If that's depression, then I'm the Archbishop of Canterbury

Not one to be left behind when it comes to bien pensant faddism, the Archbishop of Canterbury just announced that yes, he too has suffered from depression. He had to seek medical help for it

last year. But it’s all right, he adds, because his daughter (who has also struggled with depression) told him that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s ‘just life’.

Well, it certainly is nowadays. Never before in the history of the human race, it seems, have so many people suffered from mental health issues. They even have their own annual celebration

now: World Mental Health Day. But here’s a question. Could there be some within this great morass of the depressed – often successful, wealthy people living comfortable lives, if not

downright celebrities like the Archbishop – who are simply tapping into the mood music of the times? Rather like various ladies of the #MeToo rush, so eager all of a sudden to publicise

their own experience of sexual assault, even if it only entailed a lecherous hand on a thigh or a clumsy stolen kiss. In other words, can it have become another fashionable bandwagon?

Women who come forward about their assaults, whether major or minor, and people who declare their battles with depression, likewise whether serious or slight, are now regarded as admirably

brave. Far from being a stigma, these misfortunes have become nothing less than badges of honour. And if Prince Harry can address us all, endlessly, on the subject of mental health problems,

surely it has acquired the ultimate cachet.

It has reached the stage where there are demands for the NHS to be allotted as much funding to treat mental illness as it receives for treating physical illnesses – but even those of us with

lousy maths can see that the numbers don’t stack up. Because everyone, from time to time, needs to consult a doctor for some physical ailment. Does everyone require the services of a mental

health professional? I don’t think so.

The most shocking aspect of this epidemic of depression is how widespread it is amongst kids. Teenage suicide has become a high-profile phenomenon, but not, as one might expect, amongst

disadvantaged youngsters from abusive families and with poor life chances. The teenagers one mostly reads about who commit suicide are from comfortable middle-class backgrounds and have

supportive parents and promising futures, often college students. It would undoubtedly help matters if young people simply deleted their accounts on those poisonous social media platforms

where they are so easily bullied, humiliated and undermined, but good luck with that particular Pandora’s box.

I suspect that many of those leaping on to today’s trendy I-too-was-depressed bandwagon are alluding to those difficult, unhappy periods in their lives which we all endure, when

circumstances have brought us low. That is indeed part of life. And it is not to be confused with clinical depression requiring the resources of the medical establishment. Just as an

unwanted hand on a knee is not a sexual assault but a minor annoyance to be swatted away and doesn’t merit bleating about in the media.

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