Is sad so bad?

Not depressed, just sad, lonely or unhappy - Cases of depression have grown around the world. But while awareness of the illness has helped lift the stigma it once attracted, have we lost touch with the importance of just feeling sad, asks Mary Kenny.

Looking back on my own reasonably serene childhood in Ireland during the 1950s, I recall quiet murmurs about people who suffered from "nerves".

I remember hearing that a neighbour - a well-to-do woman whose larger house and smart appearance was rather envied in the community - had had a "nervous breakdown".

Although when I repeated this to my aunt and uncle, with whom I was living, I was hushed up with a peremptory word of censure. There was, clearly, something slightly shameful about a "nervous breakdown" and one didn't speak about it.

 

Is sad so bad?

I can see now, though I did not see then, that these were hidden incidents of depression among family and neighbours. But the stigma over depression, or even mental illness of any kind, must have added to their anguish.

How times have changed. It is an accepted truth, in our time, that depression is an illness with a global reach.

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We are losing old rituals which human beings have practised for eons” - Mary Kenny

It seems that depression in various guises - whether chronic, uni-polar, bi-polar, clinical, recurrent, major or minor - accounts for a greater burden of disease, world-wide, than war, cancer and AIDS all put together.

This new openness is a good thing. Yet in the process, are we losing something?

Take the word, "trauma," which is now frequently and commonly invoked in conversation today. A person who has suffered a bereavement is said to be "in trauma".

A person who has been subjected to shock is said to be "traumatised". The break-up of relationships - a sad human experience which brings us a sense of loss, and hurts our need for attachment - is, similarly, described as "a traumatic experience".

In his excellent autobiographical study of depression which he so adroitly called Malignant Sadness, Professor Lewis Wolpert employs the concept of "trauma" to describe, for example, bereavement.

Death - part of life "Trauma" comes from the Greek word for a "wound", and in a medical sense, it is what happens to the body when a wound delivers a shock.

But bereavement, of which I have much sorrowful experience is, alas, part of the natural course of life's sad events.

As Shakespeare observes, with Hamlet, his father lost a father, and that father lost a father before him, and so on, ad infinitum, through the hinterland of human history.

Grief is desperately upsetting: it hurts you for ages, and the loss of someone you love is emotionally painful, and can be enduringly so. But why not call it by its proper name: bereavement: grief: loss?

One reason may be that we are losing old rituals which human beings have practised for eons.

When I was a young woman in France in the 1960s, you would come across a shop with its blinds drawn, and a notice saying: "Ferme pour deuil": closed for mourning.

It is still seen in France, and is also a usual response in Italy. Mourning symbols were widespread in all cultures - widows' weeds, black armbands - and the community was expected to respect those who mourn.

Outward signs of mourning have declined, if not been abolished in more secular societies now: but our sense of sadness and loss endure, and instead of this being called mourning, it is called "trauma".

It might be a start to revive or recapture some of the wider, non-medical vocabulary for the gamut of human experience.

Depression may also be melancholy: it may be discouragement, disappointment, abandonment, sadness, sorrow, mourning, rejection, regret, anxiety, grief, obsession, introspection, loss, separation, loneliness, isolation, alienation, guilt, loss of hope, temperamental woe and simple, pure, unhappiness.

It can be forms of low mood now out of date. The Edwardians were very keen on a condition known as "neurasthenia"; Virginia Woolf was diagnosed with it.

It was also known as "nervous debility", or, in its milder form, being hyper-sensitive and thin-skinned.

Yearning for the past "Anomie" was another condition once favoured in the 19th Century by the sociologist Emile Durkheim, and from a sociologist, a sociological condition. Anomie was defined as an isolated mood caused by the breakdown of social norms, sense of purpose and rules of conduct.

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There are romantic-sounding forms of melancholy: the German idea of weltschmerz - a yearning sense of 'world-sorrow'”

There was also a spiritual form of depression called "accidie" much brooded on by some of the saints - this was "dryness of the soul". The writer Malcolm Muggeridge also complained of suffering from it at times.

There are even, I think, some romantic-sounding forms of melancholy: the German idea of weltschmerz - a yearning sense of "world-sorrow" and unfocused sadness for humanity: or the French nostalgie du passé, that bittersweet Proustian condition of longing for the past, with a rueful sense of regret for missed chances and lost opportunities.

