Connect Episode 31; Unraveling the Mystery of Depression: A Faith-Based Perspective

Good afternoon our viewers and our listeners.

We are so happy to be with you once again today.

This is the day that the Lord has made for us to rejoice and to be glad in it.

And, wow, it's another episode on Connect where we integrate the word of God with normal life issues.

And today, on Matters mental health, we will be talking about depression.

We will be informing ourselves and our viewers and our listeners about depression and quite a lot.

The topic is very broad, but with me today we have Linus or Yugi once again bringing this topic to us and just to remind our viewers today that in the book of our first Peter, chapter 5 and 7, it says give all your worries to God, for he cares about you.

1 Peter 5 · chapter mention

So, even as we talk about depression, the causes and everything about depression, it's also good for us to know, as Christians, as believers who pray, who have faith in the word of God, that we give our God all our burdens and everything.

But again, we need to be informed about what is happening in the world in terms of depression.

So, linus or Yugi, thank you so much once again for being here with us, just to bring issues to do with mental illnesses to the perspective where we are talking as Christians, as believers, and we want to know what is it all about?

Kari Boussana.

Thank you very much.

Pleasure being here.

So depression and depression.

And the time is really changing because on the street I get to hear people saying it's no longer about I'm stressed, but I'm depressed.

So can you maybe tell us all about what depression is all about?

Yeah, first of all, I'd like to start by saying that depression is probably one of the most commonly abused or misused words.

People used the word depression to describe normal feelings and normal emotional states, and depression, I think, as you're going to discuss today, is a very serious medical condition that I think, in my opinion, deserves a little bit of respect.

So depression is a condition that affects people of all ages, all races, high soul, high.

Depression does not discriminate, but by definition, depression is an affective illness by affective means that it affects emotions and feelings.

Depression also affects your mood and also your behavior.

Depression is also commonly known as a major depressive disorder or clinical depression.

In clinical setting, it's a condition that may make it very difficult for you to function in the day-to-day activities.

So it is characterized by persistently feeling low and then lack of interest in the activities that you normally enjoy.

Those are the two hallmarks for depression persistently feeling low and then lack of interest in the activities that are personal, normally enjoy.

Okay, wow, and I heard you talking about it affects all ages.

So when we talk about children, do we have like an age where we can say from this age, children can be affected by depression, or yeah, maybe you can tell us about that.

There's not much studies out there looking into depression in children, but what we know is that, although it has been generally considered an adult condition, children as young as the age of 6, 5 can display symptoms that would be typical of symptoms of depression.

Wow.

Interesting to know so that we are also able to detect it in case of a, when we are having children and we do not really understand what is happening in their lives.

So maybe, oyugi.

The other thing that I'd love us to understand is there has been a rise on issues to do with suicide cases.

Every now and then we are reading, and even watching the televisions and on social media, that every other morning when we wake up we get news on somebody killed themselves because of depression.

So does it really speak to the issue of suicide or how can we talk about that?

Yes, yes, a significant degree of depression does speak to suicide.

Suicidal ideation or suicidal thought is one of the main symptoms of depression.

According to the World Health Organization, we have over 800,000 people dying by suicide every year.

800,000.

800,000 suicide deaths are suicide every year worldwide and that accounts to about one death every 40 seconds.

So the rates are quite high.

So yet depression most people, especially when they've tried everything that they're likely to get suicidal.

Although I'd like to say that suicidal ideation is not just a symptom of depression.

It could also manifest in other mental health conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar, and so on and so forth.

And I think that is what we need to clear, because every other time when we get to hear issues to do with suicide, we associate it with a depression.

That person was a depressed.

So I think it's a note or it's an information that should go out.

It's not a must for a person to maybe to commit although we are conducting the term committing suicide I know that is coming up but we need to have that information that it's not a must for it to cause the cause of suicide to be depression.

But there are other factors and I know issues to do with suicide.

It's also a broad topic on the same, just like the one that we are discussing today on depression.

It has a lot, but I was just reading somewhere and somebody was asking, and especially for us believers, is depression caused by sin or it is a biological or a mental illness?

