against depression
By Anne Stameshkin
This story (audio and transcript available here) covers the high rate of teen suicide on Nantucket. The community is struggling with how to cope – and how to prevent further cases; psychologists and trauma specialists are working with police officers and teachers, training them to identify (and recommend to counseling) kids who suffer from depression. At a town meeting earlier this year, Harvard’s Robert Macy urged parents to take the time to really listen to their kids, stressing that this was more important that actively trying to prevent them from harming themselves. All of this seems like good work and excellent advice.
But I was saddened (if not surprised) by one approach – removing “depressing” literature from high school English classes. Does anyone else find this alarming?
As administrators and town officials follow Macy’s advice, teachers are taking their own precautions.
English teacher Page Martineau says her department won’t be assigning some of the more depressing books on its reading list.
Hamlet is out; so is Death of a Salesman. Romeo and Juliet stays, though. But Martineau is sacrificing one of her favorites.
MARTINEAU: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It takes place in a mental institution, and I just felt I’d like to get away from mental illness.
I’m the first to admit that literature can have a powerful influence (more complicated than simply positive or negative) on young people’s lives, but I disagree with the department’s decision to avoid “depressing” books. Isn’t it possible that reading such books and talking about them in a classroom setting would actually have a more restorative impact than pretending they – and the emotions their characters feel – don’t exist?
Are they removing The Catcher in the Rye? So let’s assume for just a minute that high school in the 21st century is more socially taxing than it was when we were in school…wouldn’t have good literature to turn to be helpful for students amidst all the Queen Bees and cliques, etc?
Anne, I completely agree with you. One of the things depressed people do is isolate themselves. If they read a book portraying someone who is going through similar struggles then maybe they won’t feel so alone. Your idea of discussing these things openly in class is a good one too; talk about the elephant in the room.
It reminds me of a story arc in the TV show “Boston Public” a few years ago. One of the younger teachers started something called “the suicide club” where he talked openly with his angsty teenaged students about the turmoil of emotions they were experiencing. Of course some parents and teachers were outraged and tried to stop him, but it really helped the kids.
This relates to the whole idea of banned books, too. I think that people often get outraged or upset over unpleasant things in books–mental illness, suicide, slavery, sex, what have you–because they think that by depicting those things, the book is implicitly endorsing or promoting them. Whereas actually, 9 times out of 10 the book and the author are interested in starting a discussion about those touchy subjects, or at least asking readers to question how they’ve always thought about them. It’s strange to me that so many people–the banned-books club and the that’s-too-scary-for-kids-crowd–appear to see books as didacticism rather than openings for discussion.
But on the other hand, I guess it’s also a natural human impulse to shy away from things that make us uncomfortable rather than to look it them in the face. Does that make writers the bravest people in the world?
[...] discussed the links between depression and creativity on this blog before—from a report that some schools on Nantucket were banning “depressing” literature in response to high [...]