Worry and Depression

            Those arms which can take you to the stars. The Australian swimmers had those very arms. He was Ian Thorpe, a man with those magic arms and he did just that. Not one, time and again. He had that lithe frame which any swimmer would love to have And every time he eased this lithe frame out of his bathrobe and walked with affectless calm to the edge of a pool in any swimming competition, Australian women of a certain age swooned ostentatiously. He was what every Australian kid wanted to be; he was awe inspiring and impeccable, overshadowed in his era only by the greatest swimmer of all time – Michael Phelps, who was 32 months younger to him.
   
One who always look skywards for answer to all un-answerable questions can certainly say that the Gods were always smiling down upon Ian Thorpe. He was 6’5” tall, had an athletic build, was starry-eyed and awe inspiring. And that was the time when the sun was shining on him, a five time Olympic Gold medalist the holder of may world records in his name. That was the time when he rode very high and at that time nobody could have felt sorry for him. What a poor little boy, what a pity! Nobody could have been imagined to be saying for Ian Thorpe. He was a poster boy who never could seems like aeons. In the wee hours of one fine Monday, in Sydney, Thorpe was found wandering, disoriented and cognitively diminished near his parents house, and was later on admitted to a rehabilitation clinic. He was under a severe bout of depression. Antidepressants and painkillers can do it to anyone, even if he is very well built and much determined. You imbibe them because you don’t was to lose your way, but then in the end you do that only and a little bit more. Depression can do that an in fact can do much more, leaving you on the very edge, staring at the bottomless hole and wondering if an final plunge could erase all the misery surrounding you. Depression makes no exception to anybody, whether he is a world class athlete, swimmer, boxer or a hollywood/bollywood star or to say any celebrity. Anybody is as vulnerable as the neighborhood, businessman or the pimply faced, black colour shortish girl who find tough in business and in getting a groom to marry. On the other hand, if you can believe it, the top sports persons, the celebrity athletes and super stars with multimillion dollar bank accounts and all the luxury surrounding them are more prone to the attack of depression. Winston Churchill the famous World War-II Hero and a very successful politician called it a Black Dog.
   
         When a Thorpe, a Tyson, a Trescothek  or a Flintoff talk about depression, the media listens and so do everybody. But there might be tens of thousands of others in every area in every country in the world who are suffering in the emotional wilderness into which the depression casts you. And depression leave such a huge hole in the soul that not all the love in the world from family, from friends, from fans  can help to fill it. Everything good which came along your way disappears into this void. For the high achievers in the every walk of life, it may otherwise also take superhuman efforts to simply be normal and sound well adjusted once their glory days are behind them. Because the guys are simply missing the adrenaline surge of the heyday, missing too, the adulation, the ovations, the spotlight, one may argue. Perhaps this causes the neuro-chemical imbalance that carries them beyond the tipping point. But this kind of reductionism will never shine the flashlight deep into the abyss. 

