Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-09-12
Follow-up Service.

Urite to tell you of my erperi-
ence as tpeH as to ask your aid. /
belong to that large company OF
Inconsistencies of tchom you hare
irritten 1Uith such understanding. I
speak not of the lGorrteS at their
1UorSt, aUhen everything seems hope
less. but in partial recovery. The
question comes again and again:
How do knolD iUhether am get
ting .t0ell? Up one day, doion the
merit. Somebody should 1prite a
neuraSthenic UerSion OF "The Mind
That Found ITSELF"
Wen, after long experience, think
I can help those tuho share my
things: First, the gloom and the
sense of incapactty wiH return; so
1CiH every symptom of the con-
founded torture; but though the
pain is Just as severe as eUer, your
potDer to stand it is greater: you can
take the blotOs and they floor you,
but though you're doiOn, you are not
out. Meat, the lighter periods, 1UHen
life is half north liUing, though you
can't tell Uhich halt, get to be
longer. Third, If you force yourself
hard enough and at the right time,
you can get the better OF it, not
1Oholly there's always an undercur-
rent of the upset., but enough to
let you do something. Last, don't
make any decision or say or do or
1Crite much tUllile the depression is
on; it isn't 1Dhdt you really mean.
And really last and most: Get some
body that you care for and, still bet
ter, 1Dho cares for you, to talk things
oUer NTH. Don't shut it all in. And
as a postscript, please remember that
If you haze been through q genuine
attack of neur1Sthenic depression,
he'll has no terrorS and there isn't q
thing on earth you can't stand
except another attack.
ONE WHO KNOWS.
Reply.
At the moment I am not replying
directly to this statement; nor to a
letter from woman in the same mail
telling me of the details of her neuras-
thenia, which has fixed itself on fea,
of mental disorder, because she has
had two aunts who had it. She ha:
dreamed that she, too, was afflicted
and a sister-in-law talked unwisely
about the heredity faint. Nor am ]
writing of the fact that, with this as a
center Of devastating thought, this lady
finds little to live for; what advice she
has been able to get doesn't help, and
she knows she should get absorbed in
her work, and get out of this condition
not to repeat the same story in a hun
dred versions, but to say something
about recovery.
What these cases need is following
service, and that's precisely what few OF
them get. Hospitals provide it for sur
g1cal and similar cases to complete the
cure, and the severer mental disorders
are closely watched by family and pro-
fessional advisers, but those who man.
age to live as other men and women
(but with what struggles few of theil
family or friends know go to a psy-
chiatrist when at their worst, get q
perfectly correct diagnosis, some assur-
ance that things are not what and not
as bad as they think they are, ant
then are just set adrift to steer fol
themselves.
When you have been skating on thir
ice and fallen through, you need q
plank and somebody with cool head
The ground under neurasthenics is just
as uncertain, and their needs are the
same. This victim contributes few
planks from his own experience, anc
he had some one with a cool head and
q warm heart to come to his rescue
again and again.
I have recently published an article
In Hygeia proposing a misery clinic
as one Of the great needs of the hour
and I gave some illustrative cases.
am now receiving letters from patients
who wish there were such a clinic
around the corner or within a mile or q
hundred miles, and they'd walk it, not
for Camel" but for a far more des-
perately needed eomfort-the comfort OF
getting some assurance and advice as tC
how to proceed to follow up the direc-
tionS that they received In some brief
interview in a doctors Office.
It just isn't rational to expect these
victims of an unfortunate temperament
to pull themselves unaided out of all the
holes that lie in their path.