How Others Perceive Depressive Behavior

- This takes place in the very early 18th Century.
- The character's an English sailor.

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They're probably still calling it "melancholy" and not depression. If you can get your hands on a copy of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, that's the seminal (17th-century) text on melancholy/depression.

There's a couple of good books on early modern suicide (MacDonald & Murphy's Sleepless Souls is specifically on England and Jeffrey Watt edited a collection of essays about Europe more generally) that deal with depression/melancholy at length. I don't have any on hand, will dig through my laptop and see if I have any notes from when I read them last.

Update: you can read Burton online at Project Gutenberg.

All I have in my notes is that at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th c., juries began to return verdicts of "non compos mentis" (not in right mind) as opposed to "felon de se" (crime against self) in suicide trials. Also many the 17th c. herbals (home remedy books) included cures or pills for the "disease" of melancholy.

One (The Sick Man's Rare Jewel, 1674) defines melancholy this way: "The Melancholly is a Delirium joyned with fear, sadness or sorrow without a manifest Cause, and without a Fever... They who have this evil Disease are sad and solitary, very fearful and stubborn, which from certain Phantasms to themselves, which neither are nor can be; they imagine many false things, they fear things not be eared, they sudden and disquet the Mind without cause, they are silent, Morose and suspicious, they have hunger above what is usual, they sigh often, the Respiration is slow and seldom, and so is also the Pulse, they speak absurdly."

AZ_Dawn said:

The setting: an island with no major port, but not unlivable. My viewpoint character sulks in the shade, cursing his former shipmates for abandoning him there instead of dumping him off at the nearest port. Why'd they do it? He probably thinks it's because they just didn't like him (like darn near everyone else he knows). I figure his shipmates had a more specific reason: he either irritated them or creeped them out. Whatever the reason, I suspect it had something to do with his depression.

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If your character is depressive, I doubt he'd curse his former shipmates for leaving him stranded there. It's more likely he'd rationalize it into thinking it's his own fault, and that he somehow fucked up, and blah blah blah. He'd blame himself, not others.

I'd vote for it being almost a misunderstanding, and he didn't defend himself because of his depression. Something else happened, someone else blames it for it and that's why they strand him there, but he just accepted his fate out of shame, without confronting the others, because he thought it was because they were all tired of him / all hated him / or because of some relatively minor thing he did (or something good he tried to do which was misunderstood as bad) or whatever.

we have a family history of severe "melancholia"--manic/depressive behavior --i think today it is called bi-polar disorder. i'm talking shock treatments and asylum stays.

speaking from experience, the self pity stage is the hardest to take for family members. i had a grandmother who had raised her children successfully, had plenty of money, a loving husband, a doting family, a beautiful house, good health--all of this through the depression and world war 2, when other people had nothing or lost loved ones. i remember her best sitting in a rocker, staring into space and crying because she knew she was going to hell.

she would stop talking to me for months at a time. it hurt because i was so young that i figured i must have done something terrible. i didn't see that she was not talking to everyone, not just me.

i have a bent towards depression myself--go figure. so i keep busy when i feel the blues coming on. having your character sitting silently would be a good way to portray depression. let the other characters be irritated. it is a maddening thing to see someone immersed in self pity for no real reason. especially when everyone else is busy surviving!

the manic side causes the the victim to obsess about other people. they must do something to avert some tragedy about to befall a loved one--like going to church seven times a week to pray for that person. or buying up all the satues of st. dymphna in the state. yes--there really is a saint dymphna and yes, grandma had a shitload of her satues.

except for the tragedy of the whole damned thing, the depressive side is almost comically self centered:' i am doomed, everyone is against me, nothing i do will ever be right so i will just sit here and wait to die and go to hell.' it is so hard to be understanding, it just shreds your spirit to deal with someone like that.--s6

shakeysix said:

Speaking from experience, the self pity stage is the hardest to take for family members.
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Let the other characters be irritated. it is a maddening thing to see someone immersed in self pity for no real reason. especially when everyone else is busy surviving!
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Except for the tragedy of the whole damned thing, the depressive side is almost comically self centered:' I am doomed, everyone is against me, nothing i do will ever be right so i will just sit here and wait to die and go to hell.' it is so hard to be understandin;, it just shreds your spirit to deal with someone like that.--s6

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I had a depressive friend. Now I have a depressive distant acquaintance. The self-pity can be maddening to the point of wanting to smack the depressed person. Not to 'snap them out of it', just for the satisfaction of seeing them finally have something to cry about.
I can totally understand a bunch of sailors, trapped on a ship with this guy, abandoning him on an island. It's nice that they checked to see that there was water first.
edited to add: 'Back away from the crazy' doesn't really apply, because a person with depression can seem perfectly normal at first. Maybe a little 'down', so you foolishly try to 'help'. It's only after a while that you realise that there's nothing you can do. And by then, they think you're a 'friend': ie on-call at all times.

