And then there's T.S Eliot, who knew depression: "April is the cruellest month/Breeding lilacs out of the dead land..." The Wasteland.
13
Two views of April. Chaucer's
"When April with his showers sweet with fruit
The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower..."
And TS Eliot: it's the cruelest month.
I'm with Tom. For me, Spring's brief riot of glorious color cruelly foretells months of torpid heat and humidity, getting worse with each passing year. I don't feel alive again until autumn.
15
“Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most”
http://youtu.be/vd5VVELfWC8
2
I am staring at the comment box struggling over saying something empathetic and sharing my own battles.
With the sunshine, flowers, and farmers markets quickly upon us, the mantra from the outside always seems to be, “Cheer up!”
What happens if and when we can’t? When plastering on a smile and being OK seems impossible and succumbing to the demons is simply out of the question?
It is beyond brave to share this piece. I hope it gives others the sense that they are not alone, and that there is help and, perhaps, a little light somewhere out there. I hope I get that sense as well.
34
I think this might have to do with comparing your inner world to outer (others and environment) and not bearing the difference.
In winter, it’s easier to feel at peace with your mood as it seems that everyone around you is experiencing seemingly similar cold dark days. It’s only in spring that you start realizing that people and nature bloom and start over fully charged and acknowledging this divergence may be unbearable.
21
I went through this this year, although without following through with a suicide attempt thankfully. I had an extremely difficult winter filled with many setbacks - or what felt very acutely like setbacks, and some of which objectively were - that fell one by one on top of my usual, more mild seasonal depression. On top of that, spring was slow in coming, and I longed for it in so many ways and for so many reasons. And yet, when spring came, my despair only deepened until it felt like a kind of psychosis - I couldn't recognize my relationship to the world or myself anymore. It was like the sunshine poured in only to cast light on something broken and terrifying. I got through it somehow, with a lot of support, and by making some important changes in my life, but wow. The idea that you are supposed to be happy in spring, and enjoying the beautiful days, only made it worse I'm sure, adding guilt to the mix, as well as a realization that no, it wasn't just seasonal, but rather I was mired in something deeper and more enduring. It was actually the first year I have felt this acute spring depression, and it was its own beast.
101
When I was 16, my mother was hospitalized with an undiagnosed illness sometime in March. It was no longer winter but not quite spring. This was long before the days of MRIs, so the doctors had no way of seeing the cancer that had already colonized her pancreas. So she was subjected to test after test, week after week as the ground fully thawed, the flowers bloomed, and the robins returned on their annual migration north. Spring was my mother's favorite season and one of her biggest regrets then was that she was stuck in the hospital, missing out on all of its beauty. By the time the surgeon had performed exploratory surgery and was able to deliver the death sentence that the cancer carried out a few weeks later - on Mother's Day - spring was in full stride. Throughout that period of hoping against hope that she might defy the odds, my family and I made a daily pilgrimage to my mother's bedside in the hospital. And with each passing day, as life returned to the outer world beyond her window, my mother's own life receded before our very eyes. I distinctly remember, thinking back on my 16-year-old self, the incongruousness of the exuberant joy with which the season seemed to imbue everyone and everything around us while I anticipated with dread, panic and misery the impending loss of the person I loved more than anyone else on Earth. To that 16 year old, spring, by its very nature, seemed to mock my suffering with boundless cruelty. I've hated it ever since.
176
@David, As a single parent to the child of a 15 year old son, your comment hit me hard. As I am in the throws of late stage 4 stomach cancer.
I love spring. I hope he still likes it later on.
Thank you for sharing your experience with us.
88
@David I ache on your behalf.
29
@David My heart goes out to your 16-year-old self and to his legacy who understandably lingers in your associations of such grief with such incongruent taunting by Mother Nature. Your articulation of what it meant to you is eloquent and moving.
So it is without any wish at all to be dismissive or even advisory that I will voice an observation that you may have already considered and found to be beyond reach, but for what it may be worth: Your mother might wish for you that you inherit her passion for spring; perhaps she was even grateful to be having her last visions out her hospital window to be ones of the season that she most treasured, as parting salves to her own grief at losing her life with you.
You might similarly consider the perspective that comes from the Stanford Forgiveness Project - https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_choice_to_forgive/. You might wish to consider forgiving Spring for being the unwitting cruel dagger in your grief, if only because I would venture to guess your mother would not wish you to hate (on her behalf) the season she loved.
I do greatly appreciate your sharing of an elegantly expressed profound pain. A childhood loss of a parent is a trauma that is in the pantheon of griefs alongside a parent's loss of a child, such as Mary Cregan's.
