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InkPetal's avatar
InkPetal
Member
10 years ago

Shut-Upworthy

Sorry for the Facebook link. This just showed up in my feed and I just want to hit walls and throw things and scream 'how dare you' into the void. https://www.facebook.com/Upworthy/videos/1188959297811593/

Comment after comment about how great a campaign this is, and then they come, people who actually have cancer to tell whoever came up with this thing that you can't compare illness, you can't compare mental and physical conditions as if it's all the same experience, you can't sit there behind a wall of technology and just say 'Cancer, depression, same same'. 

They're both severe, they both take lives, the both strip you of your agency and are like a waking hell, but this campaign is infuriating. Not because it hasn't hit the mark - but because it's totally unrealistic. People do talk to cancer patients this way. 

How many of us have been told it "could be worse"? Every time I go to an appointment there's someone who says something like cheer up or don't worry. The same thing I hear every time I have a depressive episode.

How you'd talk to a cancer patient isn't a stable ground for comparison on how to talk to someone with depression, at all, not just because they're vastly different things, but because most people can't get talking to people with cancer right either.

It's hard, and different for everyone, and I object to someone telling the world to imagine that having depression is just like having cancer. How about just not comparing illnesses and conditions at all.

/rant

(I'm undeniably reading too much into it but it hit me really hard and I needed to vent.)

5 Replies

  • InkPetal's avatar
    InkPetal
    Member
    10 years ago

    I do see where the campaign was coming from, the overlap is powerful and I understand the intention. A lot of people are getting it, but the rest of the public response is a comment warfare of  "mine is worse" and the actual comment "I would trade my depression for cancer". 

    It struck me that the people it's circulating for are the demographic of people who are going to take away that there's a cloth you can throw over talking to sick people as if conditions all somehow the same. I disagree with it on that level, and with the omission that people do in fact talk to people with cancer this way.

    I'd love for an ad like this to come out featuring someone with depression hearing "You'll be fine." "There's nothing really wrong with you." "The catastrophising is getting old." and the reveal is that you wouldn't talk to someone with depression this way, cancer is real even if it's stage one.

    I'm sorry if you thought I was being reductive of the condition, like your son, several of my depressive episodes have had me requiring supervision, just to be clear that my perspective is not from a place of ignorance. Yourself as someone who has experience with both I'm sure can understand why someone else who also has would see them as entirely different circumstances.

    Thank you for sharing your thoughts, it's all perspective, and on that note I'm genuinely glad you weren't negatively hit by it like I was.

  • primek's avatar
    primek
    Member
    10 years ago

    Having had a son with major depression and 2 suicide attempts, I understand the commercial and why they did it. I am sorry you were upset by it. I don't  believe the attempt was to downgrade the impact of cancer but to highlight the very realy risk of someone with major depression. Having had both myself, I actually liked the commercial and thought it was quite sensitive.

  • InkPetal's avatar
    InkPetal
    Member
    10 years ago

    Exactly. It's such a like-grab designed to circulate for shock factor and give people who aren't as awful as those depicted something to share and feel good about. 

    Maybe if it were someone with both sharing I wouldn't be so annoyed, because that becomes personal perspective. The whole swarm-share dose of pop "perspective changing" all just rubbed me the wrong way.

    There's no questioning the severity of either, but it's just misleading. You can't have the same conversations in the same way with or about both, they're just too different.

    I think what my irritation comes down to is that even when depression gets to the sage that someone is contemplating suicide there are care options to get you through it, but if you're given a terminal cancer prognosis you can't just think the cancer away.

    Whole thing just made me angry and miserable.

  • Brenda5's avatar
    Brenda5
    Member
    10 years ago

    Poor comparison and not well thought out by whoever made it. What was the idea? To change uncaring people like those depicted? I doubt it would happen but its nice fuzzy feeling I guess to entertain the idea.

    Depression is a little like cancer in that it just does so many weird things to so many people and each person is different. It would be great if there was one broad brush treatment for all but like breast cancer, there isn't.