The depression agreement

Robin Williams, Hunter S Thompson, Anthony Bourdain …Yup, they all committed suicide. But they also have something else in common.

What is the demographic of people—what age group and what sex— that will commit suicide the most in the U.S. this year?

Now, if your answer is teenagers and young adult males, then you would be absolutely correct.

If it was 1997.

But it’s not.

The group that now dominates the top of the suicide chart, year after year, with little sign of slowing down, is middle-aged men. In fact, males between the ages of 45 and 64 made up almost 70% of the suicides that occurred last year. 1

Not far behind are middle-aged women, between age 45 and 64. In fact, suicide rates for women of that age group actually increased by 60% between 2000 and 2016. 1

And those numbers only reflect the 50,000 people each year who die by suicide in this country. They don’t include the 1.4 million people who attempt to kill themselves each year but fail or are rescued. And the numbers are still skewed because they also don’t include the large number of suicides each year that are hidden as car accidents and other means and not reported as self-inflicted.

If these statistics aren’t powerful enough, the numbers are actually climbing. The number of national suicides has risen 33% since 1999. And the National Center for Health Statistics recently reported that the U.S. suicide rate is now the highest it’s been since World War II. 2

That means we are now killing ourselves more often than we ever did in the past, but it also means that the ones leading the charge, middle-aged people, are the parents and grandparents to the same age group that used to be at the highest suicide risk only a few decades ago.

Why is this?

Why is this generation of middle aged individuals, who are supposed to be at the top of their game, with the most life experiences, earning more, experiencing more, and having the technology to tie them to more opportunities and information than any other group in history, in such emotional and mental pain that they think that suicide is the only way to relieve it?

I don’t know.

I mean, there are theories, many, many theories of why the middle-aged suicide rate is so high, and there are the pat answers: mental health issues, drug and alcohol addiction, depression and anxiety disorders.

But if you look into each middle-aged group, you do see some common markers. Middle-aged men—this strong and independent group—often see admitting to feelings of depression or anxiety as a weakness. They’re extremely reluctant to tell anyone when issues arise and even less likely to seek professional help. Middle-aged men who commit suicide are often experiencing severe financial stress, recent job loss, debt, and a myriad of other life pressures that affect their sense of worth. Plus they are in a very unique position, begin raised by that self-sufficient generation that survived The Great Depression and World War II.

The markers for middle-aged women often align with severe emotional stresses: marriage issues or loss, infidelity, depression, and anxiety. Interestingly, the suicide statistics for this group might actually be higher than those for middle-aged men, if not for the fact that women often choose pills and other methods to kill themselves that are less reliable than firearms—the common male choice. More women than men attempt suicide and are rescued.

Okay, so what’s the point of all of this?

Well, here it is.

I am a middle-aged man. And I am depressed. And I have been for a while.

There. I said it.

And no, I will not kill myself. How do I know? Because, like many of us, I’m simply not built that way. My wiring won’t allow it. But that doesn’t mean the dark times don’t come. When they do, it’s pretty overwhelming. And to answer your question, yes, I have gone to see someone, and yes, I have tried antidepressants—two different prescriptions actually. They just didn’t work for me.

And yes, I also feel like I am betraying the people I care the most about simply by feeling this way. I worry that my family will feel that they’re not enough, that it’s something they did, some flaw in them, which is absolutely not true and is part of the reason why I have kept this hidden.

I have enormous guilt about making this public statement because I have a wonderful and beautiful wife of almost 30 years, two amazing kids I absolutely love, a job that is challenging, a roof over my head. Yeah, I get it. I know how much I have to be grateful for.

But that’s not the point of writing this. The point is that I think I may have stumbled onto something. Something kind of important. And I wanted to give it to anyone who might be able to use it.

So, let’s start with this: When a person is suffering a deep depression, it’s so huge, so overwhelming, it’s all they can see. They open their eyes and it’s everywhere, all over, weighing down on them from all directions. Anything new that comes in has to cut through all that fog first. And because the depression is so incredibly massive, those experiencing it just expect that others can see it on them. I mean, how could they not? It’s all over us! Like chickenpox or a black eye. We expect people to run up and say, “Holy cow, what happened to you?”