Dawn,

Since you deal with depression, you know what depression looks like. You have your own experience to draw on, which is invaluable.

Think about lifestyles of the early 18th century and medical or psychiatric resources available at the time. You would take depression symptoms as you know it and apply them to your character based on his life.

I don't know if these links will help you:

http://www.emental-health.com/depr_history.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1791832

frimble3 said:

It's only after a while that you realise that there's nothing you can do. And by then, they think you're a 'friend': ie on-call at all times.

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Unless, of course, you wish they'd call you at all. The most frustrating thing is when you can't get a depressed friend to turn to you, or confide in you, or let you help even a little. After a while, you just get worn out watching what you can't fix.

So if your guy's friends dropped him off, it's possible they just couldn't take anymore and figured, hey, it's a nice island, he'll be better off here in the sunshine. Let ol' Sim relax and take it easy: no job, no taxes, and all these free coconuts....

I'd have to agree that 'irritating self-pity' is often how others who don't understand it see it. I've been the irritating self-pitiful one, and it's just awful, all of it (I knew it was irrational, but that was no solution to the problem).

It is really irritating, no doubt. I like the 'well, I don't get to mope... buck up!' reaction to describe how many folks see it. It's no help that the person probably wants to 'buck up' more than anyone! Frustration all around is what I'd emphasize, but absolutely it's frustrating for anyone witnessing it, imho.

I know depression is hard to cope with. I understand that depressed people can't just lift out of it. But that's exactly why people eventually stay away from them. No matter how much you do, it's never good enough.

A couple of actual examples;

Stated problem; No-one ever visits me.

Reaction to visit; They don't understand me / stay too long / didn't call first/ wouldn't have a drink / drank too much / used all my milk for their coffee /were not dressed right / talked about all the wrong things/ are just pretending to care.

Stated problem; I have expertise on fish habitats (or some other subject) but no-one ever asks me for help.

Reaction to request for assistance; How do they expect me to do all this? / don't they know I'm ill? /I have other things to do, you know / they think I have no life / it's a cheek expecting me to just jump in and help / why can't they do it themselves / they don't consider my feelings at all /they never help me when I ask them.

Most help is unrecognised, could have been done better or is wrong in some other way. No-one understands them. No-one appreciates how hard they try. Everyone is inconsiderate.

etc etc ad nauseum.

This is actually damaging behaviour whether a person can help it or not. It can escalate to a point where it's emotional blackmail, bullying and, yes, abuse.

Depression is hard to live with, true, and the depressive has to work within their limits. The problem arises when the depressive doesn't realise that absolutely everyone around them has different feelings, assorted needs and various problems too.

We have to be considerate of others no matter what, or the problems will escalate.

AZ_Dawn said:

The setting: an island with no major port, but not unlivable. My viewpoint character sulks in the shade, cursing his former shipmates for abandoning him there instead of dumping him off at the nearest port. Why'd they do it? He probably thinks it's because they just didn't like him (like darn near everyone else he knows). I figure his shipmates had a more specific reason: he either irritated them or creeped them out. Whatever the reason, I suspect it had something to do with his depression. I think that's a bit of a cop out. People are usually more frustrated with negative people than they feel outright dislike. But, your character seems more dysthymic than depressed.

