. It sometimes can take a life time of
therapy and medication to stay stable. Therapy is annoying, stay on
guard is tiring, remembering your coping skills is a necessary but at
times get tired of having to run through the list of them whenever
you feel depressed. Medication all have side effects and many times
what worked for months now does not work anymore. Then you have to
go through the gauntlet of new medication and new side effects to
find the right one to get stable again. It can quite literally be
hell. One trip to the psych ward is enough to keep a lot of people
from being totally honest with their psychiatrist. Admittedly for
others, being in hospital is a relief because the world moves too
fast, expects too much, and is, pardon my word, way too crazy.
Chester
Bennington is not the only one we have lost to depression. Sadly, he
is just the latest. He did not want to die, he just wanted the pain
to end. He did not COMMIT suicide, he LOST his battle with
depression. He was in the midst of the perfect storm and he could
not find a way out of it. He will be mourned and he will be missed
by his family, his friends, and his fans. Attacking his character,
his music, his life and his choices does nothing but hurt his family
and hurt the people who live with the same conditions as he did.
His
experience is not fully my experience, but he was from my community.
It's up to us who live with mental illness to help each other. To
stand together and reach out to hold each other up. No one knows
our pain better than we ourselves do. We know our boundaries, we
know we can't help everyone but we can help someone. We just need
to do what we can even if its going on facebook and saying “hey
guys I love you.” or smiling at a stranger. It's got to start
somewhere, so lets start with each other.
And
to Brian “Head” Welch who I addressed this too. I am fan of your
band as well and I understand partly where you are coming from. But
I would ask you to learn more about the nature of suicide and to help
spearhead an effort to help people in your industry and maybe in your
fan base to reach those you can reach and help those you can help.
Instead of condemning try helping.
Source:
http:www.save.org
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