Personal experience: being depressed is worse than having advanced cancer.

Abstract

This short paper addresses the experiences of a recently retired mental health nurse who has suffered from several episodes of depression during her long career and is now experiencing a life-limiting illness. Rather than feeling safe within the embrace of the health profession family, the author feared negative consequences of exposing her mental health difficulties to her colleagues. Comparing the anguish of depression to the knowledge that she will die fairly soon has lead the author to question which experience is worse (for her, depression), thus emphasizing how trivializing depression may be a consequence of professional stigma and organizational neglect, as depression is not always prioritized in UK mental health services. Both of these matters may add layers of shame and fear to the sufferer's experience. The author argues that care workers should not take their criticism of stigma as a matter to be taken for granted but instead should be brave enough to face their own assumptions about who service users are and just what they experience. Stigma has real-life consequences for those with mental health problems, particularly with regard to help-seeking behaviour.