42
When I was 18 and in my freshman year of college I tried to kill myself with an overdose of Seconal. I nearly succeeded but for the early arrival home of a parent.
Two weeks later when I found myself checked into the top private psych hospital in the US, the psychiatrist told my parents that as odd as it seems, suicides peak after s long hard winter or a long beautiful summer - completely counterintuitive to what you would think.
45 years have gone by since my almost successful suicide attempt. And yet, every year, as the crocuses start to open, and everyone is commenting on how it is at long last spring, I feel myself pulled back to that dark place and think “so what?”
117
@Well-edited Thank you for opening up like you did. It made me cry. There is so much pressure to feel happy and engaged with life because it is spring time with flowers blooming and hopes anew. We all have our internal demons. The time of year, unfortunately, does not always put them to rest. Be well.
49
So true. There is something about the day or season that mirrors one’s grieve or depression and makes it fitting, tolerable. However slow and melancholy, a house-bound rainy day becomes more manageable than the brightness that demands buoyant spirits--when there are few to be had. After the loss of our grandson and my wife last year, were it not for sharing with family and friends, I could imagine all too easily the author’s perfectly described descent to despair.
122
Spring came, as expected, after a traumatic experience in January. I was suffering major depression but didn't know what it was except that I wanted to die. With spring came light and green and laughter in the streets. The intense stimuli of the annual seasonal reawakening surrounding me was harsh and painful. I remember this very well. The sun and green with bright flowers were like repeated kicks to my psyche. The winter's shorter days had protected me. Early spring remains my least favorite time of year and I still find forsythia to be harsh flowering plant knowing there is still snow further north. Snow to celebrate and slide on while here the streets remain cold and joyless. Autumn is my favorite season as the days present with sharpened shadows as the lower sun lights up all visual things. A tree takes on the magic of orange while sky darkens behind it. Darkens with purple as the days march toward early dark and snow again. Spring is harsh indeed and can be too much still for me but I am no longer depressed but have never forgotten it when it almost pushed me over the edge.
55
@Ozma
You're a great writer.
22
I think Spring gives people an energy boost. So, people feeling depressed/lethargic perk up and might try to kill themselves. Spring makes people crazy
5
Why do you blame your psychological problems on spring ? Looking for someone/something to blame could be symptom of your illness. [Excuse my uneducated comments, I have no training in psychiatry or medicine].
3
God bless you and thanks for sharing.
7
It happens in Spring. A depressed person has no hope. Without hope, April arrives as the author states in the piece by Edna St. Vincent Millay coming–– "like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers." For most of us, who are fortunate to have love and security in our lives, we welcome April. But, we must continue to be aware of those who are fragile. We must pay attention to those who have suffered losses because we have all suffered losses, and we have learned to go on and make do. But we are all vulnerable to another crash. And, if we lose sight of that vulnerability and fragility, we lose sight of humankind.
12
Thank you to those writing such candid comments. You are not alone...
This is the time of year when I'm reminded of the lyricist, Frances Landesman's "Spring Can Really Hang You up the Most", her exploration of T. S. Eliot's "April is the cruelest month..." In part :
"...College boys are writing sonnets,
In the "tender passion" they're engrossed,
But I'm on the shelf with last years Easter bonnets,
Spring can really hang you up the most!..."
4
Villette, Charlotte Bronte
Lucy Snowe: “No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as that of being told to _cultivate_ happiness. What does such advice mean? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.”
7
"Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most"
A song by Fran Landesman
2
Here is one part of the puzzle as to why suicides peak in the spring--Vitamin D.
Your internal (endogenous) Vit D is actually a hormone, & it does affect mood. It's created in your body by *summer* sunlight, (or by diet, if you eat lbs of salmon per week, but who does that?). Since sunlight has been waning since September's equinox, your body is at its lowest ebb for Vitamin D levels by the spring. So there you are: confronted by profound sorrow which the season's beauty only seems to reproach. For those most sensitive to this low level of D, suicide feels like an option.
Please see your provider today & ask for a test of your Vitamin D levels! A low level is easily treatable. Note also that a low level of D will impair effectiveness of an antidepressant.
If you can't bring yourself to seek medical care, then go to the store & buy an oil-based Vit D3 supplement. You can find it in 5000 IU/day doses.
Finish that bottle, then ask yourself: are you feeling much better? If yes, switch to 2000 units per day, (always taken with your largest meal--fat aids absorption.) Stay at that dose.
Meantime, get yourself as much sunlight as you can, taken on bare skin, decreasing as the sun arcs higher in the sky.
