Solomon’s memoir, Anatomy of Melancholy, was an amazing and clear view and portrayal of the disease, depression. Solomon, gifted as a great writer before his depression, was able to articulate the debilitating symptoms of depression on the mind, the body, and I would go as far as to say, the soul. He covers his journey of depression while sharing very intimate details of his thoughts, other’s stories, treatment, and statistics of the illness. As someone who is studying psychology, my understanding of his experiences have shifted after looking at it through the 4 d’s, the lens of a therapist, and as a unbiased reader.
The four D’s described by the DSM-5 are all present in Andrew Solomon’s experience of depression and the story he tells in his memoir (1998). The big ones that I recognized right away was distress and dangerousness. Those stand out very evidently and when examining Solomon’s personal encounter with the mental illness, you can see the dysfunction and deviance play its part. Solomon explains his distress very clearly throughout the whole story. He is seen being very upset, confused, and embarrassed by the fact that he could not complete simple mundane tasks such as showering or eating food.
This proves as distress because it was interfering with Solomon’s life and he was aware of that. He knows the significant and negative impact that depression is having on his life, and he wants it to end. Solomon expresses signs of dangerousness several times, but one that stuck out as very dangerous was his bout of having unsafe sex with the hopes that he will test positive for the HIV virus and eventual die. He is engaging in careless behaviors in hopes that he will die, which is in every sense of the word dangerous for him, and others he could possibly be affecting on his route to attract the disease.
In the case of dysfunction and deviance, I believe they go hand-inhand in his story as the cases of his deviance can also be argued as dysfunction. Dysfunction is abnormal behavior that disrupts daily life. Deviance is differing from cultural/societal norms. I believe that when Solomon is experiencing what he considers “vegetative depression”, he is experiencing both of these symptoms. He is deviating from the norm of eating, drinking, keeping good hygiene, and other life essentials that people take part in every day.
It is unnormal to be immobile and have a fear of eating, drinking, or showering. This type of depression is also dysfunctional because he is unable to keep up with the tasks needed to stay alive and healthy. It’s is hard to pinpoint exactly what exactly was the cause of the depression in Solomon. He explains that there were many traumatic experiences in his life prior to the depression starting but it appeared after all of the stress from those events had diminished. I believe the risk factor, or cause of the depression was the lack of action in his life coupled with time and solace.
He had lost his mother, his girlfriend, and had finished a book, leaving him without anything to fill his time with. This could have set off a reaction within his body and life that resulted in depression. The human brain is very unique and fragile and often misunderstood, so the stress, even unknowingly, could have set off something within his brain, even if he does not think what he went through was traumatic. At first he did what he thought he could to combat the feelings he was experiencing, but he decided to decline medicine against the doctor’s advice in the beginning of the depressive episode.
Once he decided the depression had gotten so bad he couldn’t continue without medication, then he created another maintenance factor when he began to rely solely on the medicine and use it as an escape instead of a crutch. He would take so many xanax to make himself numb and to put himself to sleep instead of using it to help him relieve the anxiety and to continue his daily life. Personally, I have never experienced or heard of cases as bad as his and other that he mentioned within his memoir, therefore I feel right now in my education, I would be very unqualified to treat him.
I personally would’ve focused on his maintenance factor or abusing and misusing his medications. In my knowledge of anti-depressants and Xanax, those medications are use to help and support patients who struggle. Many people, such as Solomon, use them hoping for it to be a miracle drug and fix the problems they are experiencing. Unlike Tylenol, which is fast acting and independent, you have to work with the drugs to notice a positive result. I would try my best to give him coping techniques and to encourage him to push himself to complete small tasks everyday.
I believe if he was to focus on helping himself instead of just waiting for the medicine to fix it, he will be able to try to come to terms with leaving his home, eating foods, showering and checking his answering machine. If he were to work with the medicine, the medicine could have a better effect in his treatment. In depression, everything is related, so you can’t just hope one thing changes everything you need to put in work in several areas of the disease to hopefully see it diminish in quality. This piece evoked emotions that most pieces, at least nonfiction, have never brought out.
I typically do not like non-fiction because I tend for it to be boring. This memoir was shocking, upsetting, melancholy, happy, and boring all together. Hearing the severe of a case of depression was shocking to me. I always thought I had known what depression meant and what it entailed but after reading this memoir, I recognize I never knew how serious and debilitating the illness could be. It was awful to hear that people experience this and do so much, such as ECT, to escape the pain it brings them. I have felt some of the pain and sorrow I feel he has gone through at a very minor or mild quality.
The depressive episodes I have experienced either through myself or others, have never resulting in the scary symptoms he had gone through, so I, thankfully, can not relate to Solomon. Reading the memoir, I was shocked when he tried to give himself HIV. I judged him at first, then tried to put myself in his shoes to figure out what he was feeling, then felt really bad that he had gotten to that point in his life. I have more than two questions but one of my main ones is, how does he feel he can help people with depression after going through what he has gone through?
Another question I would ask is, for someone who is going through this, what would your advice be for them? I would love to sit down, talk to him, and understand his thoughts as an insider and now an outsider to the horrible sickness of depression. As someone who has taken the write and open up on this disease that has so much stigma and misunderstandings, I think he is courageous. It was incredibly eye-opening to experience this disease from a first-person point of view and see it through the eyes of someone who has experienced it. I can confidently say my views of this illness have changed after reading Solomon’s Anatomy of Melancholy.
