f. “Medication will cure you completely.”
We’d love for this statement to be true! Unfortunately, it isn’t. Mental illnesses like depression can’t just be cured. Additionally, most of the time depressed people need more than medications to help manage their symptoms.
g. “Medication won’t help at all.”
Medication can’t cure depression completely. That definitely doesn’t mean it’s completely useless. Often enough, people with depression need more than medication to help them get better, but medication is a vital part of their recovery. Other treatment methods like getting therapy and even using electroconvulsive therapy, as well as lifestyle changes like getting more sleep and exercising, help people with depression. Combining medication with these treatment methods will make it easier for people with depression to get better.
h. “Talking about it will make it worse, so I should just avoid it.”
Nope! We may be used to treating depression with care and caution, and tiptoeing around the subject. However, by seeing past our stigma and misconceptions about depression and talking about this topic with depressed people around us, we can help initiate conversations about depression. Talking about depression can help people with depression release their self-destructive thoughts and feelings. This can help prevent these thoughts and feelings from becoming too negative. Through talking, we can save people with depression from suicide, or harming other people to let these feelings out.
After all, sometimes people just need someone to talk to about their problems, and we shouldn’t deny them that right.
i. “People with depression can just snap out of it.”
Possibly one of the most common stigmas around depression in Singapore is that treatment is very easy. Simply snap yourself out of it, and you’ll be fine once more!
j. “The best thing I can do for someone with depression is to try cheering them up.”
Often enough, cheering depressed people up can’t really do much. At the most, we can provide with them momentary relief from depression. Medication and therapy are far better (in our opinion) ways of helping someone, and we can help by taking the first steps toward securing these for our loved ones with depression. Often enough, telling them that you support them or just reminding them that you have their backs, especially on days when they struggle to get out of bed in the morning, is one of the best ways we can help.
Source (Picture):
http://time.com/4687244/ketamine-club-drug-depression/
Source (Text):
Breaking Through The Stigma on Mental Illness 