TW: mentions of depression, self harm, suicide, drugs, medication.
Disclaimer: I am not a medical or mental health professional. The following essay is about my own personal experience with mental illness.
I spent a majority of my life not believing that I could possibly have depression because of the way it was depicted in media. Depression is usually depicted in the extremes in television and film. A character is addicted to hard drugs, self harms, contemplates suicide daily, cannot function “normally”, always “looks” sad. While at the same time, depression is made to look a little glamorous. A little sexy. While being depicted in the extremes, it’s softened by beautiful cinematography and set design. None of this was particularly relatable to me. How could I possibly have depression if I wasn’t shooting up heroin with smudged eyeliner (that still happens to look kinda cute?), strobe lights, and a French dance track playing in the background?
Day to day depression is a lot less glamorous than this. It’s a lot less sexy than this. It’s also a lot less extreme. Now, don’t get me wrong—depression can absolutely manifest in the extremes—but these are not the only ways in which depression can exist. And because I never saw it portrayed in other, perhaps more subtle or grounded ways, I simply could not imagine that having depression was a possibility for me.
Now I have a theory as to why “real” day-to-day depression isn’t depicted in TV & film, and that is because day-to-day depression is boring as hell. It is very anti-climatic. JK, this is not a theory. This is literally the reason why.
What audience wants to watch a character lay all day in bed, not even getting up to eat, pee, or take a shower? Let’s raise the stakes! Let’s add drugs! Let’s add being on the brink of death! That is way more exciting.
The Realities of Depression
Television and film make it seem like depression cannot happen to “regular” people. Depressed people are different. They are always looking sad. They’re always wearing dark or edgy clothing. They’re always getting into trouble, they always want to kill themselves, and they’re always staring at pills in a bottle (or perhaps the pills are haphazardly strewn across the bathroom counter). There’s always some element of filmmaking used to make it clear that this character is not a regular dweller of society.
Again, don’t get me wrong—sometimes people with depression do look sad. Sometimes they do get into trouble. Sometimes they do contemplate taking their own life. But there’s other realities of depression that are not always depicted in media. People who look happy can have depression. People who go to work can have depression. People without an addiction can have depression. People who have lots of friends can have depression. Depression doesn’t always present as the stereotypes we see on TV.
Characters with depression usually have self harm or suicide ideation as part of their story arc—it is often used as a plot device. Characters with depression usually indicate in some way that they want to die, whether that’s through a scene of self harm, drug abuse, suicide attempt, or even just a voiceover literally articulating the thought.
What I never realized is that there’s a difference between wanting to be dead and not wanting to be alive. With depression I’ve experienced both, but majority of the time I experienced the latter. I’ve come knocking at Death’s door a couple times. Those times I did want to be dead. But the majority of my time being depressed was spent not wanting to be alive as opposed to wanting to be dead.
It’s hard to explain in words, but there’s two different thought processes that I experienced that could explain the difference between the two.
Wanting to die: “I would like to take a specific action to end my life”
Not wanting to be alive: “If I suddenly died, that would be fine because there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between my day-to-day and death anyway”
The majority of my depressive episodes were spent thinking the second way. That’s not as entertaining though, so it rarely makes it to big screen.
Not wanting to be alive feels like you’re just floating through life. No effort, no excitement, literally just vibes (other rather…no vibes at all). Each day, you just go through the motions. Doing what is expected of you and nothing more. I was churning out content and getting paid for it. I attended events because that’s what I was told I needed to do. I was paying rent every month because I needed somewhere to live. I went out with friends when invited (sometimes lol) because my therapist suggested that’s what I should do. But I didn’t do anything beyond all that.
I could make it seem like I was functioning “normally”. I’d complete the work that I needed to (though often not on time). I’d laugh at people’s jokes when I needed to. I’d socialize and make conversation and flirt. I was simply doing what was expected of me. I didn’t do any of this because I wanted to, I did it because that’s what helped me keep up the illusion that I didn’t have a problem. When I woke up the next morning, I would repeat the same dull cycle. I was not truly living. And if I somehow wound up in front of Death’s door…well, that was okay. Because I felt like I had already walked through the door anyway.
Television and film have not always been very responsible with their portrayals of medication and what it’s like to take medication for mental illness. I think this might be a top contributor to the stigma. Regardless, it is the reason why I avoided medication for so long.
Whenever medication is depicted in media, it’s almost always a negative portrayal to create conflict. You see characters in an asylum refusing to take their pills. The nurse hands it to them, they put it in their mouths, and when the nurse walks away…*GASP* they held the pill under their tongue! They didn’t swallow it! Because medication = bad! Even though there was no conspicuous mention of what this specific medication actually was!
In other depictions, a character is addicted to their medication. Now, there are absolutely some medications out there that are highly addictive and have negatively impacted people’s lives. I would never want to invalidate that reality. But when have you ever seen a doctor character prescribe an SSRI specifically? When have you ever seen a character simply take their antidepressant in the morning and move on with their day? When have you seen a character not have their medication act as a plot device?
Media both generalizes and sensationalizes medications at the same time. There is no nuance in their portrayals.
