Depression

 I recently watched a movie in which a woman was experiencing a weeks-long, bed-ridden depression while her cute teenage son was in the next room having noisy sex with his new girlfriend. (Don’t ask me why I even watched this movie, but I stuck it out.) As a person who suffered many years with depression and mental illness, the misrepresentation in this movie of depression, its effects and the family responses were troubling and distasteful.

Of course, this was one silly romantic comedy, but it’s one more reminder of the difficulties  people with mental illness have in being understood and their pain appreciated. We have empathy for victims of physical illnesses—we can see their pain. But for victims of mental illness, their pain and their scars are not always so visible.