People in all walks of life suffer from depression. People in any field you can name, be it a police officer, a construction worker, a teacher, a nurse, a bartender, suffer from depression. In the technological day and age we live in, we obsess on the musicians and movie stars and entertainers that suffer from depression and anxiety issues simply because those people are in the news. They are in the public eye all the time, so you hear about them. The truth about depression and anxiety is that it affects people everywhere. Normal people just like you and me. Depression knows no social boundaries and just because you don’t hear about the grocery store clerk who is suffering, doesn’t mean that they aren’t out there. Suffering.
The notion that certain people in certain professional fields such as musicians are more predetermined or maybe predisposed to have issues with drugs and alcohol and thereby suffer from depression is not necessarily true. If a person has those tendencies within them, those tendencies are going to come out at some point in life. Whether you sing in a rock band or work on cars for a living, it doesn’t matter. You can still have issues with substance abuse and still suffer from anxiety and depression. As a society, we tend to over publicize the famous people who have these issues and we tend to forget the people who are in our lives every day that may suffer from the same symptoms.
Why does this all matter?
The good news is that because of people like Chris Cornell or Prince there is help available. There are organizations who are working to reach out to help people in everyday walks of life who fight depression issues every day. It is not easy, but you can fight it and you can beat it. You don’t have to be famous to reach out to someone who will understand what you are going through. Nobody is immune. It can affect anybody and everybody and there is help and support available even if you didn’t know it. At the end of the day, you can overcome substance abuse problems. You can overcome crippling depression and anxiety and there is hope.