Walking a Black Dog

A couple of things happened in the last couple of days that have me thinking about my depression, and mental illness/health in general.

First of all, I read a blog called Walking The Black Dog that covers what it's like to live with depression. The author refers to Winston Churchill's referring to his own depression as a "a black dog." The blogger's post today was about the estimate that over a quarter million of our current military are suffering from depression or PTSD. Another quarter million suffer from Traumatic Brain Injury. That's over half a million people. And we're not prepared for them to come home. We can't handle the mental illness that's in our communities now -- how do we handle 620,000 soldiers, sailors, and marines?

The second thing that happened was that in my Bible Study class last night, we talked about the Geresene Demoniac in Mark (Mark 5:1-20. You may remember it as the one where the demon says "I am legion" and Jesus drives the demons into the pigs). That brought up a discussion of mental illness -- how it feels to be a family member of a mentally ill person, how the community feels about it, how the person him/herself feels. I didn't claim my depression during the session, but I did in an informal conversation after the class.

We don't know how to handle mental illness any better than the people of the ancient Middle East did. We're all OK with it as long as you keep it from being messy. You can be depressed, as long as you take something for it, and don't let it get all over my stuff. But don't have schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, or something else that's not well treated with drugs.

I know this isn't anything new I'm saying. I just needed to write it down. Maybe I can write about it in a smarter, more impressive way next time.