Depression and Harry in OotP

[Kate Harding]

No: HPFGUIDX 110661

I was interested to read Del talking about depression in recent posts 
about Voldemort, because I feel that depression is what Harry is 
suffering from for most of OotP, and have been meaning to write 
something about it for a while now.

I knew when I read PoA onwards that Jo must have had depression at 
some point in her life, because her descriptions of certain feelings 
are so clear, so accurate, that I immediately recognised them from my 
own experience. (I later found, in reading interviews, that she had 
indeed suffered from both depression and from artist's block, both of 
which I have experienced and which are related for me - I had a 
breakdown last year triggered by events during my art foundation 
year). She describes those feelings so vividly, in fact, that I found 
some sections really quite uncomfortable to read. For example, she 
uses her experience in writing about the Dementors - she has said so 
in interview. But what I really want to look at is Harry in OotP, as 
I don't think I've seen a connection made elsewhere between his 
behaviour and depression.

Please excuse any generalisations I make. Although I recognise my own 
experiences in Harry's, other depression sufferers will feel 
completely different. Depression is a complicated beastie, and no two 
sufferers will have the same experience. For example, although one of 
the common conceptions of depression is a lack of feeling, some 
depressions are associated with a lot of anxiety, and some with a lot 
of anger. Mine was the former - Harry's is clearly the latter. He is 
overwhelmed by feelings of injustice, and by rage.

His mood swings, triggered by the tiniest events, are familiar to me -
in depression, there is a heightened sensitivity to small things, 
which contributes to the problem that the sufferer's nearest and 
dearest are often baffled by their behaviour. I was up and down like 
a yoyo to begin with, one minute absolutely terrified, unable to 
remember that I had ever felt happy, the next I felt fairly normal or 
even happy, unable to understand why I had just felt so bad, and all 
swayed by such tiny things. There is a particular 
characteristic 'sinking feeling' which is common to depression, and 
brought on by small things which remind you of your perceived 
negative qualities or situation:

'The warm glow that had flared inside him at the sight of his two 
best friends was extinguished as something icy flooded the pit of his 
stomach. All of a sudden - after yearning to see them for a solid 
month - he felt he would rather Ron and Hermione left him alone.'

'Harry felt a dull, sinking sensation in his stomach and before he 
knew it the feeling of hopelessness which had plagued him all summer 
rolled over him again.'

This describes so accurately the feeling that the bottom had dropped 
out of my world which I got when I remembered that things were bad.

There are a million theories on the causes of depression, but one 
possible trigger which is recognised is a prolonged period of 
perceived failure, uselessness, helplessness, being defeated or 
trapped - which is why it's so common among the unemployed. No wonder 
Harry should succumb, then: not only did he experience an extremely 
traumatic event at the end of GoF, making his emotions and thoughts 
negative to begin with, but he then spends a hellish summer at Little 
Whinging, in which he's completely cut off from any positive 
distraction, utterly in the dark, and completely unable to be of any 
help. There is nothing to prevent him brooding on any feelings of 
failure and regret over Cedric's death, on his own powerlessness then 
and since:

'It was bad enough that he kept revisiting the graveyard in his 
nightmares, without dwelling on it in his waking moments too.'

'He had nothing to look forward to but another restless, disturbed 
night, because even when he escaped the nightmares about Cedric he 
had unsettling dreams about long dark corridors, all finishing in 
dead ends and locked doors, which he supposed had something to do 
with the trapped feeling he had when he was awake'.

Of course those corridor dreams were more than they seemed, but the 
trapped feeling is simply that - a feeling of powerlessness - and the 
feeling of there being nothing to look forward to is also well known 
to depression sufferers.

By the cognitive model, these are 'ideal' (for want of a better word) 
circumstances for developing depression. The theory is, roughly, that 
when you think about negative things, it makes you feel bad, and when 
you feel bad, you are more prone to thinking about negative things 
and remembering negative feelings - the negatives seem closer and the 
positives farther away - and so if you dwell on these thoughts and 
feelings you will quickly spiral down and down. So, Harry's long 
boring summer with nothing to do but remember how bad he feels and 
how hopeless things are makes perfect sense as a trigger for 
depression.

