By Azanis Shahila
While we all feel sad, moody or down from time to time, some people experience these feelings intensely, for long periods of time. It might be for weeks, months or even years, and sometimes without any ostensible cause. Depression is more than barely a low mood, but merely, a serious circumstance that involves your physical and mental wellness.
Director of Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta, Dr. Norhayati Nordin, said during the interview, “Depression is part of diagnosis in psychiatric and is classified into three major components, which are depression, psychosis, and personality disorder.
Depression goes into the group where the mood and feelings are involved and it can overlap when your mind does not connect to your thought.”
Based on her views, there is nothing much we can do to treat this kind of disorder but as a psychiatrist, she is supposed to study the patients and help to ease their difficulties so they can lead a normal life. Psychiatrists are medical doctors, unlike psychologists, they must evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments, or strictly psychiatric.
Different patients have different kinds of experiences through their illness. Some of them might face difficulty concentrating, remembering details, and making decisions. Besides they also might feel fatigue, guilty, worthlessness, hopeless and pessimistic. These are symptoms that might be faced by the patients during depressions.
Muhammad Fadhil Ahmad, 31, a depressive and panic attack disorder patient, shared his story: “My first panic attack occurred when I was 17 years old and it’s caused mainly by a gene from my family. I felt as if I was going to die and this was the day of resurrection. I could not breathe and had to walk for hours to try and catch my breath for fresh air. That was my introduction to anxiety and I had no idea that I was about to embark on a back and forth journey for years to come, and attempting suicide has been common to myself.”
Depression and anxiety has built up to a point where Fadhil’s life became grey. He did not tell his story to anyone because he knew that no one could understand him and claimed that he was crazy. This affected his relationship with his spouse, children, and other members of the family. He felt like he didn’t belong to anyone until medication and therapy helped him reconnect with people and rediscover his sense of joy.
As for now, Fadhil has been one of the administrators for a depression group association in Malaysia. He tends to help people who have the same problems and depression like him. He gives them a few therapy and talks to them about their problems.
Fadhil said in the middle of his story, “I have met and talked to this one patient and her depression occurred because of her phobia of getting raped when she was young.”
He said that the girl has been raped a few times and it started when she was three years old and because of that reason she does not have the desire to pursue any relationship with the guys and preferred to be a lesbian instead. This kind of phobia leads her to major depressive disorder (MDD) and had caused her to stay in a psychiatric ward for two times. She was given a dose of antidepressant and another medicine to help treat the anxiety.
This indicated that depressions can come for several reasons and situations. Imagine if every day of your life begins with the utter bewilderment of untreated depression. Imagine the feeling of constant frustration, the unrelenting anxiety and the everlasting loneliness of a disease that you do not understand.
Imagine how this would affect your wellbeing, your day to day activities, your relationship with your spouse, your children, your family, and friends. Imagine the effort it takes to try and live a happy, normal life, to succeed in your daily endeavour and to maintain healthy relationship, all the while desperately trying to keep your private battles within yourself and taking whatever measures necessary to ensure that nobody knows what you are dealing with.
There is another patient who does not want her name to be revealed here, but she is willing to share her stories. She is currently doing her Masters in Psychology at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). At a first meeting with her, she looked like a normal person who did not hold any sort of psychiatric disorder, yet when she started to talk during the interview, her voice was shaking and we could tell by her saying that she was afraid to talk about herself.
She said, “My depression started in 2014 and I am still having the impact and minor depression until today. Therefore, I have to know how to control my feelings and consume the right medications from the doctor.”
When her conditions became worst in January 2016, she started to meet a psychiatrist and had stopped working for almost six months to seek for treatment. There was at one point that she felt like she did not want to meet anyone and felt like her existence was not important in this world anymore. She wanted to commit suicide but unfortunately, it did not work when she realised that what she was doing was against Allah’s will.
She proceeded to seek an alternative medical treatment besides going to see the doctor, one of it was having an ice bath and she found it torturous and nonsense because the fees for that handling was extremely high, but the outcome was not significant, and it was nothing to do with treatment of her depression.
She pointed out during the interview saying, “I just needed people to understand me and do not repeat the same pieces of advice by asking me to keep strong. I know people always wanted to help me, but I do not like it when people keep forcing me to do something that I do not want to do.”
A key component of most treatments for depression is medication. For some patients, one type of medicine will work for an extended period of time without problems. For others, medicines can become less effective, or side effects may become too intrusive.
Dr. Norhayati Nordin said depression and anxiety were treatable if detected early. People with depressions should not be stigmatised as some people experience it at some phase of their lives, adding that this is what is keeping people from seeking help. This illness can be cured if a person comes forward and is open to solutions such as counselling.
“My real bits of advice as a psychiatrist to people is to talk to each other, not talk to your phone,” Dr. Norhayati said. ***