Thorpe has admitted of suicidal thought and alcohol abuse in his book, This is Me(2012) and Flintoff too talked about his alcohol dependency and crippling struggles in a BBC one documentary Freddie Flintoff : Hidden side of sports. The disease is depression and the warning signs of it are:
1. Persistent sadness or low mood and bad feelings of emptiness or hollowness combined with anxiety. Loss of interest in life and the inability to feel or express happiness and joy.
2. Feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness  and helplessness. Its’ a feeling that everything is wrong and it is on account of his/her own fault. Person is unable to see any positive or flip side or the things.
3. Frequency of crying Episodes. In between the episodes one can notice redy eyes, sniffles, cracking voice, balled up tissues and other traits.
4. Increased agitation and restlessness: unable to relax, more irritable than usual, quicker to anger, seldom calm, full of restlessness. Look for pacing, lashing out at others. He remains at the hyper end of a spectrum of behavious.
5. Fatique and decreased enery: Those who are not at the hyper end of the spectrum of behaviors, show the opposite i.e. increase sluggishness and slowness. They may avoid or skip the work.
6. Loss of interest in activities or hobbies those were once pleasurable. Person looses interest in all activities in which he was interested. They begin to decline invitations, refuse to go out, not want to see anyone.
7. Difficulty in concentration and memorizsing details and even in making decisions – Fuzzy thinking are often apparent in depressed persons. Various mental slips may become obvious, such as forgetting appointments and errands for getting names, misplacing objets, postponing decisions or referring them to others.
8. Sleeping too much or not enough – Sleep disorders and depression are closely related. In some persons it menifests as insomnia, while  in others the experience is on the other extreme i.e. excessive sleeping.
9. Loss of apetite or overeating – The person either looses interest in eating or fall into a pattern of constant emotionally triggered eating.
10. Expressing thoughts of dying or suicide; The persons often say I wish I were dead, I want to kill myself or I want to end it all, you’d be better without me, I can’t go on, I wish it were over, soon I will not be around anymore. They will hoarding pills, giving away money, suddenly changing will. To them suicide seems to be a logical way to end their pains and sufferings. They take to alcohol which worsens their cause.
11. Persistent aches, pains, cramps and digestive problems – Depression also causes stress and sometimes even chronic stress which inturn causes headache, bodyaches / pains, crams and even indigestion. They go for self medication, they refuse to see the doctors. Added to it poor self care, loss of apetite or sleep and poor self care leads to an array of health problems.

            We next come to the types of depression;
1. Major depression: it is characterized by a combination of symptoms that interferes with a persons ability to work, sleep study, eat and enjoy once pleasurable activities. Hence the major or clinical depression prevents you from functioning normally as it results into impairment of functioning.
2. Chronic depression or Dysthymia – It is characterized by long term (two years or above) of depressed mood. It is less severe than the major depression and typically doesn’t disable the person. But the symptoms of it are similar to those of major/clinical depression.
3. Atypical depression- This is characterized by non presence of typical symptoms of depression. The symptoms of this variety of the depression overeating, overlapping, fatigue, extreme sensitivity and even a feeling of dejection / rejection.
4. Seasonal Depression (SAD): In its person got depressed during certain time of the year. The symptoms are those of the typical depression
5. Psychotic Depression – When the person in depression shows psychotic symptoms like psychosis, hallucinations etc the depression is called psychotic depression.
6. Bipolar depression or Manic Depression – It is characterized by the mood swings of extreme type, elated highs on one pole to major depressive lows on the other pole.
7. Postpartum Depression – Postpartum depression is becoming common increasingly.


            What we have seen in the case of Australian swimmers, Ian Thorpe was chronic depression or dysthymia, a condition in which highly committed people lose interest and motivation. It typically occurs in hard working, hard driven people. Due to overwork and overreaching such people become emotionally, psychologically or physically exhausted. This is called as a Burnout Syndrome. This happen when one cannot say no to the additional commitments or responsibilities and hence they remain under intense and sustained pressure for a long time, as they want too much for too long. In such situations sometimes the person gets utterly demoralized and exhausted. The phase of depression is known as nervous breakdown. The recent alleged suicide by Managing Director of Tata Motors raises questions about the trials and tribulations, many chief executives face today. In their personal lives, not to speak of in their professional lives. The CEO of any big company is an individual who lives and breathes business and strives for better and better performance. In turn he is left with little space for sensitivity to personal issues. The personal issues therefore pile up and continue to mount upon and reaches a flashpoint. This is the moment of burnout and it needs to be handled with sensitivity, caution and patience both at the workplace and home. With pressure and accountability as millstones around the neck the CEO hardly has any avenue to seek counsel or eve a second opinion without fear of being judged. He is caught in one way traffic where the dictum simply is succeed, succeed, succeed and rule out failure as an outcome. Here is a superman who carries the can for results gone wrong, however unrealistic they may be. What is critical is this; the risk is too high for the very same stakeholders who want them to succeed ‘at any cost’. The human being leading the business is not a robot. It is unfair to assume the infallibility of humans, whatever their motivations to perform and succeed or their creditable carrier histories.


                                                                                           Pavan Kumar Sharma
                                                                               Chief Commissioner of Income-tax,
                                                                                              Hubli ( Karnataka )