You can also check your own Vitamin D levels at commercial labs without an RX. You want to be at the top of the normal range, not at the bottom of the range, & for sure not below normal range.
12
For what it's worth, as someone who has experienced two significant bouts of depression (20 years apart) and otherwise tends toward anhedonia and dysthymia, I've noted an annual mood cycle of this sort. One might attribute it to seasonal affective disorder, especially at the latitude I live, but the malaise is at its worst between March and June. It seems as if the robustness and resiliency I build up during summer and early fall carries me through much of winter, but has largely dwindled away by the vernal equinox. Spring often becomes a desperate lunge for light, fresh air, and activity that will allow me to regain equilibrium, but it's often well into summer before that happens.
4
Singularly the most remarkable visual representation of depression in any season, but made more profound by the artist sourcing the soul of this piece. I suspect Mary Cregan agrees.
1
Dear Mary, thank you for your vulnerability and sharing your story of grief, sorrow and despair. Be well.
6
I am inexpressibly grateful for this piece--for the breathtaking candor and deep insights of Ms. Cregan's sharing. In December/January of 2013, I experienced a near-paralyzing descent into agitated depresssion--in my late 50s, and not my first fierce episode. Thanks to my spouse, wise and attuned colleagues, and skillful psychiatric/counseling help, crucial intervention and initial stabilizing took place in the 'dead' (!) of winter. But then, in spite of being quite literally brought back from the brink for nearly two months, I had several suicidal 'rehearsals' and then near-completions in mid-March. As the weather was breaking; as winter was relenting, even while undergoing excellent treatment. I've often pondered how/why my greatest vulnerability--the sense of roaring hollowness--welled up toward spring. This piece has shed some very welcome light, and undergirds hope. Thank you.
62
For the past 44 years, each May I have questioned why my beloved mother swallowed a bottle of Tuinal , achieving at the fourth attempt the death she desperately wanted to blot out the unrelenting pain of living. Why May, to me the loveliest time in early spring ? Thank you, Mary Cregan for helping me understand at last how cruel spring can be to those battling the vile demons of unrelenting depression.
66
What a bold and brave personal essay, one with a universal statement of life over death. Spring has a long history as a period of rebirth -- but for many, the birth-after-death never comes. Your story is a reminder that living, and living well, can indeed triumph.
41
Thank you for sharing. I feel like you did that April.
Hope it passes
4
Please reach out and get help! Believe it or not, help and love are out there and the delusional tape that depression plays in our heads that we are not worthy of love or care is a lie. I know-I’ve been there too.
3
"Each day felt endless, with no sense of forward motion, no belief that I would ever feel better. Time was unbearable: time needed to stop. One morning I admitted aloud that it would be better if I were dead."
This alone is one of the best descriptions of depression I've ever read.
I've had five major episodes, each worse than the previous one, but all with hallmark of depression--failure to feel pleasure in ordinary moments of life. I remember once complaining to a new therapist that I couldn't feel anything, and he simply said, "of course you can't, you're depressed."
Somehow I felt a ray of hope, because he validated my depression. It eventually eased, but I remain on perpetual guard.
How right you are that spring with its beauty promise that can't be felt is hell for those in the grips of serious depression.
Thank you for this essay and the comfort of identification it may bring others.
23
Having quite a bit of experience with depression, I can vouch for the fact that spring can actually make a person feel worse. The sun is out! The birds are singing! Why are you inside on such a beautiful day?
Grateful Dead bass player Phil Lesh, working with lyricist Robert Hunter, wrote a song that captures the feeling very neatly:
Walk into splintered sunlight
Inch your way through dead dreams
To another land
Maybe you're tired and broken
Your tongue is twisted
With words half spoken
And thoughts unclear
At the time Lesh and Hunter were writing Box of Rain, Lesh was caring for his father in the final stages of a terminal illness. But it works well to convey the mood of someone who only feels worse then winter is over.
The answer is in the song, too:
What do you want me to do
To do for you to see you through
A box of rain will ease the pain
And love will see you through
Please, non-depressed people, no judgements about the person whose spirits aren't lifted by spring. Criticism and cheerleading are worthless IME. Only love will see them through.
21
Beautiful comment.
6
Thank you for sharing your story, Mary. I am sorry you suffered so terribly. And I am glad you have a life you love today.
12
There are times in life when we cannot fix the sorrow. We just have to move on. You have done the best that you can.
We are creatures within the natural world. Our physical systems resonate to the changes that occur in spring. When the trees come out of dormancy, it's not unusual to be bombarded with energy that causes us all kinds of overdrive.
