 Why 254, imagine? Welcome back to our health Wednesday. If you are just joining us, our discussion today is on how to deal with depression. Our guest today is Samson Mayna, as I had said earlier. Welcome Samson. He is both depression survivor and a counselor. I would like you to tell us briefly about your story on depression. Good evening viewers. My name is Meshak Samson Mayna. I am 32 years old now. I like seeing that because my history with depression comes with ES. I have one of the longest histories with depression because mine went all the way to almost 20 years. Because the first time I attempted suicide I was around 13 years. So now it is about 19 to 20 years. But now I have feel I am 3 years down the line going through counseling and other things. I started having issues within myself when I was very young. Because of coming from a family whereby people are not united. And when you are growing up you look at people and you start thinking like some people are mistreating others. You don't know what is going on but you are feeling like something is not right. And in the course of you trying to comprehend what is going on and you are young, your brain is growing and you are in your teenage years. I started developing issues whereby I could not understand myself. And along the line I found myself contemplating death so many times. I did not know what was going on. And that was back in the year 1999 coming to 2000. And in the year 2000 I attempted the first suicide. I thank God because it failed. And 2 years down the line I attempted the second suicide. 3 years down the line the third suicide. And after all of them failed I got to a point I started feeling like death is not a solution. I have to keep fighting. But you know the problem is I did not go through any counseling or any emotional help. I grew up with it. Went to high school after high school to campus. I was in Kenyatta University doing Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Sociology. And within Sociology I did some counseling courses within there. I could not understand what was going on. But I knew something was seriously wrong with me. And after graduating I tried getting jobs here and there I could not keep a job because I was always frustrated. I felt like quitting every time. I got jobs in 3 companies. 2 banks and 1 insurance company. I could not keep a job. So I resigned and went back home. Through the struggles of financial charges and I'm still going through my depression. Issues with my life are still not healed. I have not gotten any solution to any problem. I got to a point that I felt I was going to try another death. And maybe that time it would have succeeded. But I then got because in the year 2016 around February I gave up the fight and decided to look for help. And that is the time I started going through counseling. And after 4-5 months down the line making new friends. Meeting counselors and some spiritual help too. I started getting help and that's why today I'm here. Wow, quite a story there, Samson. So that leads me to a question I've always been meaning to ask. Who gets depressed? Well actually you're the first person I've heard who say they started as early as in their teens. So well do children get depressed? Actually the problem we are having in this country is because so many people who are depressed at their old age started getting depression when they were kids. There is so much going on in our families. And one of the reasons I'm saying this is because we have seen a lot of domestic violence, murders in the families, breakups and divorce. Children get hurt more than the adults in the family. But they don't have anybody to tell because you know when you are growing up there is the element of family secrets. Even if you are father and your mother fight you cannot tell anybody about it. So you have to keep it within yourself. And you also cannot be able to help them solve their problem. So you might be understanding who is mistreating who, but you don't have a say in this whole scenario because you are a kid. So these adults having their adult issues you cannot be able to intervene. So kids get depressed as young as six years. When somebody starts to understand there is love and there is hate. There is bitterness and then there is a time family is happy. Another time a family is in quarrels. That is the age that people start getting depressed. We have seen children like another one I think it was in Bugoma last month that committed suicide at the age of eight. It was a class two kid. So now looking at class two kid committing suicide it tells you this child started getting depression as young as five years. But within the age of five to ten years that is the time somebody starts to understand my mom loves me so much than my dad. Or my dad loves me so much than my mom. Or my dad and my mom are not in good terms because they are quarreling all the time. So from that young age somebody can get depression. Okay and so well other than domestic issues what are the other causes of depression? And especially for young people like young people well up to 30 something in their 30s? According to what I have dealt with personally and from the experience I have from dealing with people I classify this into four. One there is the medical part of it whereby some people are born with bipolar disorder and this is automatic depression. You get it you have no idea what is going on it is a disease that should be treated medically. And there are also other issues that come with the medical part of it whereby you might be getting treated for another disease but the drugs you are getting happen to trigger something into your mental capacity or your brain cells get interfered with it can cause depression but this is not common. It gets like into one out of ten people. The second part of it is the financial. So many young people don't have jobs, they don't have money people are struggling out here and when somebody gets to a point whereby they are feeling like they don't have any hope they are in a situation whereby if you give them money right now you have solved every problem they have but because they don't have it and every day they wake up they think about it every day they go to sleep hungry they go to sleep with a lot of debts tomorrow I don't know whether my radrod will come these issues grow into their mind and they become part of their life so instead of them thinking about how to grow themselves