What is Mental Pain, and Why Should You Care?

Have you ever tried to think through excruciating pain? Have you ever tried to function normally, whilst carrying with you a severe injury? 

TW: Suicide, Suicide Rates, Depression  

Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash

1 in 5 people suffer from depression worldwide. Around 3.38% of the global population, to be exact. And we lose almost 800,000 people to suicide every year. A huge part of that number are people suffering from depression. 

For the longest time, our collective idea of depression coincided with sadness. That's changing now, with all this effort going into mental health awareness. But even now, people tend to instinctively jump to "extreme sadness" as the default definition of depression.

Depression isn't necessarily about sadness or extreme sadness. I personally define it as a severe energy deficiency that lasts over a prolonged duration. Reasons and causes: varied.

Have you ever tried to think through excruciating pain? Have you ever tried to function normally, whilst carrying with you a severe injury?

Regardless of what definition you're going with, it's difficult to reconcile our notions of depression with the idea of suicide.

What hopelessness, despair, or sadness could possibly drive someone to kill themselves? It's such an extreme step. A step at odds with the survival instinct innate to every animal, including human beings. 

Into this gap steps the fact of mental agony, or mental pain.

Have you ever tried to think through excruciating pain? Have you ever tried to function normally, whilst carrying with you a severe injury?

Maybe you've been lucky enough to escape serious physical injury. If yes, think back to the last time you stubbed your toe. Or burned yourself while cooking.

Remember the sensation of pain? Radiating outward from the point of injury? Setting your nervous system on fire? Remember how all thought clouded over for a few moments, while you hopped around on one foot, being able to do nothing but swear profusely?

Now magnify that by a zillion times. And then imagine that there is no single point of injury that you can pinpoint. Imagine that you have no painkillers. No Burnol. No bandaids or water or soothing creams. 

And now imagine being in that state for months. Maybe years.

How long would you last before you become willing to do anything to make it stop? How long could you possibly expect anyone to last? 

If your arm is broken, no one in their right mind would ask you to lift something with that arm. If your leg is broken, only an incredibly cruel person is going to ask you to walk on it.

Mental pain is a serious matter. It manifests exactly the same way that physical pain does. It feels physical. The only difference is that the source of the pain is mental. It doesn't stem from a broken arm or a stubbed toe, so fixing it is a hundred times more difficult.

A major part of getting past our physical injuries is caring for the injury. Changing bandages, applying antiseptic, wrapping ice in cloth for the swelling or the burn. These actions soothe us. We use them to reassure ourselves that we're on the path to recovery. That someday soon, we'll feel the way we did before we got hurt.

But how do you reassure yourself of anything when you can't see the injury? When you can't do anything to make it better?

What do you do when you just can't see an end to the pain? When your entire future stretches ahead of you, filled with a pain you didn't ask for.

It's also easier for our friends and family to help us with physical injuries. They can help us with the tasks we're not able to do. If your arm is broken, no one in their right mind would ask you to lift something with that arm. Or the other arm, for that matter. If your leg is broken, only an incredibly cruel person is going to ask you to walk on it.

But when the injury is invisible, people can no longer understand what your capabilities currently are. They don't know that they're asking you to do something that is literally impossible for you. And so, when you're unable to do it, they get frustrated. They think you're being unhelpful on purpose. They think you're being lazy, or burdening them. They lash out at an injured person, hurting them further.
All these things combine to create a pretty crappy quality of life. Even the strongest wills erode with time, when exposed to these circumstances.

It hurts to see people blame someone for "choosing" suicide as their way out of this pain. (Is it really a "choice" when the alternative involves living in unbearable pain?)

It hurts that they cannot see that this was a person who suffered immensely. It hurts that they choose to judge rather than empathize.

Much of our collective perspective on mental health would indeed benefit from this perspective. If only we could see that someone's actions are the result of living in constant agony, we would all probably be able to empathize with them much better.