Depression fights the overdrive.
32
There is a tremendous amount of unspoken grief at work in our society today--from climate change, a brutal economy, a sadistic media culture--and it continues to have devastating effects. Pieces like this are important and may start a conversation that could improve, or maybe save, someone's life.
107
@M. Grove I, too, am overcome at times by waves of grief at the environmental collapse that is unfolding before my eyes and shame over my significant and continuing role in it. I'm pretty ambivalent now about the whole human enterprise.
38
@harold Indeed, in my view we all need to do a better job of finding a language that speaks to that grief. So much of the talk of solutions to climate change is technical/political and leaves out this (for lack of a better term) spiritual or primal human dimension that many people feel in need of. I think many are in pain because they love our home, the earth but are unable to articulate what that means or how to act on that.
There is another piece in the Times today that talks about the effort towards improving the communication around climate change.
21
@M. Grove
Check out Dark-Mountain.net
A group of artists, writers and thinkers who understand the reality of climate change and it's impact on the earth and society. These people question the very basis of our consumer culture, without attempting to provide solutions apart from connecting humans who share that question.
13
I spent most of my 20s mired in lacerating depression, and then shortly before my 30th birthday the man I thought I was going to marry treated me in hurtful and humiliating ways and I broke it off with him—and then a month or so later my best friend died of AIDS. I think I held on for another couple of weeks but eventually I filled the bathtub, poured myself a glass of vodka, took all of the various Valium and Valiumesque pills I had been pilfering from every medicine chest I was able to access, and then took the scariest knife I could find into the bathroom with me and ran a bath. My plan had been to bleed-out in the tub, but I lost consciousness without actually passing out. I was in a blackout wherein I wrote letters to my siblings and cried, and one of my roommates eventually heard me and drove me to an emergency room. Once I drank the charcoal the ER forced on me, I was placed in and spent two weeks in a locked psychiatric ward. I got a diagnosis (seasonal affective disorder), which helped me realize that I wasn’t just some hideous loser who was never going to figure out how to get through life, I just had a brain that needed help in the serotonin department. It was both the worst thing and the best thing that had or has ever happened to me. I am now 63.
77
The jazz ballad, "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most," says it all -- "... When you keep wishing, for snow to hide the clover ... "
7
Your unimaginable loss—I am holding you in my soul. Thank you for sharing with me.
8
I was thinking of T S Eliot's line as he grappled w WWI "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land."
5
Death of a loved one robs life, all jobs, all accomplishments, all of our mundane motivations of their meaning. It mocks us as fools. Death of a child robs life of a future.
10
Appreciate your thoughts, and perhaps imagine what people without your resources have to do to survive, many don't.
3
My guess is that springtime may be difficult for those suffering from depression the same way that the holiday season is difficult for them.
12
The loss of a newborn can trigger feelings of depression beyond grief. So too, an abortion can leave one questioning whether suicide might not have been, the better course of action. It is arguably easier to cope with nature’s April than with some April’s attack on nature. “Love one another” while we can, and let nature have its seasons.
3
This article enlightened me as to why I get down in summer. I used to be a summer baby. It was my free time to play and enjoy the benefits of an upper middle class life. Now summer is too hot, can't really afford air conditioning, my winter activities are on hold till fall, friends are traveling, kids are gone and I can feel really lonely. I remember those lovely carefree days of summer long ago with deep nostalgia.
17
Thank you for such an honest account of your struggles. I cringe when people state that suicide is an act of selfishness. What people don't understand is that suicide is an act to end one's unbearable and debilitating pain. Navigating the road through depression, anxiety, and pain is a day-to-day process.
I am working on not having any expectations, because "expectation is the root of all heartache" - William Shakespeare.
30
@Barb,
In the month of May in another era, a man afar and far older, sent a lecturing letter my way about why suicide is an act of selfishness.
I wrote: 'You have deserted your beautiful wife for another; your son's girlfriend no less and twenty years younger than you. We are alone this cold weekend in Paris, and at sixteen, I am unable to help her through this great sorrow that you have inflicted on her and none of her friends are calling when she is in need of company'.
'This is the real divorce I am sensing in adolescence, where you have sent me to school and given me shelter and parental advice. B. took a bottle of pills and she survived, but her voice will never be the same again, and all I can do is listen to what she is writing to you. Your son is not here and I do not dare ask, but there is reason to believe he is suffering in this day and in his own way'.
'So do not send word about why it is wrong to take one's life, and add that suicide is a passing emotional phase. I will remember your many kindnesses if I am in life years from now, but spring will always remain the saddest season here for reasons that you should understand...'