Because that is the belief we have For you to have depression, especially as a born again Christian, you have sinned.

But I know we are coming there and thank you so much for mentioning the statistics, speaking about the ones talking about even Kenya and what is happening.

Again, I know we have many types of depression which maybe our viewers or listeners might not be on the known, so we have just labeled it depression, we have packaged it as depression, but I understand that we have different types of depression.

Yeah, absolutely, maybe going back to statistics, something that I think it's important to notice, that depression is on the rise and especially in the post pandemic era, I think we've really experienced an increase in suicide rates.

Right now, we have over 200 million people diagnosed with depression worldwide and in Kenya it's about 1.9 million people.

And it's a diagnosed.

We have people who are not diagnosed with depression.

Kenya is ranked, I think, fourth in the continent in terms of suicide and depression rates, so it's a crisis not just for the whole world, but specifically for this country, and we've heard about the mental health task force.

It's really something that needs to be looked into and to be with utmost seriousness.

But when it comes to courses of depression, there's no single non-course for depression.

So a lot of times when you have depression, it's not going to be due to just one reason, so it will be a combination of different reasons and we have risk factors for depression.

A risk factor could be like genetic predisposition, but when talking about the types of depression, and maybe before you go to the types of depression sorry to catch you shorter when you're talking about the statistics which maybe we can talk about, when we talk about the gender women and men which one is the highest Like?

Is it on women?

Is it on men?

Yeah, men, actually twice as likely.

Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression compared to men.

There's several reasons as to why, but the number for men with depression is not as low as most people think.

I think because men have been socialized right from their young age not to talk about what they're going through, so the symptoms oftentimes goes unnoticed and it's usually last minute when the man is now considering suicide and people notice that they're not okay.

Then the statistics also are sort of the same when looking at suicide rates for men and women, because we have a lot more women thinking and actually attempting suicide, but actually twice as many men dying by suicide compared to women.

So this is what she means, as we think.

But it's really hard for us to you know, to act.

But for men, when it comes to issues to do with depression and suicide, for them, they don't even talk about it, but they just.

Yeah, men don't have those free spaces where they can talk about what they're going through and find solutions for their health.

And I think the problem for me is it starts from the very, very foundations of how we are training our boys and our girls.

Because we're training our boys to be solitary, to be their own men, but we're training our girls to know when they need to seek for help, to have help seeking behaviour.

To be weak, and that seems to be lacking for men.

Wow wow, wow, and I think we also need to look at that, because when you're talking about issues to do with depression and women being on the higher side, I'm thinking the way we usually walk to other women and be able to discuss about what we are going through, but I'm getting a different perspective from your end.

Thank you so much.

Maybe we can jump to the types of depression.

Yeah, so we have several types of depression.

Depression is basically an umbrella term and we've got several conditions that are either like depression or basically just different variations of depression.

But what most people call depression or clinical depression is called major depressive disorder.

In clinical terms, this is where by you having depressive symptoms almost all day, almost every day, consistent for a period of at least two weeks.

So, usually the symptoms are quite intense and they happen over a shorter period of time.

But we also have persistent depressive disorder, which is just depression, less intense but happening over a protracted period of time or a longer period of time, for about two years.

We have others, like postpartum depression, that does not just affect women who've given birth, but also husband with a wife who's given birth.

I can also have postpartum depression.

Really?

Yeah, okay, I think so.

It's a new thing for some of us when you talk about men and postpartum depression, because every other time when we are talking about postpartum depression, we only talk about women.

But how does it happen?

It happens, oh no, men, sorry.

You know that there's a lot of biological.

It's not just about psychological.

There's a lot of biological changes that happens to the physical body of a man to prepare them for being fathers.

So that just happened physically, also psychological changes and also dealing with new expectations, new responsibility, having to work twice as hard to make sure that you put food on the table not just for your wife but also for your child.

This can be extremely stressful, also for the man.

Wow, and they tend to unlike for women, whereby it could be postpartum depression.

They usually manifest in feeling low, sad, for men that may become aggressive but have a short temper or angry heart bus, and this is oftentimes maybe misdiagnosed with something else Okay, wow, wow.

Thank you.