they are thinking about the problems they have that is the second part. Human relationships. How you and I relate. Whether it is in family, it is in your workplace it is in your school the way you relate with people people can interfere with your life and try to make decisions for you of which when you refuse to integrate what they are telling you into to you now you become part of the struggle you get a struggle into your mind whereby you understand what they are telling you might be helpful to you but your mind doesn't want to take it so now you start creating chaos between you and the people around you and this is one of the greatest issues we have in this country human relationships in marriages, in relationships where you were born, you have a crisis between you and your mother you and your father, your siblings this chaos are causing depression and especially marriages within young people we discuss about what marriages come into this whole thing because that is where the biggest problem is but the last category the first one is a history of suicide in the family you have a grandfather who committed suicide 50 years ago that years down the line somebody else comes and commits suicide 10 years later somebody else commits suicide when you look at the family tree in like 60 people who are related by brand whether it's distant close you see we have like 5 people who have committed suicide within that family there is a high risk of somebody else continuing the trend and the problem comes because when somebody commits suicide in a family you are supposed to take that whole family through counseling for them to accept what happens because there are two types of death what we call natural death it can come from a disaster or a disease or an accident and people tend to heal very fast if somebody dies from a disease the family will mourn one month later these people have already accepted what happened and they are starting to continue their life but when somebody is killed or killed themselves there is the homicide and then suicide people never heal and in most cases not many people understand this element people never heal from a death caused by manda or suicide and that is why when you see somebody is brutally killed in a family these people have to go through counseling and that's why you see institutions like Kenya Red Cross Saint John Abulance and others holding counseling sessions for people when we have terror attacks when we have disasters that kill a lot of people because these people have to be taken through the emotional healing part of it and if you don't do it or you do it and you don't do it correctly you are going to mess up with these people because those two types of death suicide and homicide families never heal so you find that in the family tree so many people have attempted suicide and some of them have succeeded and this can be prevented through taking the whole family through counseling okay well and how what are the signs and symptoms how do you know that someone is depressed or you as a person is depressed the first sign that you get is withdraw you can withdraw from anything withdraw from your relationship with friends you withdraw from your hobbies you start withdrawing from your business you find yourself trying to get time around you have had friends colleagues at work you have relatives you are trying to withdraw from their relationship and you tell it to spend time alone whereby you feel like you are comfortable when you are alone this is a red flag anytime you feel like you don't want to talk to people you have been talking to or you don't want to wake up that early morning go to the same work that you do and help you pay your bills this is a red flag it continues and people don't happen to realize that you are going through something it now gets to another stage whereby you are starting to feel bitter because life is pushing you to do the same things that you don't want maybe I am calling you and you don't feel like you want to talk to me I call you twice thrice it starts to make you feel angry you start developing bitterness towards the same things you have been doing all along but now they are starting to become a Buddha to you and when you are trying to solve this you find yourself alienating yourself completely from other things other than the ones you are avoiding now in your list of things that you want to avoid you are increasing you continue increasing the list of those things that you are avoiding until such a time you find yourself completely alone locked up in alone and that is the head of it somebody has hit the wall they are completely alone and whatever is in their mind is how to add this whole scenario in depression there are two exits one of them is somebody goes through cancelling and they heal second one is suicide but when you are alone you do not have a chance of getting through cancelling because you cannot even actually come out and say I need cancelling actually I have not seen anybody coming out boldly and saying I need cancelling because when you are depressed you actually don't know that you are depressed and well Samsung in my circle I might know a friend or two who went through depression well at first it was so so hard to understand what was happening to them so what are the strategies and also we didn't know how to treat the person so what are the strategies to use when dealing with a person who has suffered depression how should we as people as people who want to help how should we deal with them and how should they deal with it at first now when it first starts creeping in can it be controlled in the first stages ya you can control depression if it is discovered early depression to me it's like mental cancer it has stages and so how do those people around the person how should they treat their patient their person who is infected who is affected when somebody is going through depression the people around them try to see some things that they don't understand because when I know you for 5-6 years if you change one day I should be able to know that today this person is not behaving like yesterday but now the danger is when we see this we tend to say that this human being has started changing maybe they have gotten something they don't want to engage us all they have developed another mood they don't want to be with us so we give them space and this is the danger part of it it is a bit dangerous to give somebody space when