How Genetic Testing Helped Me Finally Understand My Depression

For as long as I can remember, virtually my entire life, my depression has been there. Caused in part by genetics, there was no onset tragedy or milestone that kickstarted it, though different events in my life surely have added to it over the years. Though my depression has been an ever-present, static force in my life, the way I view my diagnosis has changed drastically over the years.

Growing up, mental illness wasn’t something people talked openly about. Made fun of, yes, but talked about on a serious level? Absolutely not — unless it was to warn someone that a person was “crazy and dangerous.”

As a child, my mother struggled with her own mental health.  It wasn’t something ever discussed, but rather something I eventually deduced from multiple trips to the emergency room when my mother more than once took far too many pills and needed her stomach pumped.  The whole household was an over-emotional battleground where everyone seemed to be yelling or crying more often than not, yet mental illness wasn’t spoken about.

The teenage son of one of my father’s friends died by suicide. Even the word “suicide” was spoken in uncomfortable whispers as if it might be contagious if spoken too loudly. Yet mental illness was never broached.

I grew up believing having a mental illness was shameful, making you simultaneously a danger to everyone, including yourself, and a joke. Kids hurled it at each other on the playground as a top-tier insult. Adults gathered around, whispering and gossiping about other people having it. Crazy, Looney, Insane, Unbalanced, Maniac, Lunatic, Wacko. That was the last thing anyone wanted to be labelled.

I knew something was off inside me. Yet I struggled in silence, afraid to speak up, afraid to be labelled, afraid to admit how hard it was some days to even pull myself out of bed. I carried with me a great shame for something I didn’t even understand, because nobody would even talk about it.

I was in my 20s the first time I had a mental breakdown and was hospitalized. The doctors I saw were focused on “fixing me” as if I was a car with a broken axel. They prescribed me medication after medication, pills to wake me up, pills to put me to sleep, pills to raise my mood, pills to regulate it, pills that promised to fix everything, but in reality did little. Up and up my dosage went as my doctors stubbornly insisted it would fix everything if only the right combination was found. Meanwhile, I got all of the negative side effects, and virtually none of the benefits. I was so over-medicated that I felt like a zombie. Eventually they labelled me treatment-resistant and we parted ways.

That left me feeling broken beyond repair. After all, even the doctors with all of their miracle drugs couldn’t fix me. I went through a very dark period of self-loathing where I made some very bad choices, especially in the love department, because I honestly didn’t think I deserved any better. I was incapable of loving myself at that time so I chose to be with someone incapable of loving me, either.

When that relationship eventually imploded, as all ticking time bombs eventually do, I came out the other side with one thought crystal clear in my mind:

I can’t keep living like this.

I couldn’t keep floundering day to day, constantly miserable, consistently hating myself, crying virtually nonstop, not wanting to live but not wanting to die either. Something needed to change. And fast.

I found a new set of doctors, ones who didn’t push pills as the panacea of mental health treatment. One of the first things they did was to give me a genetic test to help determine what medications would work best for me based on my DNA. Surprisingly, the test came back with an alert attached. I had not one, but two copies of a genetic mutation that severely hinders my body’s ability to make or process mood-altering chemicals.

Suddenly, as if flipping a switch, both the depression itself and the treatment resistance I’ve dealt with my entire life finally made sense.

Even more importantly, I had the earth-shattering realization that I wasn’t broken after all!

I wasn’t broken beyond repair. There was a mutation hardwired in my genes that made some of my organs not work as well as they should.  It was just like many other illnesses.

That realization helped me shift my perspectives on my mental illness. If I wasn’t broken, I didn’t need fixing. What I needed was treatment in order to function better. It was no longer about looking to cure my depression — because you can’t cure something hardwired in your genes  — but rather about finding ways to adapt my life and learn to cope as best as I can.

There was still the matter of talking about my illness. As much as it pained me, I still carried with me an underlying shame and discomfort in saying any words associated with mental illness out loud. The stigma attached was so deeply ingrained that I was legitimately afraid of what many people would think if I spoke about it publicly. I could speak about it one on one, behind closed doors, with my therapist, but I sincerely worried what others may think if I spoke out about so much of what I was feeling so much of the time.

Much like some people conquer their fear of swimming by jumping into the water, in a moment of strength I forced myself to dive right in.  I began to write about anything, everything that I was feeling.  I never assumed anyone would care to read it, let alone that anyone else might relate. Slowly but surely, though, I began to gain an audience of people who had walked similar paths and understood exactly how I felt.

Once I opened the floodgates, a deluge of emotions followed. The more I talked about mental illness both in general terms and personal experiences, the easier it became to accept my diagnosis and the less ashamed I became, stigma be damned. Even moreso than writing to help myself heal, I began to want to write more to help others know they weren’t alone.  The same depression that had once made me feel broken and useless had now given me purpose.

It has been a long, wild ride over these last 40-some odd years of living with mental illness. In the beginning, I didn’t even understand it beyond vaguely knowing it was seen as something shameful to have. Then for many years, I hated myself for my diagnosis, believing that I was inherently broken and deserving of only the worst in life.

Eventually, though, I came to realize that mental illness is not some scary boogeyman whose name you dare not repeat. I have an illness, but it doesn’t have me. It does not define me, either. It is a medical condition, much like many others, that needs treatment. There is no shame in that.

These days, I am proactive with my mental health treatment for my depression.  I know I have limitations due to the severity of my illness, but I’ve packed my mental wellness toolbox full of ways to cope with my condition. I refuse to see myself as broken anymore. I am disabled, yes, but not broken. It just took me half a lifetime’s journey to get to this point.