Health News - Shocked by the reactions to his illness, Dr Lewis Wolpert says the public, and employers in particular, need more information

Published: 7 April, 2011
by Dr LEWIS WOLPERT 

SOME time ago I had a severe depression and had never before experienced such a terrible a set of feelings. I was hospitalised because of my suicidal intentions.

When I recovered, thanks to antidepressants and cognitive therapy, I found out that my wife had told nobody. She explained that she was embarrassed about my being depressed and had told friends and colleagues that I was exhausted and was suffering from a minor heart condition.

She was also very worried that if the truth were known, the stigma would have a serious effect on my career. This was my first experience of stigma, and I found it upsetting as I believed that I had had a serious illness and it was nothing to be ashamed of. 

My experience in talking to others who have had a depression has provided me with numerous accounts of just how much those with depression see it as something to be ashamed of, and thus kept secret. One young woman could not even tell her father, who is a psychiatrist, and another woman could not confide in her brother or sister, so they did not even know of her suicide attempts. There can be no doubt that there is considerable stigma associated with depression.

An example of how stigma can present a particularly difficult problem for sportsmen is provided by the case of a professional footballer. Stan Collymore, who played for England, had a severe depression and his career went into a serious decline. He says that he can never forgive the Aston Villa manager for the way he reacted to his illness. He just told him to pull his socks up. 

The stigma associated with depression and other mental illnesses can result in difficulty getting employment. There is a major need for employers to be more understanding.

There is considerable ignorance and confusion around mental illness and how it can lead to violence, which is often repeated to sufferers by friends. The shame the family feels and often expresses – “keep it quiet”, “don’t tell the neighbours”, ignoring the issue, impatience, lack of understanding or support, even disgust, can be very damaging.

A major difficulty in overcoming stigma, and indeed probably one of its causes, is that it is very hard, perhaps impossible, for those who have not experienced depression or other mental illnesses to understand what the individual with depression is experiencing. As the novelist William Styron wrote” “The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.” 

The experience is almost impossible to describe and the situation is not helped by the almost total absence of good descriptions of depression in English novels – I know of none. 

What can be done to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness? 

Perhaps the most important aim would be to publicise just how widespread depression is, and that it is a serious illness. Most important is to stress that it can be cured. It could help a great deal if those individuals with depression who are well-known public figures were to support such a campaign – people like MPs.

A neglected area is health education in schools. This is odd, as one of the most likely illnesses that children will meet and even suffer from when adults is depression, and yet they are given no information about its nature. One positive venture is the play for schools by Y Touring, Cracked, which not only deals with depression but also has a debate at the end of the play in which the actors remain in character and have a discussion with the young audience. We need more initiatives of this kind to help nip stigma in the bud.

We are blessed to have a wide range of services locally to help identify and address depression before it takes too firm a hold. GPs can now routinely refer people for a short course of counselling.

As for me, I’ve been helped tremendously by my cognitive therapist at the Royal Free Hospital.