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Welcome back. Today's National Depression Screening Day. Let's get started. With today being National Depression Screening Day, I look at it as one of those tough days because first off, in order to even go the step to get screened, you have to think that there's something going on with you.
So that requires self-assessment and a lot of times Americans are not interested in that type of assessment because of the negative stigma that's placed on any type of mental illness. As a matter of fact, I was just reading this new nationwide poll that was conducted by a company called GeneSight, Mental Health Monitor. And they found that 83% of people with depression said that life would be easier if people could understand their depression. And honestly, I think that's with anything.
If you can understand where my pain is, where my heartache is, where all this stuff is coming from, it feels so much better because people understand you and they're not so quick to judge you. But most people who haven't experienced any type of depression or anything like that, they don't understand the challenges and they definitely don't understand the treatment. And that's a big problem because depression is one of the most misunderstood disorders as well as misinterpreted because a lot of times people with depression are identified as being lazy or dramatic. And that is just so not fair.
And that really bothers me for the simple fact that I went through a depression myself and I knew something was wrong with me. I knew something wasn't right. I knew that I had to get some type of help, but I didn't know how. But luckily my husband saw it in me as well.
And he went and sought out the help for me and I was able to get through it. I did it without medication. It wasn't necessary. However, if medication was needed, I would have gladly done it because the feelings were just as terrible.
It's something I would not wish on my worst enemy. But if your depression is at a point where you need medication, I actually have a girlfriend of mine who actually needed to take medication. And for a while I think she was embarrassed by it. But the better she began to feel after taking the medication, then it became okay.
And actually she was okay with speaking about it and talking to other people about it and letting them know as well that it's okay if you happen to need to take medication for your depression. What the important part is getting better. To put away some typical lesson-formed ideas about what depression is and isn't, depression is a serious but treatable medical condition that affects how a person feels, thinks and acts. And although it's typically characterized by feelings of sadness, depression symptoms may appear as irritability as well as apathy.
So you can't always just go look for the sad person and say, oh, you must be depressed. There are other things, other ways that depression can manifest in a person's life that it doesn't look like your typical form of depression. So when you're dealing with your family members and friends, don't be afraid to just kind of analyze what you're seeing in the moment. And is that what that person normally does?
Is that how they normally present themselves? And if you're starting to notice a trend or a change in their behavior, then by all means, don't be afraid to bring up the fact that maybe they need to get screened for depression. And there are websites out there that you can go and take little depression screening question and errors just to kind of get the ball rolling, just to kind of see like maybe by chance you are depressed. And if so, then let's see if we can't work together to come to some type of conclusion or let's find a doctor that can now better assess what we're finding, what we're thinking, what we're seeing.
And then that way you have a better chance at getting that person some help versus letting them just kind of spiral out of control. And then the situation get worse. And we all know that the once common idea of having people go to a place for help when they're mentally ill, that type of thing, that those places have dwindled. And now we find that the jail system is where most of our people who are mentally ill, be at depression or whatever, that's the place where they're being housed now because nobody's understanding the symptoms that they're seeing, nobody's taking the time out to actually figure out what's going on.
Instead, they get arrested and they sit in a jail and that's not getting them better. So as a society, as a community, we have to do better about serving our family members and friends when it comes to checking on them and making sure they're okay because as the saying goes, it's okay not to be okay. However, we still have to do something about it because there is a way to get better. The poll that I read also mentioned that people with depression, they basically want their loved ones to offer more empathetic support so that they don't feel so alone.
And if people could do that, that would be so awesome. However, three out of four people living with depression say that they desire support from their loved ones, including them just listening or saying supportive things like, how can I help or do you want to talk about it? It's that simple. However, the things that they're more likely to hear are statements like, you know, you need to get over it, snap out of it.
You know, we all get sad sometimes. And that's basically just taking that feeling that they have and belittling it and turning it into something way smaller and simpler because then they begin to wonder, well, what's wrong with me? Why is it that I can't seem to shake this because that's what everybody's saying I should be able to do. I should be able to shake this and I should be able to get better on my own just off of my own willpower and saying, okay, I'm over.
I'm done with this. I'm better now. And it's not always like that. If it's a chemical imbalance in your body, just having a mindset to say I'm going to be better, feel better, do better.
That does nothing for you. Nothing at all. So basically, bottom line is we need to work together to continue to reduce the impact of stigma of mental illness, mental illnesses, such as depression because people may feel embarrassed and unwilling to seek out treatment as long as on a whole we have this attitude where, you know what, just to shake it off. We got to do better guys.
We got to do better. Not for society on a whole, at least small scale for your family and friends. Bottom line guys, when it comes to depression and our family members and friends, we have to do better. We have to show up for them.
We have to be able and unafraid to have those tough conversations. Just ask the question, hey, how are you? How are you doing? How are you feeling?
Do you want to talk about it? It's as simple as that just to get the conversation going. And maybe they will admit to you that, you know what, I haven't quite been feeling myself lately. I haven't quite been able to sleep at night or when my relative passed away that really hit me really hard and I've been having trouble bouncing back from that and get the conversations going from there and then possibly ease into the idea that, well, you know what, how about if we do a depression screening because depression is treatable.
I would so much feel better if you felt better. Let's take this walk together. That's all it takes, guys. That's all it takes.
So take that with you as you go into the weekend, get yourself screened and take a friend and have them screened as well. The particular company that had this nationwide poll that I was talking about is called Gene Sight and they have a test that is genetic. It goes off of genetics and we do know that in some cases, mental illness can be passed down from generation to generation and it may be that you're more susceptible to being depressed than another person and that's okay as long as you know and you know how to proceed from there. So do me a favor.
Check me out on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube at heavet. That's at H-Y-E-V-E-T-E-T-E or just look for the hashtag tweet trends. And once again, don't be afraid to get yourself screened for depression. It's not something to hurt you.
It can only help.