you do not understand exactly what is going on because they are not telling you they don't want to talk to you they are just walking away if you give them space that is the time that you give depression a chance to grow so what you should do is keep talking to people around you and if you notice something that is not working out light today and tomorrow just try and talk about it when I'm working with you and you are my relative I should have that openness to ask you do you feel like you have a problem or I saw you doing this what exactly is going on somebody is obviously going to tell you no I am fine because that word fine is what depressed people used to define themselves and depend on the condition they have they will tell you no I am fine just feeling tired just not feeling like I want to do it next day this word fine starts to lose meaning because obviously somebody is going to say you are not fine so if you come to me and tell me now Samson I think you are not fine because now look you did not do this maybe it's work look you have not done this see this is what you did it wasn't supposed to be like this it was supposed to be the other way around so please tell me what is going on but you also have to be very technical do not go like you want to have a question answer session because when you try that they will feel judged they will start with the drawing well also I wanted to aside from aside from cancelling what else worked for you aside from cancelling are there other things that pushed you to get over the depression and also cancelling for me it was a long journey a very long history cancelling was part of it but it was not everything about the journey because now as human beings we also have some little part of religion in ourselves the spiritual part of it is also very important it doesn't matter which religion you believe in it doesn't matter whatever you believe in as far as you have a spiritual life it is very important because spiritual life gives you hope cancellers want to give you hope so it doesn't matter where hope comes from but you have to get hope from somewhere and then you start making new friends when you realize that you are going through depression a canceller has already told you we need to engage because now this and this is happening these are the signs of depression and at this point we can certify this condition and classify it as depression you're going to get guided you need to make new friends and also whatever was pushing you to depression you should learn away from it completely it doesn't matter whatever it is whether it was marriage, whether it was your job whatever was pushing you to depression first you have to learn away from it whether you come to it back and try to use another approach first you have to keep off from it okay well Samson let me ask my final question time is not on our side if you got depressed once maybe you've been depressed once what are the chances that this depression can happen again and also as you talk on that also make a brief statement on mental health awareness on how important it is and especially in our modern society today and for the youth if you have a history with depression you have had a face in your life whereby you were depressed you have another chance of getting depressed later in life if you do not treat the current situation correctly and what I advise people is whenever you realize you have depression and you go through cancering you start hearing and now you can understand what was going on first you have to solve whatever it was causing depression because if you don't solve it you still have a chance of going back there and then come out and talk about it every time you talk about your history with depression you get emotionally strengthened it is very important talk about it share the story talk about it tomorrow and the next day it is going to be part of your life you are going to feel comfortable talking about it and also reminding yourself your inner self whatever was causing depression so that next time you can be very careful because being careful is the key word here whatever was pushing you to depression do not go back there and even if you are going back there go back with a different strategy you don't make the same mistakes then from there try to engage people who have also gone through depression that is why support groups are very important talk to people about what you went through and how you came out of it somebody else is going to listen to it and tell you part of their story so whatever you think was very big that was causing depression to you somebody else is going to tell you I've gone through worse than this and then from there you get that inner strength that next time I'm not going to make the same mistakes you've talked about support groups where can people access these support groups or rather where can they find them where can people go through depression find people who can help them now they support groups let me say currently we do not have those privileges because now so many people who have gone through this tell you to hide their story and when I realized that there is that gap that is when I came out and started talking about my own story I kept the story for about 20 years but now I'm talking about it freely because I have realized there is a need for that and I am in the process of creating these groups and my target is to have groups in every county whereby we get counselors who are based in that county people who have gone through depression within that county coming together and forming a group a voluntary group whereby people can share their stories and when we realize there is one individual coattention other than the counseling these same people will be able to take up that issue and solve it well thank you so much Samson Maena thank you for enlightening us and telling us more on this topic thank you so that is all we had prepared for you for today so you back at home if you know someone or you going through depression Samson today has told us it is important to tell our stories it is important to share to other people because you may never know who it might get to so you can keep talking to us through our social media pages at Y254 channel that is on twitter a hashtag Y254 news and also you can talk to me through my social media page at www.mugena.com and we will talk more throughout the week have a lovely evening and have a lovely rest of the week thank you