When viewed in the context of depression, I believe 
Harry's 'irrational' behaviour during the early parts of OotP becomes 
understandable. Here are some common effects of depression:

1. Anger
As I say, not universal - I had none - but common is enormous rage. 
Sufferers often feel that they must be 'bad' because they are so full 
of anger. Harry is alternately apathetic and filled with rage at 
everyone and everything. He's either very quiet and withdrawn, or 
he's shouting.

2. Apathy / the small things become harder.
The feeling there's no point trying is common to depression. It 
becomes hard to do even little things, and hard to make even small 
efforts to help yourself. Which ties to:

3. People don't really care.
When you feel that bad about yourself, you can't believe others 
really care about you, or if they do they are deluded and would be 
better off without you. 
2 and 3 combine to produce the kind of behaviour we see here:
'He would not go down to dinner; he would not inflict his company on 
them. <snip> The feeling of being unclean intensified. <snip> It came 
as a slight shock when somebody hammered hard on the door a few 
minutes later.' These bits come from 'Christmas on the closed ward'. 
Harry, Fred and George have overheard speculation that Harry is being 
possessed by Voldemort, and Harry withdraws at supper, staying in his 
room until 6pm the next day when Hermione, Ginny et all make him talk 
to them. He goes hungry for 24 hours rather than inflict himself on 
others. By this point he has also become convinced that they're all 
talking about him and would rather be shot of him. Ginny points out 
that she knows that he's not possessed - something which might have 
occurred to Harry in other circumstances, but he didn't even try to 
help himself by talking it over with his friends. In his right mind, 
he would know that they care about him and want to help, but in his 
depressed mind he can't recognise this, and can't make the small 
effort to help himself by talking to them about it.

4. Lack of self-compassion
The mistaken idea that he is a burden to his friends is also typical 
of depression. People who tend to depression, or who are depressed, 
often haven't learnt to be compassionate to themselves. They haven't 
developed the healthy inner voice that would tell them that they 
aren't bad. This makes perfect sense for Harry, because from 15 
months he had no *external* compassionate voice, so how would he 
learn to internalise it? When something goes wrong, a depressive will 
berate themself - 'How could you be so stupid? You're such a failure, 
you always mess up, this is all your fault,' etc etc (exactly the 
message he's always had from the Dursleys), where a healthy person 
might say, 'OK, that didn't go so well, but everyone makes mistakes. 
That doesn't mean you're not a good person.' A similar mechanism is 
in play when an angry depressive thinks: 'People are always letting 
me down, they all hate me, they treat me so unfairly,' instead 
of, 'Hm, I don't like the way that person just behaved to me, but 
they may well have had good reasons. I'll talk to them and find out.' 
Sound familiar?

I've written quite a lot, so should probably stop for rereading (and 
more importantly dinner), but I'd like to finish with a few quotes 
from 'Overcoming Depression' by Paul Gilbert.

'Our behaviour changes when we become depressed. We engage in much 
less positive activity and may withdraw socially and want to hide 
away. Many of the things we might have enjoyed doing before now seem 
like an ordeal... Our behaviour towards other people can change, too. 
We tend to do fewer positive things with others and are more likely 
to find ourselves in conflict with them... Depressed people sometimes 
because agitated and find it extremely difficult to relax. They feel 
like trapped animals and pace about, wanting to do something but not 
knowing what. Sometimes, the desire to escape and run away can be 
very strong. But where to go and what to do is unclear.'

All very accurate descriptions of Harry's behaviour in OotP.

And the diagnostic list of symptoms:
Low mood or marked loss of pleasure
Significant change in appetite and marked weight loss
Sleep disturbance
Agitation or feelings of being slowed down
Feeling fatigued
Feelings of worthlessness, low self-esteen, tendency to feel guilty
Inability to concentrate
Thoughts of death and suicide.

Many psychologists would add feelings of hopelessness and being 
trapped to that list. However, this is the list by which people are 
medically diagnosed with depression, and for that diagnosis you must 
have the first of those and at least four of the others. I believe 
Harry meets those criteria. And although I think you have to be very 
careful diagnosing a fictional character with a mental illness - 
ultimately that depends on what the writer intended - I feel we can 
safely do so in this case because we know Jo has experienced this for 
herself. I think we can make that leap and theorise that she intended 
to be writing about depression when she wrote OotP Harry.

psyche
(btw, I'm doing much better now :) )