A FRIEND confessed to me over a cup of Chinese tea that his bouts of depression were returning with a vengeance. I was alarmed. It did sound like a cry for help, or for attention at least.

My 51-year-old friend should know. He has just recovered somewhat from an acute attack not long ago, after some medical treatment. But he did not like all those drugs that were prescribed, and now his depression has come back to haunt his nights and days.

He hinted darkly at some childhood experience as the root cause of his inner

turmoil. I suggested psychiatric treatment. Perhaps some Malaysians doctors steeped in Western theory of psychiatry can help ease his sufferings, though I have not the faintest idea where such a doctor can be found. He did mumble something about hypnotism as a therapeutic tool.

We even speculated about the possibility of consulting a spiritual medium, a bomoh, or a witch doctor of good repute. I personally do not believe in their white magic, but I have seen too many unexplainable things done through the agency of the occult to prevent others from believing in it.

Whether demons and unclean spirits exist or not is not the issue here. Sigmund Freud's theory suggests that they are powerful universal symbols with which we humans try to make sense of our enigmatic existence. It would appear that our hard and soft sciences alone cannot explain fully this miraculous mystery that is man, both as an animal organism and as a spiritual entity.

Fact of life

There might be the odd souls who have been born happy, and burst out laughing the moment they leave their mother's womb. Certainly, I have met people who have been endowed with such cheerful dispositions that no personal disaster can deter their determination to enjoy life to the fullest.

Generally though, who can escape from the clutch of the occasional attacks of depression? Most people live with them as a fact of life, and try their best to deal with them as best they can. If depression is not dealt with or treated properly, the long term cumulative effects may reach a manic or chronic level, and make life a living hell!

By now, we should be able to recognise all the symptoms. The victim (I am trying to avoid using the term 'patient') loses his appetite. In fact, overwhelmed by doom and gloom, he is paralysed from all activities by the sense of helplessness and hopelessness weighing like the Himalayas on his inner world. His self-esteem disintegrates. He cannot sleep well, because his mind churns feverishly in vicious circles, consuming itself like a snake swallowing its own tail and cherishing the taste of its own flesh.

When he finally dozes off with the help of sleeping pills or generous helpings of alcohol, he wakes up with a fitful start. Then, he can scarcely summon the energy to get out of bed, because nothing is worth doing at all.

Finally, the futility of life washes over him. Inevitably, like the biblical 'thief in the night', the thought of suicide offers its seductive powers. In the dark crevice of his skull, he plays the scene of killing himself over and over. He may even imagine various methods of ending his life, to see which one will be the most fitting end in a symbolic sense. (I have noticed that some heart-broken young ladies seem to favour jumping down great heights in a crimson dress.) Naturally this is the most dangerous stage of chronic depression, because the sufferer can indeed do great violence to himself, or to others, or both.

There is another less understood and less studied route down which a depressed person can travel. Weakened by the lack of food and sleep deprivation, the victim may lose his sense of what we normally regard as 'reality'. He withdraws to his little world, inhabited by indistinct voices and strange shadows that nobody else can hear or see. Sometimes, he will mumble unintelligibly with some invisible presence. In some cases, the hallucinating person grows incredibly frightened at the setting of the sun, preferring to cower, tremble, and whimper in the darkest corner of the house until daybreak. After a while, he will go completely insane, or kill himself in some incomprehensible manner anyway.

To each his own

Generally, long before the final cataclysmic breakdown, when Eros the God of Life is still warring against Thanatos the God of Death, the victim of depression will send out alarm signals, plaintive cries for help in various forms. This is where strong and sympathetic support from family members and the community at large can make a difference between life and death eventually.

Unfortunately, our Malaysian way of life is very much urbanised nowadays. The traditional network of extended family and friends that used to exist in small towns and villages has now pretty much disappeared and disintegrated. Nowadays, city residents live in the alienated hectic hostile environment of a sprawling metropolis. At the end of a stressful dog-eat-dog day, nobody has the energy, the mood or the time for anybody else. People have become truncated from their common humanity. They become uncaring, even to their immediate family members. Depressed people are avoided as either an inconvenience, or worse still, as a nuisance to one's pursuit of happiness.

In the end, what really causes depression is beyond my ken. I read somewhere that it is linked to one's genes, and so is a hereditary curse. A professional also told me that it is caused partly at least by the absence of certain biochemical substance in the body, and so exercise and sunshine can help produce this therapeutic stuff.

Whatever its cause, we know there are certain triggers that can push a long-suffering depressed person over the edge. It could be anything that frustrates the will of the person to life and happiness. More often than not, it takes the form of a personal disaster, such as the death of a loved one, a divorce, loss of a long held job, ill health, and even the discovery of a terminal disease.

I have also been told that women in general are more susceptible to depression than men for various reasons. Rape victims are among the worst sufferers. Others include those who have just given birth, or have suffered from a miscarriage.

Clinical definition of manic and chronic depression aside, I am more interested in this phenomena of general depression as a human condition.

Depression is a measure of our personal happiness. Frankly, I am not convinced that human beings have been created to be constantly happy. I am more attracted to the Buddhist idea that this life as we live it is meant to be unhappy, and that pain and bitterness are the products of our seven emotions and six desires. The more we are obsessed with satisfaction of our desires, the deeper we will sink into the vicious cycle of greed, resentment and confusion. There is a lot to be said of the emptying of desires, and living a simple life.

Seek professional help

Then again, if pain and bitterness are the true state of life, and if human existence has been condemned to be tragic, one of the ways of resolving the contradictions of life may just be through art. In re-enacting the tragic nature of our Being through artistic creation, the artists and his audience go through a catharsis, a purging of the soul, a cleansing of the suffering spirit. That is perhaps why some think that in literature and other forms of art, a tragedy is always greater than a comedy. That is certainly the case with Shakespeare.

Some artists must have lived an incredibly depressed life. Nietzsche was emotionally unstable for a greater part of his life. In his last ten years, he was wandering in and out of his sanity. Van Gogh's self-tormenting has now become legendary, and he did live out the last years of his life in an asylum for the mentally ill. Eventually he shot himself to death.

According to one school of thought in the field of aesthetics, there would be no great works of art if there has been no great sufferings. Having said that, it does not mean that if you are depressed constantly, you have great artistic potential in you.

Finally, I have to warn readers that I am no professional in clinical treatment of depression. My views above ought to be taken with a giant block of salt. If you need help, go to a professional.

The blind cannot lead the blind. I have been seriously depressed myself by the bad politics that exists in our country. Unfortunately, the cure for that kind of depression is not yet available in Malaysia. That is the tragedy for me.