Enter Depression, Exit…

August 13, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Count me as one of those who has to turn off the radio or television when news and commentary and sorrow about Robin Williams’ suicide begins.  Way too close an encounter for me, like the shadow of a shark to a snorkling diver.  I use the time to review the rules: don’t swim in certain waters, only go in with friends, and only when I’m rested, feeling buoyant.  When a shadow appears, talk to myself: talk to others.  Swim away as away from a rip-tide, across the current not straight back in. Panic doesn’t help; irony sometimes does — there you are again, swimming from shadows! Solid land is back there somewhere; I know, I’m mostly on it.  There are more.  Here’s a good article in the Guardian’s Science section.

Depression, the clinical condition, could really use a different name. At present, the word “depressed” can be applied to both people who are a bit miserable and those with a genuine debilitating mood disorder. Ergo, it seems people are often very quick to dismiss depression as a minor, trivial concern. After all, everyone gets depressed now and again, don’t they? Don’t know why these people are complaining so much.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; dismissing the concerns of a genuine depression sufferer on the grounds that you’ve been miserable and got over it is like dismissing the issues faced by someone who’s had to have their arm amputated because you once had a paper cut and it didn’t bother you. Depression is a genuine debilitating condition, and being in “a bit of a funk” isn’t. The fact that mental illness doesn’t receive the same sympathy/acknowledgement as physical illness is often referenced, and it’s a valid point. If you haven’t had it, you don’t have the right to dismiss those who have/do. You may disagree, and that’s your prerogative, but there are decades’ worth of evidence saying you’re wrong.

Guardian: Burnett

Filed under Health, Passings Tagged with , ,

Laos Refugees and Exile in Fresno, CA

May 25, 2013 by Leave a Comment

When we travel we begin to focus on the countries and cultures we have seen.  Laos was one of the places I visited this past winter with other friends.  We asked one older woman we met in a small village if she had family in the United States.  ‘Fresno!’ she exclaimed, and was pleased we knew it, and that Hmong people were there.

Hmong Garden

Mee Yang in the Hmong garden in Fresno, CA

Mee Yang in the Hmong garden in Fresno, CA

Not all are happy, though.

 Like Scotch broom and dandelions, despair can be invasive. This is why, every Monday, Lee Lee, a Hmong refugee, puts on her sun hat and flip-flops, grabs the hoe handmade by her father and brother in Laos and heads to the Hmong Village Community Garden here, where she tends rows of purple lemon grass, bitter melon and medicinal herbs along with other Hmong women.

“It lightens the load,” said Ms. Lee, whose depression has led her to think about suicide. “It brings peace, so I do not forget who I am.”

The garden, on the scraggly outskirts of town, is one of seven in Fresno created for immigrants, refugees and residents of impoverished neighborhoods with mental health money from the state

… On a recent morning, Yer Vang, 53, sang a plaintive song about loneliness as she worked her rows of “zab zi liab,” a medicinal plant used to treat high blood pressure. Across the way, Mee Yang, a 65-year-old shaman, weeded long beans beside makeshift scarecrows made of rows of T-shirts slung over a wire. She said she suffered from diabetes and depression and worried about making ends meet (about 45 percent of Hmong children in Fresno County live in poverty, according to a recent report by the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and the Asian Law Caucus).

[During the Vietnam War, many Hmong experienced rape, starvation and the murder of family members. Mrs. Yang survived by eating longleaf jungle plants, “the kind Americans put in the mall to decorate,” she said.]

“This is my happiness,” Mrs. Yang said of the garden. “You feel the world in this place, and it brings you back home.”

NY Times

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