But they don’t.

We see friends at our kids’ school, in the neighborhood. We sit next to them at little league games and talk for hours. And then . . . well, then nothing. They don’t see it, they don’t say anything, and we move on. And when these people don’t notice anything different about us, when they aren’t concerned, we think: “Great, no one cares.” And this hurt causes us to move us away from these people, from most people, as well as from the activities and areas we used to take joy in, and that moves us more toward . . . ourselves.

And here is the great irony.

Ready? Most of us—especially those in a state of depression—don’t really like ourselves all that much. Or even a little bit. Or at all. And now that we’ve pushed all other people away, we’re living on a deserted island with the very individual we don’t want to spend time with. Ourselves.

What’s the most controversial punishment in the federal prison system today? Solitary confinement. Or what prison officials call “the prison within the prison.” Studies on solitary confinement and social isolation show that there is a physical effect on the brain that slows down the brain’s ability to use the feel-good neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin, and over time this can actually cause physical changes in the brain. 3

See, I have always considered myself a fairly selfless person. But depression is an incredibly selfish act—at least, for me it is. Why? Because it’s all about how I feel, what I am experiencing, and what I am going through. It forces you to plan, react, think, and strategize, 100%, on yourself.

You are in pain, but it’s your pain. You feel worthless, but it’s your feeling of worthlessness. You feel helpless, but you are the one feeling this way, and the microscope is turned so far inward that the rest of the world simply becomes white noise.

And you begin to think in terms of away, rather than toward. What you want to avoid, rather than what you want to experience—because, often, the only thing we want to experience is sleep, or alcohol, or Netflix, or food, or whatever deep numbness we can get to the most quickly. And when you do that often enough, the world becomes incredibly small. We crawl into our own self-inflicted solitary confinement.

But reality is that the world isn’t small. At all. And the world needs us.

There are people all around us, every day, in every capacity, and they need us. They need us to listen and to care and to be part of their lives, even if it’s just having a conversation or showing up for their kid’s dance recital or bringing over a bowl of chili when you make too much. They need us.

When I think about the people I have pushed away, shunned, people who might be screaming inside just as much as I am, hurting and in trouble, I’m ashamed. There are others who simply want me to be part of the special times of their lives. In fact, one of my closest friends had a baby a month ago and I still haven’t seen him. I’ve avoided it, gotten out of it, and probably seriously hurt him, and that’s the most selfish act I can think of—sorry, Dave.

But no more.

At this point you might say, so you’re saying the cure for depression is to suck it up and go take a casserole to your neighbor?

Nope.

But I’m saying that my depression needs to be less about me and more about the people around me. I need to be part of their lives and they need to be part of mine and it doesn’t matter that I don’t like myself, because it’s not about me. At all.

I said that I am someone who could never kill himself. and that wasn’t entirely true. Over the years, I have already done it. I have pulled myself so far away that I am now socially, mentally, spiritually, and intellectually dead.

But no more.

I want to knock on all the houses I’ve passed on Fiddlers Green and say, “Hey, you don’t know me, but I’m the guy who has lived in this neighborhood for 12 years, pass you every day, and don’t even know your name.” I will break the cycle and go to the Elks Club fundraiser with our neighbors that invited us, and I will remind my family every day of how incredibly special and important they are.

I don’t pretend this is the cure for anything. It’s not meant to be. It’s a responsibility. A duty. It’s the agreement you sign when you join the human race, and I have seriously defaulted on that agreement.

And yeah, sure, this may not change anything as far as my depression goes. In six months, I may still be here.

Maybe.

But at least I’ll be alive.

I’ll be socially, intellectually, and spiritually alive.

And that’s good enough for me.

1 2017, report Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide/index.html
2 National Institute of Mental Health, 2017 report — https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml
3 Behavior Neuroscience, Emotions, 2016 — https://neuwritesd.org/2016/12/08/the-neuroscience-of-loneliness/