I also rather like mal du pays - the exile's yearning for the country of childhood, and it comes to me in flashes, both in the spring and autumn, when I think of Irish country lanes, and the smell of fields of mown hay. Ah, bonjour tristesse!

No doubt we are better off for shedding much of the stigma surrounding mental illness - but with it, have we lost some of the variety, the dark poetry of the human condition?

Mary Kenny is an author, journalist and public speaker

Below is a selection of your comments

Excellent article. We need the lows to truly feel the highs. When I feel a sense of loss or nostalgia, I feel like in some weird way I need it and need to immerse myself in it, briefly at least, to revitalise myself for the active, happy times. I would even say I enjoy it, for some kind of contrast - and not really in a masochistic or even necessarily in an emo/gothic culture kind of way.

Lisa, Adelaide, Australia

I originally hail from the sunny island of Cyprus and have vivid memories of my grandmother, sadly no longer with us, sitting in the chair in the sunshine and always wearing black in mourning for one relative or other. Although I think that my yiayia took things to extreme, I am suprised that in this culture, mourning is not something that is widely accepted. If I were to lose a parent or loved one I expect I would feel a great loss and for me its unimaginable that I should continue to wear the same face and appearace in public straight after such a bereavement. It feels like a denial of the loss and by extension a denial of the person no longer with us. I think a period of mourning, an acknowledgement of the loss and the pain is much better than putting on a brave face, not dealing with your emotions and developing longer harder to heal scars.

Elena Williams, Manchester

I have recently lost my son to an "unascertained" death. Yes I feel traumatised, but I am told that all my reactions to his death are normal signs of bereavement. I do agree with the author in that everything that upsets us now seems to be included under one umbrella. Lets go back to when we were griefstricken, grieving, feeling down etc etc. Every emotion is different - we need the variety of words to expess our feelings!

Marian Meggat, Boston, Lincolnshire

Has anyone actually tried thinking about WHY people are getting more depressed in the world?

Michael, North Yorkshire

There is no absolute distinction, but most sadnessess are normal or abnormal.

Max Patrick, GP, Middlesbrough

As a long term sufferer of chronic depression I hate the way people misuse the word depressed BUT because there is still a massive stigma surrounding what is an illness so I am cautious about critisising anything that helps open people up to it. On the other hand you could say that people then assume what real depression is when they are just describing sadness. Regarding the stigma i mentioned. It annoys me when people think the stigma is being broken. You try telling dropping it into normal conversation and see the room act like you have just dropped a massive fart.

James Dedman, London

Very interesting article, thanks for posting. I think there is something exceptionally wise about a greater sense of loss outside yourself. It shows a deep understanding and empathy with life

Simon, UK

Happiness cannot be a constant in life and times of sadness, loneliness and grief are an inevitable part of life. We should learn to live with them and pass through them, acknowledging that they can help us to grow, and to learn the fullness of life lived.

Fiona Sawyer, Newbury, Berks

I agree completely with the sentiments expressed. So much of our normal life experiences are couched in pseudo-medical language, because it seems in a securalised society people are embarrassed to speak of emotion in a wider 'spiritual' sense. It is as though to admit that there is a part of our being which cannot be filled with reason is to admit loss of control. It seems there must always be an explanation, someone or something to blame, we must always be 'moving on'. I find life to be messier, more complicated than that, and welcome articles which point out that it is not wallowing in self-pity, but accepting ourselves as complicated, many dimensional beings, who need times of reflection to grow and mature. "for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:" Ecclesiates 3

Grace Grant, Scotland

I often feel Melancholic its a feeling that comes from no where although this year it is especially worse after the loss of my father during the Spring, his favourite time of year. I think we should allow ourselves to grief and not be ashamed to do so,it is a natural part of coming to terms with loss.

Kevin, Tonbridge

As we take less of ourselves from our parents and give less of ourselves to our children, more of us lives and dies with us - death has become even more absolute. Despair and its partners are more available as community disintegrates into a loose collection of individuals and that some of us find depressing, stigma or not.

Jim Brennan, Prince Edward Island, Canada

One of my favourite Dickens quotes is "There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast." The idea that the lows can be balanced out by the highs is an important one to hang on to, and one that I do desperately, having been recently widowed in my mid-thirties. I have also suffered extended periods of clincally diagnosed depression in my life and that felt very different to mourning. I love old the French expression 'les papillions noir", which perfectly and poetically describes the melancholic thoughts and feelings that flutter though the mind and body when one is experiencing sadness. ( bbc.co.uk )