Today I had a nice chat with my 89 year old father in law.
I asked him how much the world had changed since when he was a boy and whether he imagined the world would ever be the way it is now.
He told me of a time when having cancer was automatically a death sentence. He told me of a time when antibiotics didn't exist and people died from bacterial infections. He told me how the first antibiotic was seen by everyone as nothing less than a "miracle".
He told me of his mother who was severely crippled by epilepsy. No treatment back then so she had to spend most of her time in bed and the children had to cook, clean and look after her.
He told me of the time when he had been to the cinema, and seen a radar in a plane. He remembers thinking to himself "what a lot of nonsense! As if you would ever be able to have such equipment without any wire, in a plane of all places!"
He told me of a time when to fly to New-York you had to go to London and fly to Scotland to pick up more passengers. Then from Scotland you flew to Iceland and had a meal! Then from Iceland you flew to New Found Land and add another meal. Then you went from there to New-York.
Listening to him gave me hope and faith in the future. One day I believe depression will be easy to treat and the symptoms will only last for a few hours.
Listening to him made me realize also how lucky we are to have medication, CBT, sleeping tablets etc etc.... when my father in law was a boy, if you had depression your life was pretty much over. No talks of having a relaxing evening listening to music or grabbing a couple of hours sleep thanks to sleeping tablets.
Depression is a horrible illness but even when I am at my lowest, I want to remember that antidepressants have given us a life we would never have in a different era. A few weeks of intense suffering is a lot better than months, years of intense suffering without any help...
Instead of thinking that getting depression is so unfair, I want to try to remember that antidepressants and CBT are giving me a life I would never have been able to have a few decades ago.