Barb, I never did send this letter to this man because it was too hurtful. I went back to school, knowing that spring would never be merry or quite the same again, with the refrain, "be prepared in life for the unexpected".
2
@Barb I was puzzled by the quote you attribute to Shakespeare, as it didn't ring true somehow.
By way of the Folger Shakespeare Library:
"The only time that Shakespeare uses the word 'heartache' is in Hamlet’s famous 'to be or not to be' speech:
'To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished.'
Nothing in there about expectations."
As a long time psychotherapist of intensive psychotherapy I wonder what would h ave happened if you had, instead of consulting a psychiatrist and being give an anti-depressant pill and sent on your way, if you had immediately been immersed in a deep and sustained dialogue bringing forth all of your thoughts and feelings and fantasies while forming a new relationship with a fellow traveler in this life of pain and joy. Some who have responded have told of close family ties with open channels of communication that got them through it and onto the other side. But when, for whatever reasons, such close relationships involving communication are not present an authentic relationship based on caring and compassion and comprehension of the suffering being lived through is crucial. Pill dispensers treating despair like it's a cold to be fixed by medication alone was your first attempt to reach out for help. When it failed you escalated your demand for understanding with a second attempt. I'm so glad you finally got the help you needed, but much of the danger and suffering might have been averted had you had intensive psychotherapy right away.
14
@IntheFray
A sales pitch for a dubious "remedy", about as likely to succeed as medication is to cure a cold.
6
As a psychiatrist who treats many people with severe depression as well as a sufferer of the same, I find your comment lacking in nuance. My colleagues and I don’t just hand out pills. We also talk to our patients. We also encourage ( and sometimes practice) psychotherapy because we are aware that medication by itself is insufficient in severe depression.
4
That was a very good article. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Having suffered with depression for many years what I have found most difficult is finding the right counselor. I have been told -join a Meetup group, get out among people. My natural introversion coupled with my chronic depression pretty much guarantee I will not succeed. I finally found someone who I thought might help but we learned at the first session that she is not on my insurance plan.
19
Five things to share 1) I'm reading this is a room with the shades drawn. One way to mitigate/mediate the sunlight. 2) You know I grew up in Florida - where there was a perpetual sunlight. I wonder what the research wold say about depression in Spring in a place where there is no extreme changes ? I am curious. 3) I am lucky I like summer sports and to sail in the summer -- as this time of year I can anticipate doing something that is healing. 4) read up on weight lifting/resistance training and depression. lots of studies. helps me. 5) My brother killed himself last winter - well, it was in Florida anyway. Rest in peace dear brother.
7
April is indeed the cruelest month. We are all bound to shifts in sunlight which affect our circadian rhythms and for some of us our moods. Kay Redfield Jamison's studies of famous artists and the surge in suicides, manias, and in some cases violent behavior, in the spring and early summer months is well documented. It's not heat but light levels that drive the behaviors. In the northern hemisphere with the onset of spring and more SUNLIGHT most mammals experience higher energy levels, better moods, joy even! (this effect is reversed in the lower hemisphere and in the winter months when more melatonin floods our brains) Depending on how your brain is wired all that extra serotonin (produced when sunlight hits the retina or with a misprescribed SSRI)will produce episodes of mania, agitation, depression. SSRI's which increase the levels of seratonin should NEVER be prescribed to those with bipolar disorder, nor the indiscriminate use of full spectrum lights used to treat so called seasonal affective disorder (though a hibernating bear would argue this is not a disorder). It's horrific to endure that level of hard wired despair (you can observe this from a cultural and medical perspective)and my heart goes out to the author, but beware of medications that exacerbate mood swings and doctors who are oblivious to the light/dark cycles, mood swings and sunlight in a pill. (SSRI's).
7
Yes the abrupt changes in daylight (exacerbated by daylight savings time) make me depressed. It’s like sudden exposure.
8
This is a beautiful piece, and for people struggling to understand a loved one’s depression, I highly recommend Mary Cregan’s book The Scar, which I just finished reading. Very insightful and brave account filled with information about the history of treating depression. Although I don’t know Mary, she taught my daughter at Barnard, and she is a gifted teacher and writer. Big thanks to Mary for her unflinching, honest account of her depression and suicidal attempts. So glad she is among the living and can tell this tale that will be so helpful to people struggling with depression and the people who love them.
