Disasters and Depression
Published by Yazad Jal December 30th, 2004 in HealthI was chatting with a close friend yesterday. He is generally quite composed, but seemed very disturbed over the destruction caused by the Tsunami. Disturbed enough to tell me that he’d been crying for some time. I was surprised. He had lost no family or friends and thus was not affected personally. He’d never been moved to tears during earlier disasters. But there was something in the entire magnitude of the Tsunami that made him grieve for the suffering and the loss of life.
I was touched. And also intrigued. How many of us have been moved to tears in empathy with those whose suffering is often beyond tears? Speaking for myself, I only remember two occassions. The second was last month as I watched Tales of the Night Fairies in Calcutta. The first was many many years ago when I saw a movie on Jewish violinists in Eastern Europe who were captured and killed by Nazis. (Can’t seem to remember the name of the movie)
A quick search on google news lead me to the Times of India which has two articles on how bad news can trigger depression.
If a vicarious experience can cause so much sadness, how much worse must it be for those right there suffering for lost ones. I can’t even start to gauge that kind of hurt.
Touching post.
Yazad, the name of the movie is The Piano by Roman Polanski.
I couldn’t stop crying on 9/11. My husband forced me to switch off the TV and just get out somewhere, so I could recover a bit. That was one incident that just invokes extreme sorrow in me every time I hear of it. In the recent times, I think it was Besslan which ripped my guts out like that.
while science is still struggling in understanding emotions, we know one thing for sure .. rather than registering deep grief or hurt, the brain goes into shock. that way the full extent of the disaster is not registered by the person. obviously still the cencerned person will experience deep hurt but the brain and mind is a resilient thing which can bounce back (if willed) from the deepest of chasms.
nice post Yaz. I did cry when I saw the devestation in Indonesia.
>KS, Polanski never directed a movie called “The Piano”. Though, he did direct a movie called The Pianist.
And Yaz mentions “many many years ago”, substituting for many many as >= 2; I would discount the movie The Pianist.
the pianist was a .. (what else) .. pianist and not a violinist.
1. violinists who were
2. many many years ago
.. a different movie?
The movie is neither The Piano (1993) directed by Jane Campion, nor is it The Pianist (2002) directed by Roman Polanski.
I was around 13-14 at the time so it’s circa 1985-86. But those times movies were released in India much later than the international releases (sometimes 5-10 years later).
The only actors name that I vaguely remember is Timothy Bottoms, but I couldn’t find the film in his filmography.
The list of Timothy Bottoms films can be found here The only Bottoms WW II film, that I can remember being aired in Mumbai was ‘Operation Daybreak’. But I can’t remember a violinist in that one. It was about Reinhard Heydrich’s assasination. I can recall the film as if I saw it yesterday. The ending is still vivid in my mind.