depression is not a wysiwyg illness
yoinked from sophie's tumblr is a link to a fantastic article about the portrayal of depression in literature, particularly children's literature. the writer, kit whitfield (whom i am now irrevocably in love with) explains what depression feels like so accurately i'm kind of crying as i read this because it is so horribly true:
Depression is, by its nature, a disease that makes its victims overreact to the world. Unless you give some serious justification for it in fiction, it's hard to portray well or sympathetically; the Wikipedia article on Sydney Carton, for instance, describes him as 'indulged in self-pity because of his wasted life', which is hardly sympathetic. But Carton's depression is mysterious: there's something wrong with him, but he can't say what, and in the absence of an explanation, it seems frustratingly incomprehensible that he'd be drinking away his potential and reject good advice and encouragement. From the outside, depression looks like an easy fix: just drop the moping and do what you need to do. Of course, saying that to someone in the throes is about as useful as telling someone autistic that they just need to be more sensitive to other people's feelings: it looks like won't, but it feels like can't. Depression is an implacable force - or at least, implacable to more or less everything except medical treatment - but the implacability comes from within, and from without, it looks like someone is doing it deliberately unless their illness happens to be tied to something that's easily understood. If it's not, then it baffles anyone who's fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the effects. You need some way to make the baffling seem plausible, the mad seem believable.
this is the story of my life. this is the story of everything. thank you kit, and sophie.
Depression is, by its nature, a disease that makes its victims overreact to the world. Unless you give some serious justification for it in fiction, it's hard to portray well or sympathetically; the Wikipedia article on Sydney Carton, for instance, describes him as 'indulged in self-pity because of his wasted life', which is hardly sympathetic. But Carton's depression is mysterious: there's something wrong with him, but he can't say what, and in the absence of an explanation, it seems frustratingly incomprehensible that he'd be drinking away his potential and reject good advice and encouragement. From the outside, depression looks like an easy fix: just drop the moping and do what you need to do. Of course, saying that to someone in the throes is about as useful as telling someone autistic that they just need to be more sensitive to other people's feelings: it looks like won't, but it feels like can't. Depression is an implacable force - or at least, implacable to more or less everything except medical treatment - but the implacability comes from within, and from without, it looks like someone is doing it deliberately unless their illness happens to be tied to something that's easily understood. If it's not, then it baffles anyone who's fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the effects. You need some way to make the baffling seem plausible, the mad seem believable.
this is the story of my life. this is the story of everything. thank you kit, and sophie.