Let’s take antidepressants as an example. Lexapro is in an entirely different class of medications as Xanax. SSRIs (antidepressants) are completely different from benzodiazepines. They are different in their molecular structures, what they are prescribed for, how they are used, how often they are used, and how they even work. Yet these nuances are neither articulated nor laid out within the narrative of the movie or show. This lack of distinction led me to believe that all medications were the same and had the same effects.
Medication is almost never portrayed as a normal part of a character’s daily routine. There always has to be some dramatic reasoning behind it, OR some dramatic effect of taking it.
Whether you’re taking an SSRI, benzo, or whatever is between you and your doctor. There is no shame in needing to be medicated for any reason, but it helps to be aware and educated about what you’re being (or not being) prescribed. Some people do fine on certain medications while others do not. Sometimes it takes a bit of time and effort to find what works best for you. Some medications can be used long term and some should not. Ask lots of questions if you need to. Everyone is different. And always remember that there’s nothing wrong with you just because your brain works a little bit different from others. There’s nothing wrong with you if you find you need a little bit of help. It’s okay to not be okay.
What Depression Feels Like
When searching for a photo for this section of the essay, I searched “depression” on Unsplash.com. There were the usual visual depictions of depression—a person sitting alone in a dark room. Perhaps there’s a dark vignette around the photo. But there were also lots of photos depicting a hand reaching out from underwater. That is actually a pretty accurate depiction of what depression feels like. Well… what it felt like for me, anyway.
This is what depression felt like for me: I was submerged underwater. I looked up. I could see the surface! I would start swimming. Up and up, and up, and up. It’s so close! I feel like I could reach my hand out from underwater! But for some reason, I never broke the surface. I just never got there. It seemed like the more I swam—the more effort I put into it—the further away the surface became. Eventually I just got exhausted. I got tired of trying. What’s the point? So I just stopped trying. I just floated there. Submerged underwater. I felt like I was drowning. I felt trapped in misery.
That was depression for me. It felt like no matter how hard I tried, I would always feel this way. There was nothing that could make me feel better or different. I was destined to stay submerged underwater. Trying to improve my condition with exercise or positive affirmations or whatever, felt like trying to swim to a surface that would never get closer.
Depression didn’t feel like sadness, necessarily. It felt like…"meh”. Most of the time it was neither happiness nor sadness. It was just floating. Little moments of joy were fleeting. Sometimes I wonder if I was truly experiencing joy or if I was just emulating how I was expected to react to something joyful. Am I really happy about this good news, or am I just smiling because if I don’t, people will think I’m ungrateful? I really felt like a robot. Or just a shell of a human being. I felt fragmented, damaged, and not whole.
My depression wasn’t crying everyday, though I did cry sometimes for absolutely no reason. My depression wasn’t looking sad all the time—I often emulated what people think happiness and joy look like.
I posted the image above to Instagram in 2018. The caption reads “happy n healthy n lovin life !!” Yet 2018 was the worst year of my life. My depression was at its worst that year. I was absolutely not happy, not healthy, and not loving life. I don’t even know why I wrote that. I was in denial, perhaps. Maybe I wrote it to keep up with the illusion.
My depression was miserable, but not in a sensationalized way. It was regular. Sometimes it was truly neutral. But miserable, nonetheless, because there was nothing I could do to feel any different.
Movies portray mental illness in extremes, because movies are supposed to make money. And to make money, they need to be entertaining. So sometimes screenwriters, directors, producers, executives, etc. sacrifice nuance and accuracy for inflated versions of reality to entertain the masses. And the masses don’t care about the main character struggling to get out of bed, they want to see ~*~TRAUMA~*~
Look, I get it. Stories should have conflict. Stories without conflict are boring. This is such a niche comparison to make, but have you seen the kdrama Record Of Youth? There was like, no conflict. I fell asleep multiple times throughout multiple episodes and I didn’t even finish the series because it was so boring. So, trust me, I get it. But couldn’t a depressed character have some conflict that is totally unrelated to their depression? I mean, “regular” characters have tons of conflict without needing to fall back on a mental illness or medication as a plot device.
This isn’t to say that every single movie that depicts mental illness is problematic. I can think of a few shows and movies where these issues were treated responsibly. But I think that the majority of media that have depicted depression, have done so in a stereotypical way that glosses over the nuances of its realities and treatments which ultimately led to the stigma that exists today.
I spent the majority of my life not believing I could have depression because I didn’t even know what depression actually looked like. To me, it was the stereotypes I saw on TV. I didn’t actually know what depression was or how it manifested. I literally did not know her. Even when my depression started to worsen and I started crying for no reason, I had already convinced myself that I was not depressed. So it didn’t occur to me to seek help. I couldn’t even recognize when I was having panic attacks because they weren’t quite as intense as the ones I saw on TV. All because my own experience wasn’t as dramatized as what I saw on TV
I fully convinced myself that I was okay. I was lying to myself and everyone around me and didn’t even know it.
Hopefully, by writing and talking about my own experience with depression, I can provide a reality that isn’t filtered through movie studio executives wanting to cash in on trauma.