Invisible Disabilities
By: Katherine Battershell
“There’s no way you have depression! You’re always smiling!” This is something I’ve had people say to me when I’ve talked to them about the disabilities I have. Often times, they don’t believe I’m actually telling the truth because my appearance and actions don’t match up to the picture in their mind. A picture of a person who never smiles or laughs, who dresses in all black, and has a bleak perspective on life. While some people do appear like this, more often than not, most people with depression appear to be “normal."
Some other things that I’ve been told is that I’m “just making it up to get attention” or “I just need to pick myself up.” Just this past semester, I heard, from a girl I considered a close friend, that I was “just making excuses to try and get out of [my] work” because I told her that I didn’t have the energy to do something. In my opinion, responses like this tend to occur because people don’t understand what depression actually is. They don’t understand that depression makes the simplest of tasks, like brushing your teeth or taking a shower, a struggle. They think that because people with depression can still interact with people on a daily basis that they must be lying. All because the disability that we suffer from isn’t physically tangible.
Many believe in an afterlife of some shape or form, or that there’s an invisible world filled with angels and demons who can affect our lives; however, the moment someone tells them that they have a disability that can’t be easily seen, they no longer believe in an invisible world. They see a person standing in front of them, see that they’re breathing and their heart is pumping, and assume they’re fine. Even if there are scars on that person’s arms, which tell a different story, many people will think that the person who bears these scars is weird and seeking attention.
To be fair, there are some people who claim to have mental disabilities like depression for attention. They want the so-called “perks” of having a disability without being affected by it, like parking in a handicap space at the grocery store even though you don’t have that little blue tag. Having a mental disability is a means to an end for these people; an excuse to get out of work. These actions are what causes society to have trouble accepting that depression is a disability. This mindset seems to say that so long as people, who don’t have depression, can’t get the benefit of using it as an excuse for themselves, then they will do everything possible to deny it’s an issue. After all, if someone is affected by a possibly fatal illness, but you and your loved ones are safe, it doesn’t really matter if the other person is suffering because it doesn’t affect you. Right?
