By: Ed Hendrickson
It’scommon debate parlance to say that a tournament is depressing. We joke thatit’s killing us, running us threadbare—that is, the continuous cycle of cuttingcards and debating, weekend after weekend, month after month, year after year.Admittedly, debate is a highly time consuming activity. Many debaters complainthat between the sleep deprivation, malnourishment, and mental competition,they can’t seem to feel much else besides fatigue. At the end of the year, there’sthe usual chatter of quitting, but most everyone serious returns next year toendure the grind again. The soul-sucking exhaustion doesn’t seem stratified,either: people from the lowest brackets of tournaments and highly seededgrandmasters stagger like equals through this haze of debate-weariness, but formost, I think the struggle is largely metaphorical. The frustration anddepression of debate take on no realized form and are cast off soon after thetournament is over. But this isn’t the case for all of us.
The trouble with depression is that it can be made invisibleso easily by those afflicted. When asked, “how was your day?” the depressedperson need only say “fine” to immediately dismiss any suspicion that, in fact,their day was not fine. This is made especially easy in debate room chatter,where words like depressed and exhausted and dead and beat are all tossedtogether in a mélange of pseudo-psychiatric self-evaluations. Here, thedepressed person can blend in. For me, blending in was an effort to avoiddetection—to go under the radar of nosy friends and adversaries and teachers sothat I might avoid the public humiliation of being labeled a downer or a loser.Culturally, we treat mental disorders like they’re something to be ashamed of.Worse still, the word itself, depression, has been cheapened by overuse, whereeverything from a losing record to a lay judge is depressing. Stuck in thelanguage, I lost sight of whether I was actually depressed or not—whether I wassad all the time only because debate was emotionally demanding or whether I haddeveloped a legitimate disorder.
I have since confirmed that I am not alone in this regard. Icouldn’t tell you whether debaters have a particular depressive streak or not(this, however, would be a very interesting bit of research, perhaps for sometime in the future), but my purpose here is not statistical; I’m only speakingto my personal experience. I’ve met many debaters who are struggling with orhave struggled with serious depression, though countless others remainunfamiliar to me, I’m sure. Some are undiagnosed or refusing treatment, whileothers are self-diagnosed and self-medicating (through counterproductivemediums like alcohol), and others still are receiving medication andstruggling. They’ve experienced a range of reactions, from familial exile to warmembraces to moments of quiet solitude—some are lucky, others not. Sources ofanxiety and stress are just as varied: some are the survivors of abuse, someare struggling with their gender identity, some can’t see themselves gettingout of bed tomorrow, some never feel smart enough, some can’t begin to seethemselves as pretty, and some still don’t have a reason—they just know thatsomething is missing. Some are suicidal; some are not.
I would also like to make note of the fact that, althoughI’ve been speaking strictly of depression, many of the same conditions ofsilence exist for those who suffer from other, legitimate psychologicaldisorders. Depression has been my experience, so I’m speaking to itspecifically, but I know people who regularly struggle with dissociativedisorders, anxiety, OCD, ADD, ADHD, among others. I’m sure there are more stillwho I will never know.
The problem I wish to address here, to be absolutely clear,is the twofold problem of silence: there are those who remain silent abouttheir depression, and there are those who refuse to acknowledge theinvisibility of their peers, and thereby participatein its continuity. What’s important to recognize is not that depressed peopleexist, because to most people, especially in a liberal and open community likedebate, that’s just a fact of life; rather, we should direct our attention tothe pervasive unconsciousness to the emotional and psychological well being ofother people. We need to be good to one another in a way that transcends phaticconversation in the hallways, and we need to have at the forefront of our mindsthe idea that the subjects of our conversations (be it online on a blog, in apost-round rant about and RFD, or in an actual debate) are very real, oftenvulnerable people. Anyone could be depressed. The moral of the story is not ‘benice,’ but instead ‘be aware.’ Consciousness begins with openness and dialogue.
This can be hard, most definitely, and I’ll be the first toadmit that I’m not always available myself, and I know for a fact that anactivity like debate can be trying for a lot of people, physically, mentally,and emotionally. Of course, that’s when our awareness is needed the most. Whenit’s quiet is when it’s important to listen.