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Depressed workers should be helped

Monday, January 22 at 1:22 AM

By David M. Perkins

I have learned that I am but one in a staggering statistic. Depression is an epidemic in the United States. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention estimates that 19 million people a year suffer from depression, more people than suffer from cancer, HIV/AIDS and coronary heart disease combined. There are no statistics on how many people go undiagnosed and untreated — except perhaps guessed at in the almost 80 suicides committed each day in the United States.

Depression is painful and debilitating, both mentally and physically. Unlike other illnesses, depression carries a stigma. Many don’t understand it as a bona fide disease — and it is all too often an embarrassment for those who suffer with it, who feel an inappropriate shame and see it as a failure or a weakness in their makeup rather than as the treatable illness it is.

Beginning a little more than two years ago, I found myself dangling from the thread of no more choices — or so it seemed at the time. In a short span, I had started a stressful new job in Washington, D.C., and soon thereafter received the news that my younger brother in Colorado was dying of cancer and that my son was facing major surgery. My brother died within three months of his diagnosis — which hit me harder than I ever could have imagined — and I was fired from that new job the day after I returned from his funeral. There were too many strains in my life at that time to concentrate on doing the work I had done so successfully during the previous 30 years of my career.

My son went on to have a successful surgery, but the anxiety of having your only child undergo a lengthy, complicated operation also took its toll. I was out of work for six months when I realized my savings obviously would not last long at the cost of living in the Washington area; and I was forced to put my life into storage and I returned home to Colorado to stay with friends and family while I looked for work.

For a man of my age, in spite of my experience, there was little to find in my field. Finally, after more than a year of full-time desperate searching, I took the only position offered me, in another state and at less than half the salary I was making before. By the time I arrived, however, it was too late — the stresses of the past year, and the black hole of my anxiety and depression pulled me in and I spiraled into despair.

I found myself in the hospital and once again out of work. I’ve learned since then that firing someone with depression is probably illegal, but few of us who find ourselves in this position have the wherewithal — emotionally, physically or financially — to seek redress.

My wonderful friends and family welcomed me once more, and with their help, and the proper treatment and medication, I am healing and suspecting that there may be hope somewhere around any corner now, even though I am still unemployed. My story isn’t one asking for pity — it is asking only for understanding for those other millions of people every year who find themselves felled by depression and further harmed by discrimination. (No one would fire a diabetic needing a daily dose of insulin. No one would ask someone to run with a broken leg.)

I am hoping that I will find work again soon and get my life back. But more than that — now that I find myself capable of writing again — I hope that this will speak on behalf of those suffering from depression, who simply can’t express to anyone the misery that torments them.

Most of all, I hope this will speak to employers, so that they will familiarize themselves with the symptoms of depression in their work force and, instead of showing a suffering employee the door, will instead show them some compassion and perhaps even help them get the saving rehabilitation they desperately need.

David M. Perkins is a resident of Arvada.

READER COMMENTS

I guess in this day and age of corporate profit at all costs that profits are more important than compassion for the worker. Sad comment on our society. Good luck to the writer. I hope his life turns around soon!

Posted by Michael on January 24, 2007 12:05 PM