Coming Out of the Dark

It was a quiet and most receptive group of 200-odd people who sat virtually immobile for the first five minutes or so as she told her story.

On some minds was the obvious question: “Does she really suffer from depression? How is that possible?”
On the minds of others, the shock: “She got guts to get up there!”

But speaking about her depression was something Margaret Gill had thought about doing for a while, so she pressed on and for about ten minutes she let everyone know that it was a condition that could be controlled, if not defeated.

When the associate lecturer walked into the Sherbourne Conference Centre Tuesday night, locks partly swept up, partly swinging midway down her back and wearing a casual flowered dress, she thought like anyone else she would listen to the panelists talk about depression and maybe throw a question or two at the end.

Then chief consultant at the Psychiatric Hospital and her personal psychiatrist Dr Ermine Belle walked up to her and whispered these few words: ‘Could you address the gathering?’

When she rose, a bit nervous, to the microphone, nothing could stop her jovial personality form shining through.
And with a characteristic, gentle smile, she starter her story.

Her first crisis, which is what she calls her episodes of depression in the 1986 after she spearheaded a very successful regional meeting under the United Nations.

“I think it is important that you know I went into depression over success,” she said, forearms propped on the wooden podium.

Brow creased and head slightly bent, she likened her depression to a kind of pain; not one that can be pin pointed on some specific part of the body, but a spiritual pain fed by a tremendous loneliness.

“The pain is also associated with a sense of hopelessness – that you cannot conceive of another day that will not feel like how this bad feeling is now,” she said, as some heads in the audience bobbed in agreement.

“I remember a Christmas morning sitting at my parents’ table, all my family gathered around me and I knew that they wanted to do something for me, that they wanted to take it away.

“I also knew that absolutely nobody could take it away. It was just something on the inside that no one could get inside of me and take away,” Gill reflected.

The lecturer in the Humanities Department at the University of the West Indies noted though that there was also a fear associated with depression – the fear of social stigma.
‘Exposed’
“I recognize that in coming here and speaking I have actually exposed myself to you. I hope it is a good thing because I don’t want anybody to feel the way I have. If I could say something that would prevent that I would do whatever is in my power,” said Gill who suffers with a form of depression called bipolar disorder.

Bipolar disorder is characterized by altering patterns of emotional highs and lows and the intensity of the signs and symptoms may vary. There is no cure.
But it is a condition, she said, she continues to triumph over because of her Christian background and family support.
She was brought up in a Pentecostal faith, through which she said she had developed an understanding of what God meant in her life.

“My faith has given me that strength,” she said, adding, “I have had very, very good family support from the beginning. I think in having this condition I could not want for a better family to fall into and I also have a group of women who are very close friends who all know. They all know what crises mean for me. That is what I call my episodes. I haven’t had one in a couple of years and it is because I am on medication,” she said.

He greatest fear when diagnosed with depression was going insane, but, she said, Dr Belle took care of that.
“I said to her, ‘you know what really freaks me out? The thought that I could go mad. I would hate to go mad’, and Dr Belle looked at me and said, ‘Margaret whatever makes you think that you never went mad?’

“It was the most liberating thing that any doctor had ever said to me since e1986 because you know what I realized? My worst possible fear I did go through it, according to Dr Belle, and look at me now,” she said to laughs and loud applause.

And now with a new lease on life, she has wisdom about depression that she can share with others.

“One of the things that came to me during a crisis was that really depression is faith in a negative future – in other words you have faith that tomorrow is going to be bad. If you are going to go through the trouble to have faith, it makes sense to have faith in a positive future.

“Recognize that it may happen again but what the hell. I lived and I was able to do what I wanted. I continue to do what I want to, I have a very full life. I enjoy teaching tremendously and if I have another episode I know when it is coming, and I know that I will live through it.”