13
An acquaintance committed suicide and I commented to a mutual friend that the act was inconceivable to me. He responded, "Yeah, I don't get it either - and I've been suicidal in the past and tried to take my life. But now I'm OK and I just can't remember that feeling of despair." We can never Grok the experiences of others. Such a mystery…
9
What a powerful presentation this is. I am very grateful for it in many ways. It seems to me, particularly, that the basic truth of the human condition is vulnerability ... that none of us is immune to being deeply wounded by an event or events that may be generally understood or, probably more often, uniquely personal. In a broader context of how to be a nation, if only what Ms Cregan offers would apply and life ... all of it ... be supremely respected and honored.
5
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Now I understand myself better. I'm in my 70s, have been successfully treated for depression since 1985, but even as a child always abhorred spring. Felt like an outcast. I wondered how everyone else could take the glare of spring--it always seems too much for me. Now, because of your writing, I will take a chance and look at it--really look at it. The new understanding is like a pair of sunglasses that will shield me from being overwhelmed. Thank you.
17
I couldn’t help thinking that you were experiencing post-partum depression. My understanding is that the hormone system changes dramatically after birthing, and these changes can unbalance your mental state. Between that and the death of a child, I would hope physicians would warn patients (and their relatives) to be on the look out for mood abnormalities.
9
The roller coaster that's life may be mimicked by the seasons yet measured by the moments, each and every one of them, good, bad and in-between. No two are ever the same. That's a hard lesson to learn and often a harder one to follow. Fear and hope
affect us all in different ways. Accepting, living and even embracing them all might just be the hardest task we'll ever face.
Regardless of where you are at this very moment, 'this too shall pass.'
12
Happy belated spring birthday greetings, Ms. Cregan. What a lovely portrayal by Ben Giles, where a woman is under a weeping cloud, surrounded by flowers and the wonders of nature. It has been a cold spring, where the cherry tree in the garden here is reminiscent of a Rackham painting of a sad woman, looking reticent and lost.
I send this to friends with 'cherry blossoms for your good fortune'. A widow called earlier for she has come out of her winter blues, and we shared some news with mirth, laced with a sense of new beginnings.
What could be sadder than the loss of a child, and my thoughts are with another friend who is smiling during her favorite season, yet the scar she carries in her heart on losing her grandchild will always remain in her eyes.
'April Is The Cruelest Month' wrote T.S. Eliot, and the song 'Twas in the Merry Month of May', inspired the author James Jones to write a story for 'Barbara', a friend who died of a broken heart. But spring brought her back to life, and it was November who swept her away.
Despair is seated on a park bench at this time of year. He wears a dusty grey suit and shades; do not look at him, ignore his call and walk by him. If you join him, he will smile and you will suffer, while smiling, frozen, while children are playing and people are wandering, birds on trees, and you will know that you will never again be at ease to stroll at leisure, or free as the birds.
So wrote the poet Jacques Prevert for you, for all of us.
13
@Miss Ley
Beautiful.
4
For many years I experienced similar symptoms in Spring: racing pulse, anxiety, insomnia and other mania-like manifestations. I propose a different cause: lengthening days which played havoc with sluggish circadian rhythms. I found comfort with winter light therapy and large doses of vitamin D. Aging helped too, but that may come too late for many. Try EVERYTHING, and don’t let anyone tell you it’s all in your head.
33
Winter is easier on depressives - the night comes earlier allowing them to retreat into bed, the streets are quiet and not filled with ostensibly happy people, and everybody is a little "down" due to the weather. The light of spring leaves fewer places to hide.
78
@thebigmancat. For most, depression comes and goes when it pleases.
4
@michjas That is definitely true. But I have to agree with the author of the column: April is, in fact, the cruelest month.
1
@thebigmancat You said it. Couldn't agree more. Spring's exposure can be harrowing.
3
Thank you for sharing your story. I'm glad that you were able to have another child. You will always remember Anna but then you got a son to raise instead of just a daughter to mourn. Good luck as you send him off to college. I hope you have grandchildren to love.
26
I don't want to downplay the mental illness described here, but I do want to add that part of this has to do with people just being different. Melville writes of "the damp, drizzly November of my soul," but for me November is tied with October for being my favorite month. I come alive from late September through January. As spring approaches, things start to go downhill.
Today was a beautiful day here in western New Hampshire, but the pale green trees, the bright yellow forsythia and the lilacs, just starting to bud, seemed all too much. I kept wanting to say, "Slow down, Mother Nature." Don't even let me get started on summer.
I think I must have seasonal affective disorder in reverse!
22
@Elizabeth Fuller
There are many of us who have what you interestingly called seasonal affective disorder in reverse. I certainly do. January is my favorite month. I love October through February. I hate July, with its unbearably long, bright, hot, humid days. We may be a small percentage of the population, but there are lots of us.
