We start everyday with a report from the overnight resident about the admissions that came in since we left the day before. Many patients are depressed and come in from the medicine or surgery team after a suicide attempt. The tired, overworked resident rattles off their tales, which all seem to fit into a nice neat template:
Mr/s Doe is a xx year old male/female admitted from medicine/surgery status post suicide attempt by xx mechanism. Patient reports feeling depressed, helpless, and hopeless and has signed into the psychiatric floor.
"...depressed, helpless, hopeless..." The words simply trip off the resident's numb and over-tired tongue. But honestly, I can't even imagine what that might feel like. We learn to say we understand and empathize with our patients, and our patients always protest that we don't understand. And I am hear to say just how right they are. At least for me, I have no concept of what "depressed, helpless, and hopeless" feels like. Well, I tried...
Depressed is darkness, blackness, emptiness filled with pain, the pit in your stomach filled with nothing, swirling gray fog, tears, yet pain so bad the tears can't come, you drown in it, gone in it, nothing left in it, no points of light to lead you through the deep velvet blackness, no way out, you are helpless, you can see the world around you like a diver stuck below the surface of the water in a cage, see the air the life but unable to reach it as your lungs burn but there is nothing but water around you and you're going to die, there is no more to life, all effort is futile, all motion is hopeless.
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