Depression Does Not Discriminate

The following is a guest post by Michael Lichens.
So many have been shocked by the news of Robin Williams and what appears to be his self-inflicted death. For years, he was to me a poster-child for depression. Laughter became his shield, as it has for many who suffer from mental anguish, but he still was internally haunted. I know in my own struggles with depression, comedy was exactly what I used before discovering the toxic cocktail of food, porn, and booze (really, just don’t do it). A little secret of mine is that my first real writing gig was a weekly satirical column in the Eugene Comic News and I got to meet a lot of comedic writers through that. All of them struggled with some form of mental anguish.
So it is that many wonder how a man who is so funny, so full of life, and with so much adoration, could be depressed. When I hear people asking that, I swing between having no answer to wanting to hit my head against a book case. The same question was asked again when Mother Teresa was “outed” as having dealt with some heavy dark nights of the soul. No one could figure out how a holy woman could feel God’s presence, act in great charity, and yet feel the pains of depression.
Then there’s my personal life. One of the most jovial friends I ever had killed himself after his wife left him several years ago, and just a week ago another close friend attempted to take his own life. I’ve recently been public about my own struggles with MDD and how many times I stared down that abyss where death seemed like it would be the only relief. At one point, medication and a lot of counselling is the only thing that made me turn away from it, along with some