I also love overcast skies and rain. To me, one of the most beautiful sounds is the sound of rain, especially rain at night, with the occasional car splashing in it.
The only good thing about August is that it means those unbearably bright days are just about over.
20
@Robin Cunningham & Elizabeth Fuller perhaps it's english ancestry remembered in your genes? as a british ex-pat i long for rainy cloudy days.
7
@Elizabeth Fuller
Generally speaking, and this will be changing I am sure, the worst time of year is from mid July through mid August. It forces me inside to escape the energy sucking oppressive heat and humidity. My mood is at its lowest. I turn into a grump!
Is it in our DNA to feel so differently about the seasons?
By August 20th, my spirits are soaring as I anticipate cooler nights and fall - the best season of all. My body and brain are recharged. As my friends are whining about the end of summer and all it's "fun"- I am celebrating it's end!
My moods are strongly affected by the seasons. I can only imagine what it could be like to have that amplified somehow - an event, a physical issue, living in another warmer climate?
Just the sound of the words "Global Warming" are powerfully depressing to me. More heat?!
Of course, none of this properly addresses the authors seasonal memories. So glad she found her balance and a way forward. This is a courageous article - hopefully, a help to some others.
5
It’s a form of negligence to write about this topic without mentioning the breakthrough drugs available to treat intractable depression: ketamine (legal) and psychedelics including psilocybin and LSD (not yet legal). The national suicide hotline is not enough. Include links to John’s Hopkins and Yale research and what works, not a suicide crisis hotline.
12
@Irene. Ketamine and hallucinogenics *might* work, but their success rate is lower than Electroconvulsive Therapy and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, for intractable depression. What does work, for a person reading an article while in the midst of suicidal thinking, is the opportunity to talk to someone trained in crisis counseling and prepared to offer appropriate resources. At this point, having kept this person alive, the newer treatments can be discussed, along with the many standard medications that have helped millions, many with what was thought to be intractable depression, until the right combination of medications was found.
16
@PinkFreud
Ketamine has been shown in double-blind, placebo-controlled studies at major research universities to provide fast relief for depression in a whopping 70% of patients. That hardly classifies as "might" work.
This is without the side effects of ECT: memory loss and difficulty learning new things afterward. Most people would say "no thanks" to that.
The Cleveland Clinic has named ketamine among the top 10 medical innovations of 2017 – that's two years ago.
The "right combinations" of SSRIs and other medications you suggest: they DO NOT WORK AT ALL for 30-50% of the population, cause myriad side effects, often in young people, including traumatic experiences of suicidality and psychiatric hospitalization--the very opposite of what the drugs are supposed to do. Psychiatrists make their daily bread by pushing them. It's a bad model for patients.
Readers can learn more about ketamine here: http://www.ketamineadvocacynetwork.org/
3
@Irene The Suicide Hotline saves lives. Peace.
4
I used to volunteer on a suicide/crisis hotline. We were taught that there was additional risk for suicide when someone went on anti-depressants because it elevated their energy level enough to act on their suicidal feelings. Likewise, we were taught that the same effect happens has winter gives way to spring.
29
Thank you, Mary, for having the courage to tell your story. And thank you for regaining the desire to truly live your life which indeed seems to be a beautiful one. I believe we all have loved ones, if not ourselves, who have contemplated suicide...and sadly in some cases succeeded. A number of years back it came too close to home in my own family life. Coincidentally it also happened in the Spring. Depression had been working its way through my treasured, loved one. Perhaps, it was always there. But life became unbearable one fateful day. It was as if the bright sun was too much of a shock, too opposite of those winter days which masked the darkness within. This person got through it, but for the grace of God, only to be followed by another bout several years later. This time, the individual older and wiser, knew what to do....a good counselor with an effective anti-depressant was sought. And success. Yes, it takes work. And depression is often a chronic condition. But as you have experienced and as I have, it more often than not is treatable. How marvelous. Finally, to those people out there who are having a tough go of it, please do not feel stigmatized or ashamed. Please know that you are far from alone.
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" April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers."
From "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot
37
Thank you for reliving this period of your life for our benefit.
It's also worth noting that there's a proper way to talk to someone suicidal, and a way to completely muck things up. Glib advice ("look on the bright side,") will get you nowhere. Promises ("it gets better") are generally unproductive, especially when they're made on behalf of the universe.
In my experience, what tends to work is companionship. A willingness to exist alongside someone. The companionship _is_ the cure, in many case.
Of course, this shouldn't dissuade anyone from checking up on their friends or neighbors. Nobody was killed by a hello. But if you're going to do more and get your hands dirty, you should be careful.
