In the forever debate of nature vs nurture, in my case, nurture won out more often than not.
How to start this off delicately? I have suffered from depression and anxiety disorder for the majority of my adult life, to the point that I can easily classify them as chronic. It started in my early teens, and at sixteen I saw my first therapist because I couldn’t understand why some days I was so tired and needed to sleep all day, and why other days I was filled with such self-loathing that I didn’t want to live anymore.
Well, at seventeen my questions were answered, my depression was likely consequence of my parents longtime battle with addiction to crack cocaine, which inspired the neglect that my brothers and I had experienced all of our lives (and to which we thought was normal).
According to a study carried out by the University of Toronto in conjunction with Partnership to End Addiction, children with addict parents were likely to experience depression within their adult years. The study included 6,268 participants and it found that 312 participants experienced a major depressive episode in the past year, while 877 experienced one before the age of eighteen.
My battle with depression has seen me homeless, it has seen me in crisis, and it has seen me in a psychiatric ward for suicidal ideation. Most importantly, it has seen me seek the social services for help at those low points, which directly opened my mind to display more compassion, to seek to understand the trouble others go through, to understand the privileges I do have, because I do have them. As a white person, regardless of the hardships I have experienced, I benefit from white privilege, so I want to use that privilege to help others, to advocate for people who need support and amplify voices that are not being heard.
References
Collins, C. (2018, October). What Is White Privilege, Really? Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/fall-2018/what-is-white-privilege-really
Staff, P. (2013, May). Children of Addicted Parents More Likely to be Depressed in Adulthood: Study. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://drugfree.org/drug-and-alcohol-news/children-of-addicted-parents-more-likely-to-be-depressed-in-adulthood-study/#
ma guarda quante stelle nel cielo 