I tried googling depression stigmas (tough research, considering I'm a depressive myself) and of course, got swamped by a bunch of links that said the same basic things, mostly focusing on the lazy and weak stigma. Surprisingly, I didn't find any back-away-from-the-crazy stigmas like you often see with other mental illnesses. again, you're talking about depression vs. dysthymia. Your character is dysthymic. Not clinically depressed. People often give up trying to interact with or help people who are negative and appear unwilling to take steps to change their negative thinking/behavior. Of course, when someone is depressed or dysthymic, nothing seems like a good idea and everything seems like it won't work. People have a need to protect themselves, not beat their heads against a wall. If nothing seems to work, why on earth would they want to hang around with a person why makes a difficult situation worse by complaining and not taking positive steps. Rather than see the depression as victimizing the sufferer, try thinking about the motivations of others as self preservation. Of course, if you're writing from the POV of your MC, he won't see it that way

How do others perceive depressive behavior. Irritating? Creepy? Something else? Modern views are acceptable, but if it helps:
- This takes place in the very early 18th Century.
- The character's an English sailor.
- He's not into self-mutilation.
- There are no shrinks, surgeons, or anyone else with knowledge of psychology on his old ship. you've got to realize, his dysthymia- low grade, chronic depression is actually not abnormal for his situation, although he probably feels it to a greater degree. He is not clinically depressed, he's dysthymic.

Thanks!

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Look up dysthymia, rather than depression and you'll probably see your character in the description. The willingness of the sailor to participate in the activities of others and be a team player will have more of an effect on how his fellow sailors (coworkers) treat him.

Does he self-medicate, with alcohol or something?

Susan Littlefield said:

Dawn,

Since you deal with depression, you know what depression looks like. You have your own experience to draw on, which is invaluable.

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Yes, but that may be a problem when you're writing a novel about it. I'm heavily re-editing a WIP where my MC is clinically depressed. She's my heroine, so I need her to be likable or else I lose the readers. Well, because at the time I wrote it I was depressed, I portrayed her depression very well. So well my beta readers hated her. Their reactions? "I want to slap her in the face." "I want to strangle her and tell her to grow up." "Why does she behave like that? Why does she sit in her chair whining about nobody liking her when she could just go out and have fun?" "Why is she so prickly with everybody--doesn't she have any friends?"

So now my heroine is no longer depressed. She's just s bit weird. I don't know your novel, so maybe you're doing it the right way. It sounds like your MC has a really good reason to be depressed, so maybe that will make him sympathetic despite the quirks of the illness. But be careful. You want your characters to be likable, first. Then they need to have quirks and stuff. But some conditions may interfere with the likability of the character.

AZ_Dawn said:

Considering most sailors drank heavily back then, who would notice?

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If he got into more than his ration, and ended up so falling-down drunk that he couldn't make his watches, they'd notice. Of course, he'd probably be had up before the mast, and the next thing he'd get his share of would be the cat-o-nine-tails. (Just off the top of my head; I'm no expert.)

Sorry if this has been said before, I have to run in a sec. But depression sometimes manifests as irritability/anger, which can be very hard for others around the sufferer to take.

I would imagine that in the early 18th century, a depressed person would be seen as a malingerer and punished accordingly. Some of the reaction to him would depend on his social class standing.

Prototype729 said:

If your character is depressive, I doubt he'd curse his former shipmates for leaving him stranded there. It's more likely he'd rationalize it into thinking it's his own fault, and that he somehow fucked up, and blah blah blah. He'd blame himself, not others.

I'd vote for it being almost a misunderstanding, and he didn't defend himself because of his depression. Something else happened, someone else blames it for it and that's why they strand him there, but he just accepted his fate out of shame, without confronting the others, because he thought it was because they were all tired of him / all hated him / or because of some relatively minor thing he did (or something good he tried to do which was misunderstood as bad) or whatever.

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This makes sense to me.

Depression typically comes off to others as being lazy and/or selfish, but I'm not sure how it would have manifested in his particular situation. Isn't a ship pretty busy with hard labor? Did he actually not do what needed to be done? It's hard for me (also a depressive) to understand how depression manifests in more physically active and less self-motivated lives - where survival depends on activity, and activity generally mediates depression. Did he shirk responsibilities or was he just irritating? I just can't get a picture of it.

I just had to comment. I picked your post because so many of the others expressed the same thing. I've had bouts of depression all my life. No, I do not take medication unless you count St. John's Wort.

Goldenleaves said:

I know depression is hard to cope with. I understand that depressed people can't just lift out of it. But that's exactly why people eventually stay away from them. No matter how much you do, it's never good enough.

A couple of actual examples;

Stated problem; No-one ever visits me.

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In a state of depression I seldom can identify a problem. It is a feeling that settles in, not a pout, not a blame, not anything, just an overwhelming feeling of sadness and a loss of interest. Staring out the window is activity enough. The last thing I want is a visitor.

