Dr. House?

Hugh Laurie is one of my favorite actors, and the character that he plays on the TV series "House" is one of my favorite TV characters of all time. What I admire about Dr. House is his ability to not care what anybody else thinks about him (and I love people who can honestly do that). In addition, I love the conflict between his apparent dislike of human beings and his passion to save them.

So you can imagine my surprise and my happiness (well, happiness in a "misery loves company" kind of way) when I found out that Hugh Laurie suffers from depression.

For those of you who didn't read "Inside The (Odd) Mind Of Hugh Laurie" by Jeanne Wolf, in Parade Magazine, April 5, 2009. This is what was written about Hugh Laurie's depression:

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"He has, however, spoken frankly about his battle with depression, for which he sought help in 1996. 'I wish I'd kept my mouth shut about that.' Laurie says, 'That's an example of me throwing open the doors and trusting - and then coming downstairs and finding the TV is gone. Now an undue weight has been given to this aspect of my life.'

'I don't like to be thought of as this guy who has nothing else to talk about except how miserable my lot was,' Laurie continues, 'And of course people respond to that in peculiar ways: 'He's incredibly fortunate and blessed. What the hell does he have to moan about?' I remember watching Mel Gibson on some show once, and he was being asked about his belief in the afterlife. Gibson said, 'Well, I can't believe this is all there is' and I thought, 'Wait a minute. You're Mel Gibson. You have millions of dollars. You're a great-looking chap with every conceivable blessing that could be bestowed upon a man and that's not good enough? So you can see why I'm hesitant to talk about any trivial pain I have. I find myself going 'Oh, for God's sake, Hugh, pull yourself together.'

'On the other hand' Laurie adds, I do know depression is a disease. It's a matter of pride fot the people who work on House that we have aligned ourselves with the National Alliance on Mental Illness. We've brought some attention to the cause. Funny enough, it is the last great taboo - something people still don't want to talk about.'

All this awareness hasn't chased away Laurie's self-deprecating attitude.

'I suppose I'm trying to exorcise something by anticipating disaster,' he says.'Perhaps I am encouraging the gods to go easy on me, because I have already done it to myself. So they don't need to add or put their boot in. I've tasted the worst before it's happened.'"

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One of my major concerns about depression is that it doesn't matter how good someone's life is on the outside, if that person is hurting on the inside then what's going on in the outside is not going to change anything. If someone has cancer and everything is going well otherwise, no one is going to say "Pull yourself together with the cancer, everything is going well for you otherwise." So why do people do that with depression, when depression is as much of a disease as cancer? It's because people don't see depression as a disease. They see it as a mood or an emotion that people have control over changing "if only they chose to."

Afterthoughts:
In last night's episode of "House" one of the main characters committed suicide. I believe that the ones who are responsible for the TV series will raise awareness to mental illness in a respectable way through the show. Kudos to House for doing this.

Here is the link to buy a t-shirt:

http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=House_T-Shirt_Partnership&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=72464&lstid=944