Thank you for clearing that up.

Yeah, so there are the types of depression, because you've mentioned who are there?

Only two.

There's a few more.

There's less prevalent.

There's a premenstrual dysphoric disorder that affects women during the period of time having the men's.

There's also seasonal affective disorder that you would not find in this part of the globe.

It affects those people maybe in very cold temperate regions like Russia, where they have long winters, so during winter they experience depressive symptoms, but for them they're not prescribed antidepressants the saccant is actually recommended that they come to Africa and enjoy the warm weather Really, absolutely.

That's interesting.

But the last one, maybe variation of depression, would be bipolar disorder, which is also called manic depression, where somebody is fluctuating between episodes of high and low, what we call manic and depressive episode.

Wow, so you spoke about bipolar and I know it's something else that sometimes we really confuse it, and when we see people, or become a close people, who sometimes are behaving this way, in 30 minutes, after one hour, they have changed.

We keep saying this person has bipolar.

How do we talk about bipolar even in our family's level?

Yeah, so bipolar is not what most people think that there's shift in mood within minutes or hours.

Bipolar is when you stay in one mood state for a longer period of time, which can be sometimes days, sometimes weeks on end.

Maybe they're extremely sad or extremely excited.

So yeah, it's a different variation of depression in that people fluctuate between episodes of high and low Wow, and the symptoms can be quite far reaching in terms of how they affect the person's level of functioning at home and at work, and at work.

Wow.

And then we talk about workplace and issues to do with depression or even bipolar.

Sometimes we, as employers, we might not be able to really understand what is happening when we see these people behaving in a funny way.

What do you want us to tell people today about?

How do we manage to detect that this person is either suffering from this type of depression or these other type of depression?

The part of detecting and knowing for a fact.

Diagnosing should be left to professional and doctors.

But I think when it comes to understanding whether somebody is going is not doing okay, I think what you need to do is to just observe any change in behavior.

That is usually the most telling factor of somebody not doing well.

They're usually sociable, very open, do they like mingling with people, and all of a sudden they're keeping to themselves.

They're reporting to work late.

They're constantly irritable.

They're just so different.

They're not the neglecting personal hygiene.

They're reporting to work early in the morning, smelling of alcohol.

This could be science that somebody is going through something, but you can't really tell for a fact that they have depression because they'd have to be officially evaluated by a good-fine practitioner.

This takes me back also to the Bible when we talk about Elijah.

The Bible explained that Elijah was a bit depressed, especially when he was running for his life.

At one point he prayed God and he wanted to die.

He said he wanted to sleep and never to to really wake up.

It means that even as believers, as Christians, sometimes we go through a lot.

We might not have somebody maybe to talk to to them about what we are going through, or perhaps we will be, or we might be misunderstood about our faith Because we are not able to talk about it.

Sometimes we feel like it's not biblical, and I know we will talk about courses where we will also touch about issues to do with in the Bible, courses of depression.

But that story reminds me of hope and that story reminds me also of Jesus when he was really tempted and looking at him and looking at the biblical story about him.

At one point he told God remove this cup, take it away from me.

So it means that as long as you are a human being, you can go through a lot of things that might make you depressed in life.

But what assurance do we have for our viewers today In the book of Philippians, chapter 4, 6 and 7, talks about do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the peace of God that transcends all understanding, the peace of God that does what Transcend all understanding.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

Will God our hearts, will God our mind, in Christ Jesus.

That is just to assure us that God knows what we are going through, even as believers.

But again, you give and we look at what is appealing in the world, and me and you, we know because we go to church with our believers.

What message do we bring in our church platform about depression?

That's a very complex question to answer, but I'll try to answer it as best as I possibly can.

I think the story that you've given of Elijah, of Prophet Elijah, is a perfect example of what depression should mean for a Christian, because Prophet Elijah, I think, is considered as one of the people who was most closest to God, was very close to God.

As a matter of fact, the Bible says that he didn't die, he was just figured.

So for a man like him to feel suicidal and to actually want to die should actually tell us that there's nothing wrong with feeling suicidal, like it's okay not to be okay, and being sick in the body does not mean that you're not a friend of God.

