Ladies, gentlemen and chairperson, please indulge me for a moment and imagine this scenario. Everybody is looking at you intently. You look down at your shaking hands, which hold the palm cards that you have recited a billion times before in front of the mirror. As your hands and legs begin to tremble, you contemplate your options: one, you can straighten up and get through the speech or two, you can drop the cards and flee. Ladies and gentlemen, each and every day we are faced with manageable obstacles or for better words, invisible boundaries. However, each and every day, individuals face invisible boundaries presented in complex situations. I ask you this ladies and gentlemen: did you ever think invisible boundaries would be found in domestic
…show more content…
Often, the misconception that depression is easy to overcome is made, but did you know that depression continues to present its victims with invisible barriers every single day? Ladies and gentlemen, these invisible barriers are not the glaringly obvious obstacles you would begin to think, but rather mere everyday tasks, such as showering. Everyone of us will experience some type of sadness in our lifetime, and whilst this may stay with us for a few days, we do not have depression. Depression is not your monthly cry; depression is endless nights and days, weeks, months and years of feeling drained, dejected and despondent. Consequently, depression is not a walk in the park; it is ‘a serious condition that affects your physical and mental health.’ 29-year-old mother of two describes her reason for staying alive is ‘because my two gorgeous boys need me.’ For those of you who are parents, think about that. Every day she faces the decision: should I kill myself? Every day she struggles with the temptation to live her fantasies ‘about how and where [she] would [commit] suicide.’ Whilst the mother’s high dosages of medication only take the edge off, she describes ‘everyday [as] a huge struggle for [herself] to even get out of bed, but [she does it] for [her] youngest son [because] he needs [her]’. Even if you are not a parent, ask yourself, is society doing everything it can to merely help reduce these invisible boundaries? This mother did not have anyone. She describes her mother as ‘a gambler [who] had never cared about anyone but herself’ and her father ‘an abusive alcoholic.’ So ask yourself this: are you, exhibiting empathy, compassion and perhaps most crucially, simply being there when invisible boundaries of depression do not allow its suffers the quality of
Often, the misconception that depression is easy to overcome is made, but did you know that depression continues to present its victims with invisible barriers every single day? Ladies and gentlemen, these invisible barriers are not the glaringly obvious obstacles you would begin to think, but rather mere everyday tasks, such as showering. Everyone of us will experience some type of sadness in our lifetime, and whilst this may stay with us for a few days, we do not have depression. Depression is not your monthly cry; depression is endless nights and days, weeks, months and years of feeling drained, dejected and despondent. Consequently, depression is not a walk in the park; it is ‘a serious condition that affects your physical and mental health.’ 29-year-old mother of two describes her reason for staying alive is ‘because my two gorgeous boys need me.’ For those of you who are parents, think about that. Every day she faces the decision: should I kill myself? Every day she struggles with the temptation to live her fantasies ‘about how and where [she] would [commit] suicide.’ Whilst the mother’s high dosages of medication only take the edge off, she describes ‘everyday [as] a huge struggle for [herself] to even get out of bed, but [she does it] for [her] youngest son [because] he needs [her]’. Even if you are not a parent, ask yourself, is society doing everything it can to merely help reduce these invisible boundaries? This mother did not have anyone. She describes her mother as ‘a gambler [who] had never cared about anyone but herself’ and her father ‘an abusive alcoholic.’ So ask yourself this: are you, exhibiting empathy, compassion and perhaps most crucially, simply being there when invisible boundaries of depression do not allow its suffers the quality of