Carolina Marín: "Psychologists are not mere 'listeners'"

Major depression is a pathology that, although a few decades ago was overshadowed by a series of very harmful ideas for mental health (such as, for example, that having depression does not consist of suffering from a disorder but is simply "being weak"), today it is increasingly considered as a problem that must be taken into account. I laughed. Thanks to this, for example, there is pressure to make the health systems of the countries incorporate prevention and treatment measures for this type of pathology.

However, much remains to be done in the area of ​​awareness raising, and part of this is because in no rarely do they fall into a very simplistic and stereotyped view of what it means to be a person with depression; It is difficult to put a face to this disease. It is partly for this reason that books such as "Semicolon: The emotional story of a psychologist with depression", written by the psychologist Carolina Marín, who puts into words what she came to experience when developing depression and whom we interview here.

• Related article: "Major depression: symptoms, causes and treatment"

Interview with Carolina Marín: any psychologist is susceptible to falling into depression

Carolina Marín is a psychologist federated by the FEAP and a specialist in intervention in adults and adolescents, as well as author of the book "Semicolon: The emotional story of a psychologist with depression", recently published. In this interview he talks about the fundamental ideas that he transmits through this narration.

What led you to the idea of ​​writing “Punto y Coma” and what has been your main objective in narrating this story?

At first I used the narrative technique, that is, writing how I felt in each monument of the disease. Later, when I gradually got over it, I felt the need to make it public, with the sole objective of make people aware that depression is not a transitory state of sadness, but rather an endemic evil of the century XXI.

It is a very serious disease, and one that leaves a lot of pain behind. Perhaps if we know what happens to a person when they go through depression, we can better understand this pathology and know how to make better decisions in relation to the disease and who suffers from it.

Is the idea that psychologists, by virtue of being psychologists, should be able to keep disorders such as depression out of their lives?

That's how it is. It seems that mental health professionals are vaccinated against all mental disorders. And it is not like that.

Psychologists are normal people who have completed some studies, and who are trained throughout life, to help in the best way possible to solve the difficulties that patients pose. However, we professionals are also parents, we have children, we are children, cousins ​​and grandchildren. And we have to pay bills, mortgages etc. We have difficulties like any person. And having knowledge of how to help a person overcome depression does not make us immune in any of the cases.

And what are the negative consequences of having such a simplistic or even idealized view of psychotherapists, according to which they are practically robots?

Unfortunately, there is a general lack of knowledge about our profession. In addition to being poorly regulated in what is really important. Psychologists are not mere "listeners" of the different discourses of the patient. We are something else. You have to study techniques, understand the mind and how it works. The good professional has been training for years; well, I think all my life. And depending on its orientation, it will carry out one type of intervention or another. But we are not robots, we are human beings of flesh and blood, who suffer and suffer.

To raise awareness in society about issues such as depression and other mental health problems, is it important to go beyond figures and statistics and rely on stories and examples? Or can we trust everything to the world of scientific papers?

To raise awareness in society I think knowledge is important. Understanding what happens to a person when they enter this dark forest is essential to being able to help them in the most effective way. It would be necessary to do a job from psychiatry and remove the stigma that still exists. Because psychiatrists not only treat more acute people with complex psychopathologies, but they are the ones who They mainly administer psychotropic drugs, that is, anxiolytic and depressive treatments personalized to each patient. And these are vital to be able to unblock at some point the person suffering from depression, for example.

The world of scientific publications is vital because thanks to them we can, in the daily life of our profession, exercise with more guarantee, what the scientific community has discovered and endorsed. Although it is necessary to go further out and realize that the numbers that depression throws up in these times continue to grow very quickly and alarmingly. We should do an analysis of the situation and ask ourselves where we are failing so that people are becoming depressed at this level.

As depression has a thousand faces, is it common for people around us to suffer from it and we don't even realize it because they don't fit the stereotype of a very sad person?

Exactly, there are several types of depression, among them the most common, which is anxiety-depressive disorder. However, there are common symptoms. The most important thing is to be able to talk to the person and to be able to express what and how you feel. There is a symptomatology such as irritability, apathy, emotional blunting, marked decrease in interest and the ability to enjoy, feelings of worthlessness and guilt, low self-esteem, recurring thoughts that may be common to types of depression. When a person shows irritability, for example, it can be the prelude to entering a depression.

What should we do if we notice that someone in our environment may be suffering from depression?

It is vitally important that you put yourself in the hands of a professional who can carry out an assessment to later determine if you need pharmacological treatment and psychotherapy. Depression is not sadness, it is much more. It is a network of symptoms, where it affects not only the mood, the eating behavior, at the cognitive level, the patient's perception of reality. Understand that with the accompaniment of professionals the disease can be mitigated, and thus avoid major consequences.