Professor Geoff Gallop is Professor and Director, Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney.  Professor Gallop resigned as WA Premier in 2006 to seek treatment for depression.

Since my own decision to seek medical help for depression early in 2006 I have learnt a good deal about myself and the condition which we have appropriately labelled "The Black Dog"

However, in order to learn these things I had to acknowledge that I had a problem. Self help only follows when there is self awareness. By its very nature depression is a secret for whom there is no story-teller. Not talking about it is part of its definition. We hold it in as it tears away at our senses and our sensibility. It's very personal and its very deep. We disconnect from the world and from others, with despair occasionally descending into a living hell. Imagine a world in which every second feels like a year and a world in which the ability to laugh has been extinguished. I recently came across a quote from Abraham Lincoln which describes the feelings associated with depression with unerring clarity:

"I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would be not one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me. (1)"

The guilt that depressives feel in the face of theirs and the world's many imperfections also works against their own liberation. They want to please and isn't everything that happens their responsibility and theirs alone? The more they do, the more they have to do. It is for others that they act and it is to achieve at the highest levels that they work beyond reason. To do otherwise - and to put themselves and their well-being first - is to fail the test of life that has been created in their own minds. Herein lies the problem for many of our professionals and high achievers - they have lost control.

That which drives them also has the potential to destroy them and, tragically, all too often it does. As Dr Mamta Gautam said of the legal profession in her Tristan Jepson Memorial Lecture last year: "These personality traits are all very socially and professionally valuable, but personally very expensive". (2)

In saying these things I find myself asking: "Why didn't I take action earlier?" We don't because the very nature of the illness prevents it. It feeds off itself and in a world of individual ignorance and social stigma it claims many victims. Prejudice and melancholy feed off each other like psychological twins. The more the prejudice the more the concealment, the more the concealment, the more the depression.

However, what I have also learnt is that liberation is possible. The causes and consequences of mental health (and illness) has at last emerged as an important subject for serious scientific analysis and proper public discussion. We have learnt much from neuroscience and have at last discovered the wisdom of Eastern religion, psychology and philosophy. Depression can be treated and well-being sustained. Indeed my research tells me (and my over experience confirms) that sixty to seventy percent of patients with depression will respond to initial treatment with monodrug therapy (usually after four to eight weeks of treatment) or to a completed course of psychotherapy (usually 12 to 20 sessions or about 12 weeks). Of the 30% who do not respond to initial treatment, the majority will improve on an alternative approach, and upward of 90% will eventually recover fully. From these statistics we can see that the prognosis of major depression is among the best of any medical illness of similar severity. (3)

Spreading this message will not prevent depression. Genetic endowment and personal circumstances determine that some of us will be depressive. But what it can do is prevent crisis by countering prejudice and offering hope through a range of treatment options.

What it also does is put on the community's agenda the whole question of mental health and mental well being.

Life itself is full of suffering and contradiction and yet we complicate matters further with the dysfunctionality of so many of our relationships and the unrealisability of many of our aspirations. Some cope but too many don't. Our genetic endowments are different and our upbringings are different.

This fact of modern life shouldn't just be an issue for individuals as they try to make sense of it all but also for governments as they consider their policies and priorities, for employers as they manage their workplaces and for families as they plan their future together.

It's all about greater awareness, individually and as a community. We can and should better manage the pressures of today just as we can and should seek a better life for the future.

Thank you.

References

1. Joshua Wolf Shenk, Lincoln's Melancholy : How Depression Challenged a President and Fuelled His Greatness (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), p. 212

2. Mamta Gautam, "Towards Managing Mental Wellness in the Legal Profession", Tristan Jepson Memorial Lecture. Supreme Court Building, Sydney, 7 September 2006

3. Mamta Gautam, "Depression and Anxiety". http://www.drgautam.com/gautam/article6.htm