Battling Against Depression

By Podraig O''Morain

The Irish Times

"More and more people say that they owe their lives to Recovery," Betty Whelan, the self-help organization's former area leader for Ireland, tells Podraig O'Morain.

"I was demoted and demoted and demoted," says Betty Whelan of how her depression affected her job. "I was lying in bed all day watching the clock go round and hating myself for it. You feel worse than a worm on those days, covering up for your actions."

Up to then she had led an active life. She had a job with a semi-state company and "I was always doing things. I was in a choral society, I traveled to places. I loved it."

Then her parents died within a year-and-a-half of each other and it was during this time that a deep and serious depression descended on her. "To me it was like being in a bottomless pit, not wanting to be there and not able to get out."

The depression paralyzed her so much that "I didn't even invite my best friend over because I would have to make a cup of tea for her."

She was hospitalized three times in three years. She lost her job.

In the middle of all this her sister telephoned her to tell her about an international organization called Recovery Inc. which had established itself in Ireland four years earlier, in 1971.

She went to a Recovery group meeting and was so taken by it that she attended three groups a week in the first flush of enthusiasm.

Today she is Recovery's area leader for Ireland and readily admits that she does not know what would have happened to her without the organization and its method. That method involves taking control of your own thoughts and attitudes.

"We learn that we can change our thoughts to positive rather than negative," says Betty Whelan. "For each thing we perform we endorse ourselves - tell ourselves that we have done very well."

"We work on trivialities," she says of the detail in which the method is applied. "After all, our lives are made up of trivialities."

So members give themselves a pat on the back for engaging in the simple transactions for the day: making a phone call, keeping an appointment, getting up in the morning, and so on. They also try to notice when their chain of thoughts is heading in a dangerous direction - either towards depression or towards a damaging degree of exhilaration - and to break that chain of thought before it gains momentum.

"Break the fear at its most trivial link," is how Betty Whelan puts it. Also important to break is the vicious cycle which Recovery calls "reviewing and previewing." That's the common affliction in which we keep replaying that upsetting scene with the boss and fantasizing about what we are going to say the next time we see the so-and-so. Since we rarely actually get around to saying it, all we succeed in doing is hurting ourselves, probably to a greater extent than that to which we were hurt by the original incident.

"That's detrimental to the mental health," says Betty Whelan with considerable understatement. "We learn to become objective, to think of something else, try and think of something pleasant, something we like doing - phone a friend, go out and have a cup of coffee."

Attending the weekly Recovery meeting is a key part of the process for members. There, members talk about how they handled, or failed to handle, problems which arose during the week, and they take it in turn to read extracts from Recovery's principle text, Mental Health Through Will Training, by its founder, Abraham A. Low, MD.

Dr. Low founded the movement in Chicago, in 1937. Since then, people all over the world have been able to stay out of psychiatric hospitals and to lead normal lives by using his approach.

The idea of adjusting your attitude to events as a form of mental health seems old-fashioned, and it is. Two thousand years ago the stoics were urging people to adopt a positive attitude in the face of life's vicissitudes and they probably weren't the first. In recent decades, the increasingly fashionable cognitive therapies work though enabling people to change damaging thinking patterns (patterns such as seeing a simple setback as a catastrophe, for instance). They do this through noticing their first negative thoughts in reaction to events and replacing them with thoughts which lead to more positive emotions or through giving themselves very positive messages about their achievements, abilities or situations.

The importance of Recovery is that it provides a tried and tested framework which has salvaged the lives of people who would otherwise, in many cases, be unable to function outside a psychiatric setting. Many members are referred to Recovery by psychiatrists and some are receiving medication - others might very well have thoughts of suicide.

"More and more people say that they owe their lives to Recovery," says Betty Whelan, who does not know what would have happened to her without Recovery.

All Recovery group meetings are open to anyone who wants to attend. People attending don't have to give anything more than their first names, if that's all they want to give. There is no fee for joining or taking part. If they wish, members can contribute financially towards the organization, which doesn't seek funding from the State.

Posted with permission from The Irish Times.

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