Disease killing more people than cancer

May I thank Ceres Doyo for her column, “To Robin Williams: ‘Nanu nanu’” (Opinion, 8/14/14). I know how it feels to suffer from depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, panic and insomnia, however you call it; for many years now I have to live with this ailment.

It is good that people are talking about it after the tragic death of actor Robin Williams. Depression kills more people than cancer does.

With cancer you could get a tumor or you may have chemotherapy for treatment. But depression you can’t see, and you can’t put it out of your body. It’s like the soul, you can’t see it, but you know it exists.

I hate it most when people think it’s just a temporary melancholic mood disorder that soon disappears, like having the blues or being stricken by the midlife crisis. But in my case, it has become a chronic condition and is not likely to disappear. I have been consulting with a psychiatrist and am taking medications to stabilize my serotonin, but the root cause of the sickness is always here. I just can try to control it before it controls me.

Often I feel like this old man in a painting by Vincent van Gogh—someone who feels how it is like to be sad and hopeless, like me, Van Gogh, Ernest Hemingway and millions of other people. It’s often the situation that makes us how we are. Sometimes it is genetic (I have two suicides on my father’s side), so people often see suicide as freedom and a place to rest, not anymore as hell. Is there life before death, they ask?

Once again, I thank Doyo very much for her column. I wish her the best!

—JUERGEN SCHOEFER, PhD,

Pasig City