Geoff Gallop and depression
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He is one of many politicians who’ve suffered this illness. It is a huge step for him to give up power and go public with his condition. Not many depression sufferers, particularly in high profile positions do that. We had a minister here in the ACT, Simon Corbell, who went public about his depression a couple of years ago when he took several months leave from work.
I can relate to how hard it is to admit to people that you suffer from depression. In 2004, I had a couple of months off work because of it. It’d been building up for some time, and I’d put how I was feeling down to working very long hours under great pressure, plus some family problems which had been getting to me. Finally, I got to the point where I just couldn’t face another day of feeling so bad. I got first a couple of weeks off work from my doctor, just to rest, and begin working on how I was feeling. I thought things were improving and went back to work at the end of that, but could only manage a single day. Then I had another month off sick which lead into a couple of weeks of planned leave. I saw my doctor and psychologist regularly during this time, and my company was very supportive, telling me to take as much time off as I needed to get better, and providing other support. In the end, I changed roles to take some of the pressure off, and returned to work. I’m lucky that my employer is quite flexible, and I can manage my work mostly so that when I need to, on those days I can’t drag myself out of bed, I can rock in late, or work from home, or similar. Even so, I’ve found it hard to tell people clearly what is wrong - at work only my manager and our HR person know the details, to everyone else I’ve blurred the reasons for my time off and my change of jobs. Same with friends and acquaintances ….I’ve been fairly vague about it with most of them.
Until it struck me, I’d always thought of depression as a sign of weakness. I’m sure I still do have that thought in the back of my mind. However, I can vouch for how debilitating it can be - I was just knocked flat for months.
