Depression Quest contains at its outset a warning that if, “you are currently suffering from the illness and are easily triggered, please be aware that this game uses stark depictions of people in very dark places”. It does indeed. The experience is not entirely pleasant as it can hit quite close to home, as it did for me.
Depression enveloped me like a black cloud at the onset of this year, and as I stared at the page, I ignored the trigger warning and dove right into Depression Quest . Curiosity kills the cat, right? Maybe, but I have more lives.
I thought about putting my thoughts to words in February then back when I first played Depression Quest , but I felt crippled and unsure how to express my contemplations on a game about an illness that affects a plethora of people (more than 350 million people globally according to the World Health Organization) and can remain invisible to everyone. I doubt even my close friends were aware this year that the black dog was chasing me. One can keep it well hidden for fear of the stigma.
There’s a social stigma that exists towards mental illness. Recently actress Jennifer Lawrence who won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as the character of Tiffany in the film Silver Linings Playbook , a film about characters who are mentally ill, criticized the ridiculousness of the stigma when she said:
“It’s just so bizarre how in this world if you have asthma, you take asthma medication. If you have diabetes, you take diabetes medication. But as soon as you have to take medicine for your mind, it’s such a stigma behind it.”
She’s absolutely right that there is this social stigma with mental illnesses. There’s not the same social judgement if you’re physically ill. If your arm is broken and you’re wearing a cast and letting it heal, then no one will castigate you and tell you to hurry up and be healed instantly. However, if you’re suffering from a mental illness, then society’s attitude is frequently the reverse. In whispered tones or to your face, you will be told that you’re just “lazy” or that you just need to “get over it”. I once worked for an organization when a senior member of staff took time off for depression. I bit my lip as I heard the news, knowing that people would talk behind his back.
There’s a rage and frustration inside the minds of people with mental illness because of this stigma and the yearning to be healthy. I can relate to the lyrics in Sufjan Stevens’ song ““, where he cries, “AND I’M NOT FUCKING AROUND!” I’m not fucking around. I’m not lazy. I long to be well. Stevens in an interview with The Guardian spoke of an illness that befell him that remains undiagnosed in which, “it was like I was possessed”. I remember feeling possessed myself as a teenager when I was held firmly in the claws of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and I felt as though someone else had taken control of my body and made me wash my hands one hundred times in a row until the skin was raw and bleeding. I could only watch in horror, feeling helpless to take charge. I knew what I was doing was not rational or logical, but I’d watch on powerless to intervene.
Depression is like this too. There’s a coherent part of the mind still alive fighting to tell you take the logical decisions and ignore the negative self talk. I think a lot of people who do not suffer from mental illness fail to realize this. “Why don’t you just do something to make yourself better?”, “Exercise more! That’ll cure you!”, or “Go out more” are the platitudes given by well meaning friends or by people who do not understand, but it’s not so simple. There isn’t a neat and tidy solution that will cure all.
This is what I like about Depression Quest . It doesn’t glamorize mental illness. It shows that hope is possible, but realistically there is no happy ending that solves all problems. People frequently have mental illness for life and it’s a constant battle.
Depression Quest is an interactive fiction text game and illustrates how sufferers of depression can feel powerless to make a rational decision. The decisions that seem logical, that you know are the right things to do to make yourself better, are crossed out and impossible to choose as you become more and more depressed. You can see them, but you can’t select them. That’s how it feels when you have depression. The ‘good’ choices are right there in right of you, but are tangibly out of reach in your present state.
I hope this design choice can explain to people who don’t suffer from depression how it is to live with depression and how it’s not just a matter of snapping one’s fingers and being better. I hope too that it shows to people who live with depression that their lives are not anomalies, they don’t need to feel guilty, and they are not hopeless.
It helped me appreciate that about myself. I’d be speaking in conditionals to myself – I should’ve done this, I could’ve done this, I would’ve done this. It wasn’t supposed to be like this! But the past is over and cannot be changed and perfectionism is not realistic. Depression Quest unfolds life as being a series of choices. For those of us who suffer from depression, occasionally specific choices are unavailable to us even though we are cognizant of them. There are always other choices possible though and it can help to try not to catastrophize or think only in black and white. There are options available to suffers, and so to become better is an achievable goal. One does not need to continue in a negative feedback loop. The player can replay Depression Quest and see how different choices affect different outcomes. You can’t rewind and replay real life when you feel that your life is spiraling out of control and you’re falling into the pit, but Depression Quest shows that you can make decisions that will help you climb out of the pit into a place where your illness is manageable.
Depression Quest should be praised for spreading awareness of this common illness and helping suffers and non-suffers alike. It can be played for free or by paying whatever amount you wish to pay at its website . A portion of the proceeds made from the game is donated to iFred , a charity that aims to remove the stigma associated with it and, “ensure 100% of the 350 million people affected by depression seek and receive treatment”.
Depression Quest is well written and engaging for suffers and non-suffers alike. That it can help people with depression and aid in removing the stigma just goes to show how the medium of video games is flexible enough to allow a creation such as this and that video games do not need to be only about burly, steroid abusing men shooting zombies in the face with large guns. Video games can educate, and help, and heal, and Depression Quest does just that.
