Rebecca Olivo

Com-101-126

Professor Dow

3/8/22

Benefits of Having Depression

Being a part of a community could mean many things like some you may not choose like

what your culture may be, and some can be chosen by being a hobby or a passion you enjoy

partaking in. With this community you choose or do not choose to be in there can be pros and cons

being in it. I did not choose my community, and it is the “having depression” community. Even

though it is something that is not necessarily great and awesome I do love being in this community.

The benefits of having depression are having enhanced empathy and compassion.

Now within my experience of having depression I have more compassion and empathy

after having depression. This is because the most common thing with depression is families who

have not experienced it find it weird or suppress it and tell their family members or even friends

that it is crazy, and they are just sad. It is hard to go through it because you are confiding in

someone you trust and tell them personal things for them to dismiss you. So, I do believe that

going through things like that make you more empathetic if you struggled with depression and

someone came to you with a personal problem, you might feel empathy for them more than others

because you know what it is like to have someone dismiss you and not understand what you were

trying to say. To have someone listen or just be there is something that people with depression also

understand because they might have struggled with people not understanding but also not being

heard, being talked over, or ignored. So, when that friend came to you for that personal problem
and you just listening could have helped more than saying their problem is nothing compared to

other’s problems. When dealing with depression a lot might go to therapy and that is not only

someone to help you deal with it, but they are also there to listen. Of course, someone with

depression can have more empathy and compassion because they understand what it is like under

any circumstances where someone may need help or to just talk.

My friend, Robin, that I decided to interview, answered some questions I had so I was able

to show someone’s experience with depression. When asked what is one of the benefits of

depression, Robin said, “for the second question I would say Umm. I do not know if this is too

abstract or not, but I consider feeling these emotions is a benefit. Although there are lots of bad

results that come along w it that are exhausting, I find it a benefit to be able to feel such raw

emotion. for example, when watching a movie or show and there is a character experiencing a

similar intense emotion, being able to sympathize and feel it back is so interesting. like in terms of

the arts (film, paintings, music, etc.), your perception of impression is so vast, like you could intake

the information in a heightened way n that feeling is so interesting.” I did not think about this

benefit when researching depression. I did see that these people may think more deeply or have

better judgment but never something like feeling raw emotions, such as empathy and compassion.

Feeling more heightened emotions is a symptom of depression and common but besides the

negative or not so good, heightened emotions there is also the heightened ones for the good ones.

When doing research on this I saw some interesting facts that even I did not know like, “In fact,

people who are depressed display some surprising advantages in their thinking skills.

Depressed people: 1. process information more deeply (Dean)”. I thought that is crazy because if

you go into detail about situations or circumstances people with depression go through you can

see how they would have some advantages on their thinking strategies. To be able to process
information more deeply, a symptom of depression is thinking about a lot of things so this would

be understandable. Now to see something I can relate to about depression that are not the dark

humor jokes or facts like “Over 700 000 people die due to suicide every year (World Health

Organization)”. When I read this, “Depressed people are normally thought of as being somewhat

disengaged from the rest of the world, but in 2005 psychologists at Queen’s University in Canada

found that mildly depressed students actually had a heightened ability to detect other people’s

emotions from photos that showed only the eye region of their face (Jarrett)”. It sounds weird that

these people with this illness can somehow detect someone else’s emotions, but it shows how this

illness can impact your brain and see how you affect others with these traits you get after getting

depression.

With some traditional people or people who do not understand or who are quite judgmental

just assume people with depression are “Lazy” or say things like, “Snap out of it,” “You have

nothing to be depressed about,” “Get over it,” or “Others have it worse than you.” When people

who are not or do not know someone struggling with depression it is so easy to judge because they

do not know firsthand what it is like to suffer from it. I think a lot of people just do not understand

or could be stubborn. I have been told every saying you could think of when I tell anyone I have

depression, especially in the beginning of my diagnosis because I was very new to being open

about it. Now in 2022, more people do not say much of those things because luckily it has been a

bit normalized that teens, adults, anyone really can have depression. Depression has a lot of

symptoms which can mean that being “lazy” is not true you just have the symptoms of this illness

like if you do not feel like you want to do anything that could be loss in interest or slowness in

activity. If you do not want to eat or eat too much that could be excessive hunger or loss of appetite.

There could be any symptoms that range all over the mind or body and that could be because of
the symptoms of depression. Of course, his never means that yes you can be lazy but if you never

have been or were and you struggle with depression this could be because of this illness. So, this

does not mean that the mean or negative things people say are true, this is just a result of the illness

if you or someone you know have it.

Thinking that all of this is from a mental illness that can be harmful to people themselves,

I would like to remind you that depression just develops and happens. It is not a choice. Someone

can get depression after one or multiple traumatic events. Being in this community is such an honor

and is so important to me, I am proud of myself and all the others in this community. I would never

wish this membership on anyone or want someone to join this because it is way better to not

struggle with it. I do know though, that I will always receive anyone who happens to randomly

join this community with open arms because this community is amazing and loving because we

know that the struggle of waking up in the morning is as bad as getting fired from a job. I chose to

learn from it instead of running from it. Every day is an exhausting day but also a lot of amazing

“I am so happy to be alive” days, along with that I’m grateful that the two benefits from my “I

have depression” community are my two favorite traits that I have myself, compassion, and

empathy.
 Works Cited

Dean, Jeremy. “4 Surprising Advantages of Being Depressed.” PsyBlog, 16 Oct. 2016,

https://www.spring.org.uk/2014/11/4-surprising-advantages-of-being-depressed.php.

“Depression.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 21 Sept. 2021,

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-

sheets/detail/depression#:~:text=At%20its%20worst%2C%20depression%20can,receive%

20no%20treatment%20(2).

Jarrett, Christian. “10 Studies That Show the Advantages of Feeling Down.” Research Digest, 15

Jan. 2018, https://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/03/31/10-studies-that-show-the-advantages-of-

feeling-sad/.