Depression--The Unseen Deadly Illness

Long depression might cause someone to commit suicide

Life is hard. That’s what most people say about life—and, sadly, it’s true. Everyday we face pressure from our surrounding—family, friends, school, work, and other things. For some people, life is too hard that they fall into a deep and long depression that destroys their lives. If they are lucky, the may survive the dark times, but if they are not, it might end with suicide.

Life has never been easy to a friend of mine, Luke (26). Luke is gay—and he was born from a very religious family. Since elementary school, he was often bullied by his peers for being feminine and by the age of 13 he realized that he romantically and sexually attracted to same-sex.

Although he realized the risk he would face if he come out to his family, Luke decided to tell his parent about his sexuality when he was 19.

“I want my parent to know me, to know the truth about their son and accept me for who I am. My dad was furious when I told him and my mom couldn’t stop crying. They said that I should go to the doctor and cure this ‘illness’.”

Not long after this, Luke decided to move out from his house and didn’t speak with his mom for 4 months and another 3 months with his father.

But it wasn’t the only problem that he had to face. When he was 22, rumor about his sexuality began to spread in his workplace and some of his colleague became hostile towards him and eventually he was ‘politely asked’ to resign from the job. This happen shortly after he was dumped by his boyfriend whom he dated for 2 years.

This series of unfortunate events made Luke fell in to deep depression.

“I couldn’t stop crying, especially due to the lost of my boyfriend. I could handle about losing my job, but losing the person that I love and I thought love me is incredibly painful. I felt so unloved and unworthy. And I don’t know what to do, I couldn’t tell my parents and I only have few friend who know that I am gay.”

Although he found another job, thanks to his friend, Luke couldn’t get over his heartbreak and began to consume sleeping pills so that he didn’t need to spend another night crying over his ex-boyfriend and became addicted to it. At this point he even thought of ending his life.

“I felt I have no point for living. I am the black sheep in my family and the love of my life left me. I have no use to anyone. I didn’t think someone would cry in my funeral… One night, I had a thought of taking a big amount of sleeping pills but that before I could do it I got a call from my mother and we talk for about half an hour—normal conversation, and after she hanged up, I cried myself to sleep.”

Luke began counseling session with a psychologist. He was advised to keep himself busy and try to open his heart to another person. After six months of counseling, Luke started to feel better about life and decided to slowly move on with his life. Now, Luke finally overcome his addiction to sleeping pills and although he has not yet began a relationship after his break up years ago, he keep himself busy by become active in a theatre community and campaigning about HIV awareness in LGBT community in Jakarta.

Luke is lucky. But not all people could survive this situation. A relative of a friend of mine also experienced a similar circumstance as Luke and despite many efforts, he couldn’t overcome his depression and hanged himself in June 2017.

The suicide rate in Indonesia may have decreased than a decade ago. A report from FKUI showed that in 2016 there is only 840 cases of suicide compare to 30.000 cases in 2005, however this is only from reported cases as most people find suicide is shameful. Report also show that male tend to commit suicide compare to female because the person feel ashamed to talk about their problems so they keep quiet instead of seeking help and as the result, if they couldn’t overcome their depression, they committed suicide.