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@Publius
My first round with depression came three weeks after giving birth to a much-wanted baby. It set in over the course of one night in which I could not get to sleep. Gradually I acquired other symptoms, but insomnia was the worst, leaving me drained and barely capable of caring for my child.
And my mother made it so much worse by comparing my misery to that of other new mothers, who were sleep-deprived because their babies screamed all night, or my cousin, who had had a miscarriage. The message was clear: You have nothing to complain about, so stop asking for help.
Please, non-depressed people: Don't be like my mother.
18
@Publius Yes, thank you.
1
@Publius
Yes. Isolation is truly terrible. As a widow for 19 years, I rely on my daughter, sister, and good friends.
8
Those of sensitive and reflective dispositon have often opined they find more that is representative of their view of life and its fleeting nature on cloudy, dark, stormy days and are more alienated on bright, sunny, warm days, when the contrast of living exuberance to its inevitable dissipation almost seems to be mocking.
So it's not surprising that there are so many suicide attempts, successful or not, in the spring/summer months.
This is not to say that there isn't a lot of depression and malaise during the shorter days of the year; seasonal affective disorder is a well documented phenomenon. But that seems to be far more mediated by biochemical and metabolic processes reacting to lack of blue wavelength light than what the author describes here, which seems to have a considerably more distinct cognitive component, and which would need to be treated differently.
In either case, though, the first thing to do is recognize what is happening--and, despite the tendency, resist keeping it just to oneself.
12
I applaud this author for her courage, keen ability to describe her despair and to give hope to anyone who has suffered or is suffering from mental illness.
35
"spring can feel like an affront, the gulf between outer and inner worlds too wide to cross...' that sums it up pretty well for me
29
The Widow's Lament in Springtime
William Carlos Williams - 1883-1963
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.
95
So perfectly captures exactly what we know to be true. Thank you for sharing it.
3
This is so true. During winter, it seems that everyone is hunkered in; binge watching something. Come spring. people start to head out on adventures and suddenly being alone creates what sometimes feels like an unnavigable chasm apart from the coupled and family life going on elsewhere.
74
@Mary....exactly.
7
I’m glad you are here too, Mary. To share your story and to offer hope to those who lose sight of hope.
I don’t care what I have gone through, spring is the vital return-to-life that I always need and respond to. But I can see how that is not always so for others living under the black dog.
24
T.S. Eliot said it best in the opening stanza of The Wasteland:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
(That was published in 1922.)
85
Just...beautiful. Thank you so much for your courage.
51
Believe it or not, it has been observed that allergies and depression are frequently associated, and that some depression could be caused by inflammation or immune system responses. Early antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs and antihistamines and antibiotics were sometimes the same drugs. Histamines are neurotransmitters. A fascinating topic.
89
@Laume A very interesting book on exactly this inflammation/depression is "The Inflamed Mind" by Edward Bullmore. No panaceas are offered, but it is a new way of looking at the problem, perhaps with some hope of research into new treatments.
20
What you say about spring is so true. I remember being particularly depressed after a relationship ended years ago. It was during the month of May, and the only time I felt actual relief was during a string of rainy days. A sunny beautiful spring day represented renewal, and I didn't want that, or to move forward. I wanted to stay burrowed in my grief and longing.
82
While anxiety/depression/sucidial ideations etc are complex and there is no one size fits all, I cannot recommend strongly enough Dialectial Behavior Therapy (DBT). I have seen it save the lives of those closest to me and it has forever changed mine for the good.
34
I'd once read that suicide among native youth in Alaska is highest during the spring and summer. In the winter, everyone is in the village together. In the spring and summer, those with families who have fish camps go out into the countryside and those without families with camps stay in the village and are at higher risk for suicide. Those without the strongest connections to the land are at risk. Those without the strongest family traditions and bonds are at risk. It isn't the darkness of the Alaskan winter that is depressing. It is not being as connected to family, land and traditional ways and that is most evident in Spring and Summer.
91
Um, not exactly. That’s a pretty simplistic explanation for a serious and complex situation.
2
What an unfathomable loss you survived.
What courage you have to share your journey back from the brink.
There’s not much too add, other than that, every season, every day, there are people drowning in anguish and hopelessness, needing someone to be a lifeline. It is always the right moment to offer concern, kindness, and a listening ear.
183
Thank you, Mary Creagan, for sharing a moving "chapter" of grief and depression in your life, and for sharing your current, inspirational "chapter" of happiness. It conveys hope to others that joy in living after a loss and a mental health imbalance can be rediscovered with support and love.
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