Goldenleaves said:

Reaction to visit; They don't understand me / stay too long / didn't call first/ wouldn't have a drink / drank too much / used all my milk for their coffee /were not dressed right / talked about all the wrong things/ are just pretending to care.

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This is a blaming thing. It has nothing to do with depression.

Goldenleaves said:

Stated problem; I have expertise on fish habitats (or some other subject) but no-one ever asks me for help.

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Whine and blame. It has nothing to do with depression.

Goldenleaves said:

Reaction to request for assistance; How do they expect me to do all this? / don't they know I'm ill? /I have other things to do, you know / they think I have no life / it's a cheek expecting me to just jump in and help / why can't they do it themselves / they don't consider my feelings at all /they never help me when I ask them.

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Nothing to do with depression.

Goldenleaves said:

Most help is unrecognised, could have been done better or is wrong in some other way. No-one understands them. No-one appreciates how hard they try. Everyone is inconsiderate.

etc etc ad nauseum.

This is actually damaging behaviour whether a person can help it or not. It can escalate to a point where it's emotional blackmail, bullying and, yes, abuse.

Depression is hard to live with, true, and the depressive has to work within their limits. The problem arises when the depressive doesn't realise that absolutely everyone around them has different feelings, assorted needs and various problems too.

We have to be considerate of others no matter what, or the problems will escalate.

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I know plenty of people like the ones you describe here. Their problem is not depression. Their problem is an inability to take responsibility for themselves. They want sympathy. Mostly they want to thwart us in our efforts to help them. If you play, they will get a payoff, because eventually they will piss you off so badly you'll want to smack them, thereby proving all their whining to be fact. I'd happily put them all on an island together In fact, the thought just perks me right up.

WriteMinded said:

I just had to comment. I picked your post because so many of the others expressed the same thing. I've had bouts of depression all my life. No, I do not take medication unless you count St. John's Wort.
In a state of depression I seldom can identify a problem. It is a feeling that settles in, not a pout, not a blame, not anything, just an overwhelming feeling of sadness and a loss of interest. Staring out the window is activity enough. The last thing I want is a visitor.

This is a blaming thing. It has nothing to do with depression.

Whine and blame. It has nothing to do with depression.

Nothing to do with depression.

I know plenty of people like the ones you describe here. Their problem is not depression. Their problem is an inability to take responsibility for themselves. They want sympathy. Mostly they want to thwart us in our efforts to help them. If you play, they will get a payoff, because eventually they will piss you off so badly you'll want to smack them, thereby proving all their whining to be fact. I'd happily put them all on an island together In fact, the thought just perks me right up.

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You know I have wondered about that. I mean - I've been the antidepressant route a couple of times and when I've been depressed I didn't want to move and I really didn't want to see anyone, in fact I wouldn't see anyone unless it was unavoidable, because I was too bloody miserable.

Yet I know several people who say they suffer from severe depression who seem to be endlessly foisting guilt trips on any and all comers.

I put my foot down and refuse to deal with these people no matter who they are. I can't help them but they could hurt me. Not happening.

So, are you saying that it isn't depressive behaviour they're displaying? It's some other syndrome and it's misdiagnosed?

Goldenleaves said:

So, are you saying that it isn't depressive behaviour they're displaying? It's some other syndrome and it's misdiagnosed?

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I've seen that behavior in a few people with bipolar disorder, but whether it is a result of the disorder or occurs alongside it I can't say. I certainly wouldn't call it depressive behavior.

The best psychological definition of depression I've read is "anger turned inward."

PinkAmy said:

Look up dysthymia, rather than depression and you'll probably see your character in the description. The willingness of the sailor to participate in the activities of others and be a team player will have more of an effect on how his fellow sailors (coworkers) treat him.

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I just looked this up. Am I wrong or would Eeyore (one of my favorite pooh characters) be dysthymic?

Anger turned inwards? Good grief. The worst 'I am a depressive and everyone's wicked for not catering to my every whim' person I know of would never admit she might be even a tiny bit wrong. She's never exhibited any form of manic behaviour that I'm aware of either.

I know others but this one takes the biscuit. I don't see her at all but I understand from others that she hasn't changed a bit.

We've all been led to believe that she's under treatment for depression. Not that I'm going to make it any on my business. I defend myself fiercely against any and all emotional blackmail.