UNDERSTANDING THE ESSENCE OF MOOD DISORDERS THROUGH THE EYES OF POETRY

Psychiatric disorders have a history as old as mankind. The ancient literature is replete with vivid descriptions of various afflictions of the mind. Throughout history, the human intellect has assiduously tried to classify illnesses on the basis of common features between them. In fact, this tendency to classify extends far beyond the realms of illnesses to include virtually all phenomena that occur around us.

Psychiatric disorders have a history as old as mankind. The ancient literature is replete with vivid descriptions of various afflictions of the mind. Throughout history, the human intellect has assiduously tried to classify illnesses on the basis of common features between them. In fact, this tendency to classify extends far beyond the realms of illnesses to include virtually all phenomena that occur around us.
Though, the continued effort to classify and subclassify mental illnesses has helped in increasing our understanding and helped in carrying out research, it has its own inherent drawbacks. One of the major drawbacks relates to losing the very essence of the mental illnesses in the jargon of coding and classification.
For instance, understanding depression from a medical standpoint does not help clinicians understand the way in which an individual constructs and understands their depression, both personally and culturally. 1 Poetry and medicine, at first sight, seem an unlikely pairing. 2 A closer look, though, reveals a different perspective. Poetry is characterized by compression, an economy of words, image and metaphor and, hence, a poem has the capacity of capturing the depth of human experience. 3,4 It is said to transcend formal logic and be more faithful to the logic of emotion. 4

Could poetry help in rediscovering this lost essence?
This is the basic question that this research paper attempts to answer. We will be focusing on poetry related to Mood disorders in our present endeavor.
We believe that poetry can help us gain perspective which technical jargon is never able to convey. An analysis of poetry opens a new door to explore alternative methods of understanding mood disorders. An examination of the styles, diction, metaphor, simile used in the poems can help discover how mental illnesses can be understood outside the world of neurons and neurotransmitters. Such an analysis may help find a way for society to better understand individuals suffering from mental illnesses. 5

Portrayal of Depression in Poetry
The Diagnostic & Statistical Manual -5 6 outlines the following criterion to make a diagnosis of depression. The individual must be experiencing five or more of the following symptoms during the same 2-week period and at least one of the symptoms should be either (1) depressed mood or (2) Anhedonia or loss of interest or pleasure.
• Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day. Coleridge, in this poem, uses the metaphor of a ship to represent the mind. He describes the mental state of depression by using the phrases like "idle….painted ship" that is "stuck" with no "breath or motion." The frozen state of mind of a depressed patient is described by Coleridge as "a painted ship upon a painted ocean." Depression is associated with a mental state where nothing can alleviate the all pervasive sadness of mood. This is beautifully captured by Coleridge as he writes "Water, water everywhere…….Nor any drop to drink." The poet continues to describe the feelings of loneliness by deftly repeating the word "alone" three times in the last stanza. "Never a saint to pity on me" points to the hopelessness often endured during bouts of depression.
Another poem which vividly captures the essence of depression is "Melancholia" by Charles Bukowski (1920Bukowski ( -1994 8 . Keats advises "not to go to Lithe (ancient Greek river associated with forgetfulness) by taking to drugs or by "kissing the nightshade", suggesting deadly nightshade, a metaphor for committing suicide.

…me, I writhe in dirty sheets
Keats goes on to suggest that looking upon pleasurable things and reflecting that they will soon die, surprisingly cheer us up ("She dwells with Beauty -Beauty that must die; And joy, whose hand is ever at his lips bidding adieu; and aching pleasure nigh, turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips"). 13 The list of poems that capture the essence of depression is a long one. What we have tried to do is to feature a few of them.
The phrases like "My brain begun to laugh" and "My brain keeps giggling" gives a vivid description of a maniac state. Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his lyrical ballad "The Rime of the Ancient Marine" weaves the maniacal state by using the phrases "Souls …..from their bodies fly", "They fled to bliss, like the whizz of my crossbow." Coleridge continues "Fly, brother, fly! More high, more high!" to describe the sustained elevated mood.
The swings of mood from extreme depression to severe mania have been vividly captured by different poets. Samuel Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Marine" describes the bipolar illness beautifully as the first couple of stanzas portraying the dark days of depression gives way to the heady days of mania.

Potential Utility of Poetry in Mood Disorders
• Use as teaching aids for better understanding of the illness. • The patients could explain their symptoms in a better way by way of poetry as it is one of the few media of public communication that can be (more or less) trusted to represent honestly and authentically the truth. 1 • More patients could be identified as suffering from mood disorders not fulfilling the required diagnostic criteria. • Poetry tends to stick in the memory because of its intrinsic rhythms and so helps the patients as well as the clinicians to retain the lessons learnt from them. 15 • The use of poetry to describe the symptoms of various psychiatric disorders has the potential to take their description back to the narrative form, away from the tabulated forms, so characteristic of the newer textbooks and diagnostic manuals.
To conclude, poetry, far from being "an unusual pairing" with medicine, helps us to rediscover the complicated emotions associated with psychiatric disorders which can so easily be lost when we merely focus on the technical aspects alone.

Declaration of conflict of Interest
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