How you can escape chains of depression

Dar es Salaam. Over a year ago, Doreen Peter Noni, 30, realised that her life wasn’t making sense anymore after her father, was put in remand prison. A feeling of hopelessness was creeping into her life and the rest of her family members, she says.

“I could cry a lot with my sister in law and I would express my feelings about it[…]I would lock myself into the room and cry…and cry…and cry…I was struggling to be positive about it but I also realized that other family members were also struggling to be positive…,” says Doreen.

Doreen, the daughter of Mr Peter Noni, former Managing Director with what used to be known as Tanzania Investment Bank (TIB), felt restlessness when her father was charged with counts that would see him spending several years behind bars.

“At home, we had been a loving family, close, supportive and energetic but it’s like we lost the energy. We were all struggling in our own ways but no one was speaking out. I had to take charge,’’ recalls Doreen as she narrated her past tribulations to Your Health.

“My family saw the energy in me, especially after they realized how I was going to see my father in [remand] prison and coming back. But at times my family would get irritable over a small matter, I realized that the pattern of our relationship had changed,’’ she further recalls.

“I lived like that for several months. I tried to find comfort in friends—my long time friends but you know, it wasn’t easy. I could experience some sort of stigma…I could get disappointments from people I had thought would be there for me but they weren’t.”

“That was happening while I was in Dar es Salaam. But I had my business in Mwanza so I had to run the business remotely. That was even more challenging for me. My father owned businesses and we had to make sure it keeps running but that wasn’t easy.”

“So, problems just kept adding and adding and adding...”

Light and end of the tunnel

“There was a time I travelled to Portugal for a global meeting…where I had been invited to be a speaker…I started a panel discussion with a man known as Mark Mahajjar who had been imprisoned with Nelson Mandela. He was explaining how Nelson Mandela changed his life and the experiences they went through of not being able to provide for their families while in prison..

He said a lot of things that I felt I could relate with and for the first time I felt like I was not a lone, and found myself raising my hand and standing up to speak…after this [occasion] I had a lot of men and women coming around to speak to me and I realized there were untold stories of people with hidden suffering…”

“That whole experience and people opening up and speaking their problems, made them feel good. They were speaking about depression. I had never used that word and in fact I hated saying that I am stressed.”

“I started reading about depression when I was in the US [United States] and I realized that I was going through depression because I read the symptoms and I said Oh My God! That’s what I have been going through. I also realized that’s exactly what my family members had been going through too.”

“By the time I came back home,[in Tanzania] I already had a different mindset, I had strength to be able to speak out about my problems without feeling that I would be laughed at or stigmatized because I knew I was not alone. There were those who had gone through a tougher environment.”

“Later, I joined peer groups…I met a friend who told me she had attempted to commit suicide two times because of what she had been going through. I was so shocked. I had never thought about it.”

‘Peter’s Daughter’ is born

“This whole experience gave me an idea to start Peter’s Daughter Project. This was born because Peter was a great man and who raised me with good values. I tried to do good to people that [my father] doesn’t k now.”

“That was how I decided to start searching into the dangers of depression and came up with an idea to help others who could be going through a similar situation,” she said.

Being an entrepreneur, who runs Lake FM Radio in Mwanza, Doreen thought of doing something that would deliver the message of how to get rid of depression to other people.

“That was how I came up with an idea to prepare a series of programmes – to be aired on TV, Radio and online platforms – profiling people who have been going through depression,” she says.

The idea, codenamed “Peter’s Daughter Project” emerged as the first winner at this year’s Total Starterupper of the Year Awards, bagging Sh30 million from Total Tanzania.

It was an idea that was borne out of pure bad luck for Doreen but one that made her start seeing life differently. She now believes that talking and opening up is a cure to many psychological problems, including depression.

What she now tackles is something of worldwide concern. About two years ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) sensitized people around the world to embrace the power of talking as a way of dealing with depression, as countries marked World Health Day, themed: Depression: let’s talk.

According to a clinical psychologist based at Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH), Mr Isaac Lema, about 5 in 10 patients visiting the mental health department where he works, exhibit signs and symptoms of depression at various stages.

“In fact, encouraging the patients to talk or speak up their inner psychological challenges helps relieve them of a burden. We employ this strategy in various interventions for our mental health patients here,’’ says Mr Lema.

Experts say people who harbor problems in their psyche, may develop feelings of self-doubt and later this may swiftly turns into depression and one of the surest ways to get out of the trap is “…talk, talk your problems….

Mr Lema says, however, depression is in various stages. There are those with signs and symptoms of depression which are not severe. “But there are those who indeed exhibit very serious depression, we call clinical depression. This requires more serious interventions,’’ he says.

For most people who are not aware about depression, there is a tendency to believe that they have been cursed or have demons. This condition can happen to anyone regardless of age.

At the WHO level, experts believe one of the first steps is also to address issues around prejudice and discrimination. During the World Health Day in 2017, WHO sent messages around the world on depression.

“The continuing stigma associated with mental illness was the reason why we decided to name our campaign Depression: let’s talk,” said Dr Shekhar Saxena, Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse at the WHO.

Depression is a risk factor for suicide, which claims hundreds of thousands of lives each year, said Dr Saxena.

“A better understanding of depression and how it can be treated, while essential, is just the beginning. What needs to follow is sustained scale-up of mental health services accessible to everyone, even the most remote populations in the world.”

Researchers believe that getting people out of the chains of poverty and financial challenges can significantly get rid of many mental health challenges—including depression.

A survey titled: Common Mental Disorders and Risk Factors in Urban Tanzania, also shows that the CMDs are highly associated with exposure to traumatic life events in urban Dar es Salaam, particularly events involving relationship difficulties and financial instability.

“Efforts to address poverty and disadvantage in low income countries such as Tanzania will need to take mental health into account and address the difficult circumstances and environments within which people live and work,’’ suggests the survey published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

For the case of depression, it creates feelings of severe despondency and dejection and according to data released by the WHO ahead of the World Health Day marked yesterday; more than 300 million people are now living with depression globally.

For many years in Tanzania, mental health experts have been raising the profile of depression and the impact it has on society, encouraging the society to speak up—data released on Tanzania speaks volumes.

A facility-based analysis by Dr Sylivia Kaaya from the Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences(Muhas), shows that the data collected from 20 Regions in Tanzania from 2006-2007, showed that depression accounted for 7.5 percent of all reported (89,045) patients with mental disorders.

On a global scale, the number of people living with depression by 2015 had reached 322 million, up 18.4 percent since 2005, the WHO says in its database.

Failure to act now is costly, according to a study by the WHO; which calculated the treatment costs and health outcomes in 36 low-, middle- and high-income countries for the 15 years from 2016-2030.