All is not well : The Growing Cases of Depression Amongst Gen-Z

“...all winter the acorns and red Maple leaf mouldered in silence - in the same way grief is gnawing at me - slowly, imperceptibly... consuming...”

― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

The internet defines depression as a ‘common’ medical, mental illness that effects an individual negatively. How common, does common feels? Just about one amongst fifteen of our kids.

How many times within twenty four hours of a day have you felt the sadness seeping through your veins and clogging your breathing for a considerable amount of time? Maybe many. It is not unusual for a teenager to feel “The Blues” and meaningless in today’s world. The confinement of this putrefying emotion does not exist till the chronic sadness  one feels or the urge to hide from the world that an individual shows. It extends to so much more.

It is the lifetime of space between what you think you want and what you actually desire, it’s the gap between the mouldering emptiness and satisfying existence. Also, the current generation seems pretty ill-suited to handle the emotional intimidation that life throws in their faces. There seems to be a lack of seriousness towards certain issues amongst our youth which acts as a blanket , covering the adolescents up within the confines of their own imaginary little world. This detachment of people, from people serves the purpose of a wildfire and is responsible for causing major obstacles in someone’s beinghood. There are infinite number of reasons why a teen goes into the tunnel of numbness every now and then, a past major event, surviving an abuse, neglect from a loved one maybe and this incapability to deal with any kind of a loss is the reason for increasing statistics of depression in current youth.

Absolutely anything can trigger this hollowness within an individual and become a destructing agent for him or her in all sense. It begins with a minuscule prick within your emotional psyche, rests there, stays , and feeds off you like a parasite. This miserable combination of feeling decadence, despair, hopelessness, pitiful, worthless and unfit in comparison to the crowd surrounding you on day to day basis gnaws off your inner strength bit by bit. We as humans have majorly failed to understand the intensity of this particular emotional sensitivity amongst our very own flesh and blood. There has always been a stigma within the generations about the chronic sadness that one feels, this very stigma that circles around the periphery of an emotional disorder hurdles an individual to take his or her condition seriously and go ahead with the idea of taking ‘help’ of any sort. Also to this day it remains a big question why gathering any sort of external help to determine your emotional needs is such a taboo within the society.

There is absolutely no limit of people’s incompetency and inability to make rational decisions when it comes to connecting with someone on emotional basis. In this age of pathbreaking technology connecting with someone on an emotional level has become a cumbersome task in itself. It is no surprise to find people with mind plaguing devices glued to their hands for almost all fourteen hundred forty minutes of a day without a minute of breath. No matter what amount of pleasure it gives you to keep scrolling aimlessly through your phone it is acting as a barrier between you and other humans around you. What was the last time when you sat down with a family member or a friend for that matter of fact and talked into the hours of the day without any sense of time. People seem to have forgotten the pleasurable part of talking along with connecting with someone on emotional grounds and have omitted the whole process of it all. What we all want now is someone who will throw away all his or her engagements and sit down for us whenever we feel the need, but how conveniently we choose to not be there for them when they feel the need for it.

Parents think of schools as a student friendly environment that nurtures the good in their infants from the very start of their lives. But are they correct in processing this thought within their minds ? I won’t be exceptionally wrong in stating it plain and simple that schools now have stopped fostering the belief that a child’s worthiness and his or her happiness quotient depends upon he himself rather than his or her academic performance. These mindless numeric calculations have started to hold the power to determine whether a ward is deserving enough to be socially accepted or not. No matter how witless this may seem , these numerals have undeniably changed the way an individual functions, whether on a schooling level or on a graduate level. It is absolutely phenomenal how the whole definition of learning has changed bringing about the worse in students.

There happens an immeasurable amounts of bullying and  name calling by our very own peers that leads us into believing otherwise. People are accurate in making you swallow the fact that you are a misfit and you continue to be just so they can feed off you and keep themselves whole in every situation. From the very beginning of one’s secondary education or adolescence as commonly known , feeling of unworthiness starts to grow within a teen’s mind and it crumbles every resolution one has been given by his or her parents about being indestructible. It is hard, even if   grown-ups feel this to be just a hormonal imbalance it could be the very inauguration of depression within a kid’s system.

There might be a plethora of occasions where I’ve found myself tightly closing my fists in the middle of a huge throng and sound just to stop myself from screaming my gullet out in absolute vexation. It is so absurd that I as a person would go to immeasurable amounts of efforts just to avoid a face to face conversation about how I feel with someone else. And for people like us, who are afraid to walk amongst this huge dramatics that surrounds us , certain things provide us solace. There are things that cease this domino effect of your insides or inner resolution falling off , bit by bit, piece by piece and the very same thing has the capacity to turn the course of an individual’s life. But all aren’t lucky enough to find this beautiful saviour of a thing to extract them from this soul sucking marsh of sullenness and it is undeniably unfair.

Life is nothing else but a chain of reactions linked to one another in the most ludicrous way possible and any sort of mismanagement of one thread leads to complete destruction of another. It’s surprising how our fellow human beings feel that one’s display of certain emotions is a sign of weakness while in reality it signifies the humanly nature of a person with comparison to someone who’s merely just existing for the sake of it. I have always failed to comprehend that people sympathise with the affected rather than sitting, talking and connecting with someone that could help him or her in ‘n’ number of ways. I can vouch in all sensibility that this feeling of being depressed rips apart a soul into tiny slivers of barely anything in order to keep the people around you within a notion that you’re doing just fine. This shame that one feels in accepting the facts about your own self is a gnawing ache that prevents you from understanding that yes , you’ve fallen down pretty hard and you need a bit of a picking up by the hands of someone. Anyone, who might see the weakness in you and still despite of all the flaws will be ready to heal you in ways never imagined.

It is horrible how the youth is going into this mind numbing tunnel of  hopelessness , not to avoid the constant need one feels of self-annihilation. I can almost picture someone pick up a sharp metallic object, stare into it for a couple of minutes, debate with himself or herself and finally bring it near to his or her skin with the sole intention of harming oneself. How astonishing it may sound that cutting yourself, or placing the trace of a wound over your very own skin to draw out something scarlet might cause a tiny sense of satisfaction within your psyche, but it is true. It does. Not in a satisfactory way, but it does.

See the concept is a person might feel ensnared within a   self-created labyrinth. It is no science that diverting one’s attention feels as the best option to overcome the hell functioning inside you. People often mix grief with depression, which is a habitual enough mistake. There exists a fine thin grey area between acute grief and depression, and even counsellors face a considerable amount of confusion in determining what actually the person in front of them is suffering from. For the possible treatment of it, a just deducement of the problem is absolutely necessary.

Treating yourself with thoughts of non-existing dignity and pride might drive out the worst in you, resulting in immense grief. A pessimistic approach is also a very significant cause for depression. If seen generally mostly everyone around us have the ‘glass is half empty’ approach towards life which nibbles the rest of an individual’s pride and self-worthiness , whatever amounts is left of it.

It is true there doesn’t exist a set method or process for prevention of a person entering into the swamp of darkness, but surely there must be a way to pull him or her back to the light. Grief gives rise to this ever so riveting illness and we as humans should stop acting as mere spectators and for once do something to stop this ricocheting of emotion from an individual’s anatomy. Imagine what a world it would be if things were loved and people used , how inharmonious it would feel to be a part of such combination. Encourage yourself to take a step forward, to stop and talk, to listen and ask how someone is feeling, to try and help, to make their survival a little more adventurous. You might make a ‘common’ medical illness proportionately ‘uncommon’.

Pen down✌🏻
Surya Pratap Singh