| That doesn't help with the very real fact that suicide and depression are heavily stigmatized in our culture. If you're down, that's fine. Everybody has rough days. Depression, the kind that leads to suicide, is very different. I've spent quite a bit of time around depressed and suicidal people: My brother (whose son committed suicide), both of the first two girls I fell in love with, and more than a handful of friends. So while I'm not a psychologist, I can speak from some experience as to what they go through. A friend of mine once described depression as being this massive black ball that hangs in front of your nose that nobody else can see. It blocks out almost everything else in your vision, but nobody else believes it's there. When you try to talk to people about it, they treat you like a crazy person, because they can't see this massive thing that is impacting your life. The people that suffer from this are treated as if they have some type of permanent crippling disability, rather than a treatable medical condition. Oftentimes when they try to get help, they're ostracized by their peers because they're a "crazy person" because they've got a mental illness. Mental illness. The label obliterates the person underneath. People that talk about it, that try and get help, find that they've got fewer friends than they used to. That fewer doors open, because nobody wants to hire or invest in a crazy person, and even after that person gets the treatment they need, the stigma remains. Many startup founders and Silicon Valley hotshots exhibit the signs of severe depression, but it's completely taboo to talk about it. Admitting that you're spending time working with a therapist or taking medication is effectively a career death sentence (unless you're already a success). And so the problem stays buried, and every now and then we hear about another bright mind that just couldn't take it anymore. More people need to come out with these problems, so that we can talk openly about this as a community, but that process needs to start from the top, from the investors and the big-time successful entrepreneurs. |
I'm the first to acknowledge the difference between acute depression and clinical depression. I wouldn't even venture to say that I have experienced depression because I consider self-diagnosis of psychological problems to be incredibly dangerous. Not to mention offensive to my friends who are clinically depressed (and yes, I have had friends and family commit suicide as well).
Me, I have anxiety issues that I have medication for. Sometimes dealing with my startups is overwhelming and I just crash and can't do anything for a week or more. But I am incredibly fortunate that this down state is not my equilibrium and that I have a strong internal correction that lets me realize I have a problem, gets me to actively try to find a problem, and which so far always has eventually gotten me back to a balanced place.
But I do know people who are clinically depressed, and they should frankly not be starting companies. If a friend who was clinically depressed were trying to start a company and came to me saying that their work was making their depression worse, I would do everything in my power to encourage them to seek professional help (which I am not), and to gently encourage them to consider alternative professions. It is not worth your health, mental included.