reputation as the high- maintenance guy in the group. Can't let them think I'm just another bitter and self-pitying cripple, can I?
Perhaps I am simply projecting my own issues onto those around me. But countless conversations with other people with disabilities, and observation of the behavior of even more, has forced me to conclude that Depression is near universal in our community. The only ones who claim otherwise are either in Denial or running a con game. Or they're motivational speakers.
“This guy is so full of crap,” I hear some readers saying. “I never get depressed. OK, maybe I have been, but isn't everybody depressed these days, whether they're disabled or not?” Possibly. I live in California - everyone in this state has visited a therapist at least once. Psychobabble is such a common language here, we should print our election ballots in it. What's different about depression among people with disabilities is in its treatment, or lack thereof. In my mid-thirties I had a bout of serious depression and found myself plummeting down a steep and terrifying emotional spiral. The people around me, as they always had, complimented me on how “cheerful, confident, and well-adjusted” I was in spite of my Disability. Meanwhile, I spent more and more time in my room with the door closed, crying for no reason, and I was in danger of losing my job because I couldn't concentrate on my work. To top it off, I was experiencing the Triple Crown of doomed relationships: wrong person, wrong place, absolutely the wrong time.
Finally, tired of feeling so out of control, I started calling therapists. The first one sounded promising, so I went in for a consult. I explained to him that I had been born with osteogenesis imperfecta, that I was having trouble with depression, and that I wanted to find out why, and how to overcome it.
“Is there a cure for your condition?” he asked. “For OI? No, I don't think there will ever be a cure - not in my lifetime.”
“Don't you want to be cured?”
“I never gave it much thought. Since there isn't a cure, what's the point?” “Hmmm…”
A few minutes later he began talking about limb-lengthening surgery, which he'd read about once in the paper. “A lot of dwarfs are having it done these days.” I replied, with decreasing patience, that OI is not the same as Dwarfism, and besides, for someone
with brittle bones, having my legs broken repeatedly to add a few inches to my height was the worst form of torture I could imagine. His response was another, “hmmm.”
We repeated this for a full hour. I'd attempt to ask him about depression and he 'd circle back around to the medical details of OI and my “refusal” to consider a cure. Afterward I shook his hand politely and raced to my van. I couldn't get away fast enough.
The second therapist didn't even make it past the initial phone call. I barely finished introducing myself before she stopped me, said she didn't believe my depression had anything at all to do with my disability (How she had reached that conclusion after less than a minute remains a mystery to this day). She referred me to a psychiatrist and suggested that I request a prescription for a new drug that had just come on the market.
My next call was to a friend working on his masters in psychology. “Hey Dude, what the hell is Prozac?”
On the brink of giving up, I decided to call one more therapist. This time I lucked out. While warm and empathetic, she also had a matter-of-factness about her and it was clear that she did not suffer fools gladly - I took an instant liking to her.
Moreover, her husband was a quadriplegic, and both of them were active in the disability-rights movement. During her sessions she repeatedly stressed that her job was not to make me “normal“, to lower my expectations or to re-program me into accepting the status quo, but rather, to help me to develop the confidence and self-esteem by which I could accomplish my own goals and effect positive change in the world. No Woody Allen-style-five-days-a-week-analysis for her.
We covered a lot of the usual psychological ground - childhood trauma, body image, sexual anxiety, and so on - and worked on some guided-imagery exercises to help me relax and improve my concentration. But we occasionally took up whole sessions discussing the psychology of disability - and the double standard to which it is held by society. I came to understand that certain traits largely disapproved of in our culture - low self-esteem, lack of assertiveness, dependency, learned helplessness - are expected and even encouraged among people with disabilities. We may get patted on the head now and then for showing courage or being inspirational, but more often, folks would rather assume that we live miserable lives full of self-pity and despair. In that way, they reaffirm their
