A Black Dog

Today, October 10th, is World Mental Health Day, as set by the World Health Organisation. In honour of this, they have produced a video giving an overview of what depression is, and some tips for dealing with it.

 
Given that 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem in a year, and depression and anxiety are the most common mental disorders, I strongly believe we need to hear more about depression, more from depressed people, and have more done for depressed people both in the secular world and within the church.

I would like to see churches address depression and other mental health issues from the pulpit, in leaflets and so on, and hear more stories of Christians with mental health issues. There are a few, doing sterling work, but as with wider society there is still a stigma surrounding mental health.

I want to live in a world where a person with depression is not told to “pull yourself together” or “smile!” or, in Christian circles, “You have a spiritual problem”, where depression is treated as an illness and not as some special sin we have committed, some fault, some lack of faith or demonic activity. In addition, I have written before on the laziness of saying “I have depression” when we are merely sad, and that, too, is something that irritates me.

You may have noticed this is a bit of a link-fest! (That would be because it’s 1am). More recently I wrote 10 ways to cope with depression and I will have more, soon.

Related articles

• World Mental Health Day: Defeating the dog called Depression (blogs.independent.co.uk)
• World Mental Health Day Brings Awareness to Depression That Affects 350 Million Worldwide (medicaldaily.com)
• World Mental Health Day and the global crisis of depression (sciencelens.wordpress.com)
• Many Millions Suffer from Depression (voanews.com)
• World Mental Health Day – 10th October 2012 (maddsuspicions.wordpress.com)
• World Mental Health Day (datadiary2012.wordpress.com)
• emma gilkison: finding a way out of depression (blkcowrie.wordpress.com)
• World Mental Health Day 2012 Coverage (psychcentral.com)