The message that I always tell people, especially Christians, is that you can be sick in body and yet be a friend of God.

You can be sick in mind and yet be a friend of God and a candidate of heaven, a favorite of Christ.

So I think that's what I can say.

Wow, that is interesting.

So let's talk about now manifestation of depression, and I know we come from different backgrounds and, as you said, and we were trying to talk about depression and the issue to do with the gender, how does it present itself when it comes to women?

How do we take it?

But a different view again on issues to do with depression in our home state how do I tell personally that I might be depressed and at what point do I need to go and see a clinic for the same?

That's a very good question.

I think the fact that a person gets to a level whereby they're asking themselves that question should be an indication that they're not doing well.

It's just the fact that you can think of that question Am I okay?

I don't think I'm okay, that should be signed that you're not doing fine.

But for you to know that you can't really say for a fact that you have depression, we're trying also to dissuade or to prevent to talk to people, especially young people, and to tell them that it's not really the right thing to self-diagnose, because a lot nowadays there's a lot of self-diagnosis.

So you can't tell for a fact that you have depression but you can't suspect.

You know, on our website we have self self-screening tools that I think you can share with our viewers, like the link to this self report tools, that they're just questionnaires that, based on how you respond to them, you can get an understanding of how you're doing psychologically.

So we have assessments for depression, anxiety, alcohol related problems.

If you're drinking, maybe you're suspecting that you may be drinking a little bit too much.

Mm-hmm.

You can just do these questionnaires and at the end you'll get a scoring and interpretation.

That will tell you the levels of depression or anxiety and so on and so forth, and after that Then you can decide whether you want to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist from father evaluation.

Wow, so these are tools that are available, yeah and for free and for free.

I can just sit at home and Fill them.

Yeah, you can.

You just need to get access to our website.

Click on the link.

Then you get a Google form With the question is then based on how you respond to them.

We'll get a scoring and interpretation at the end.

Okay, then again, being a clinician and I know you have done this for for a few years or a number of years the number of people who come and talk to you about they're not feeling well and they feel maybe they're a bit depressed here in Kenya.

Do you think the numbers are matching with the statistics that we have just spoken about?

Yeah, absolutely they're matching, but there's still so many people who have not received the message of mental health.

I'm sure that the numbers will be even far, much higher.

If more people so absolutely they do much there will be even more people and more people Coming to to seek for help with with with more knowledge being being spread and more people was learning about mental health.

Okay, so it means maybe some of us are failing in our work because we really need to do a lot of Advocacy and awareness.

Yes, a little bit of that.

It also a little bit of lack of resources.

We are experiencing hard economic times.

Doing advocacy Mental health awareness is also an expensive venture.

We have got to get people who understand the different languages and who can interpret.

But we are going to get there slowly but surely wow, good, because that's that was Bringing me to the next question of why do we think people are not really Seeking, you know, to know issues to do with depression?

Why are we not coming out and Speaking about our feelings and what we are going through?

the first answer that comes to mind is stigma.

There's a lot of stigma surrounding mental health.

Ask any Kenyan what is the first thing that comes out that that comes to mind when you hear the word mental health and remember, I'm asking just mental health yeah, statements such as window a zimu cheesy.

Yeah, yeah, I'll catch you a coca Looker, strong one this are very negative things that we've associated with the mental health.

Set up a tent, set up two tents anywhere and say that this tent is for meant for people who are Want to be screened for mental health and this is for people who are screened for physical health.

You find that there's not so many people Coming to the time for mental health because there's stigma and I think having conversations like this is Helping us break the stigma and get closer, closer to our destination.

Thank you so much.

In the book of Psalms 34, 18 Talks about nobody knows better about how we feel.

It's only our God who knows how we feel when we are crashing down, when we are so down.

It's only him who can put our pieces together.

This has been connect and we are so happy to To have you listen and watch us today.

Please, if you want to keep interacting with us, connect with us using the social media platform on the screen, and we'll be very ready to To help you through the whole process and to give you more information about issues to do with mental health, illnesses and more about today's session.

Thank you so much, layna's, for being with us here, and a good bye to our viewers and listeners.