SeelenSchatten

Two women and one man, all suffering from severe depression, are accompanied by a documentary filmmaker for a period of one and a half years.

Starting point for the film is their acute depressive phase. How does the illness affect their lives? How do they experience their stays in the psychiatric clinic? At what point do they feel healthy once again? SOULSHADOWS explores the darker side of the human spirit and the many facets of depression. The goal of the film: to promote understanding of those people who, even today, are still stigmatized because of their mental illness.

With housework it was a catastrophe. If my son came to visit, I let the dirty dishes sit around til the following Saturday. Did nothing... no laundry for two months...
Hélène P.

My depression was like a protective shield, so that I realized things couldn't go on that way.
Anonymous young woman

I didn't see anything but black; the hole that I myself was in.
Charles E.

Depression as Illness

We have all experienced low moods, feeling “down,” bad days and grief. In everyday speech it is common to say, “I feel depressed”. But the illness of clinical depression belongs to a qualitatively different dimension that has little to do with everyday ups and downs. Depression sufferers experience an extreme lack of motivation, joy, interest, hope, and self-confidence; they are affected by feelings of guilt, emptiness, and anxiety, by sleeplessness and sometimes by delusions. “I can't want to anymore” is a key statement for the clinically depressed.

It is remarkable to see how depression sufferers attempt to struggle, sometimes for long periods of time, against their feelings of depression, making things even harder for themselves with heavy self-reproaches, only to finally “capitulate” to the illness. It often takes a stay in a psychiatric clinic in order for this mental suffering to finally be perceived as an illness, rather than as personal failure. The clinically depressed are dependent on active help from the outside, and are often forced to withdraw from daily life and professional duties.

Diagnosis and treatment often prove difficult. It can take a long time before an adequate treatment method is found, because the symptoms of depression manifest themselves in a multitude of ways. Each individual will be affected differently; a treatment which works well for one person may have no effect on someone else. Treatment with anti-depressive drugs is often the only way to bring patients out of their mental standstill and offer them the possibility of actively facing their own lives. Psychotherapy and other therapeutic forms are just as important, contributing to the sufferer's ability to structure and manage daily life and to come to a better understanding of depression.

Clinical depression is often – but not always – triggered by clearly discernible factors. Many mental disorders and psychic pressures – caused by loss, the death of a loved one, major life changes, stress – may result in severe depression. Whether or not these factors lead to illness depends on an individual's profile: biochemical processes, personal disposition, past history as well as social context may all play a role. However, most experts agree that at this point very little is known about the underlying causes of depression. It seems that patients are affected by a number of factors, but today there is insufficient knowledge of the interplay between these factors.

SOULSHADOWS - Knowing and Seeing Are Not the Same

by Dr. Berthold Rothschild, M.D., psychiatrist and project consultant

One day someone comes to see me at my office – but not as a patient. He's a filmmaker, he tells me, and he wants to make a film about depression. Would I agree to act as psychiatric consultant for the project? I'm sceptical: so many articles are constantly written on the subject, interviews published and films produced. Is he just another vulture feeding on other people's suffering? And what kind of 'consulting' does he want? He's probably just looking for someone to put a professional stamp on the project, so he can sell it as being 'approved by a doctor'. As it happens, I soon find out I'm wrong.

Dieter Gränicher isn't planning to do just a quick shoot. He wants to immerse himself thoroughly in the subject and is prepared to spend many months, or even years, on it. And he doesn't want experts to define and 'explain' the difficult subject of depression: he wants to get his information from the patients themselves, who are after all the real experts on the subject of 'unwilling sadness'. He's not looking to research and document an illness, but rather a form of existence in which people suffer over long periods of time. And he wants a 'consultant' because he had quickly sensed that his work would not allow him to stay on the 'outside', but rather would often make him feel uncertain or confused, and might affect him psychologically as well. But I still have my doubts: will it really be possible for him to win over for his film project people who have withdrawn into themselves and turned their backs to the world?

Would he be able to convince them to cooperate? When even we, as physicians and health professionals, are so often unable to break down the boundaries and establish relationships with these patients, when even we are sometimes barely able to learn to deal with their distance and resistance?

After two years of working together with Dieter Gränicher I must admit I was wrong. He succeeded, where we often fail: in developing a long and profound relationship with the depression-plagued protagonists of his film. In giving them (and us, as viewers of the film) an extensive and nuanced glimpse into the complex experiences and suffering of what - in generalizing and superficial terms - we call 'depression'.

Upon closer inspection, the people he filmed reveal considerably more differences than similarities, and the catch-all medical term 'depression' often proves inadequate in describing them and their suffering. From him, the 'specialist of the gaze', I have learned that difficult situations may be grasped not (only) through knowledge and speech, but also through looking, watching and keeping an eye open, in such a way that they reveal to us things we otherwise wouldn't notice, and thus wouldn't experience. And another thing: by watching these images and scenes, the observer (the 'voyeur') and the observed (the 'protagonist') become joined in a commonality that can be attained only with great difficulty, if at all, in the so-called 'therepeutic relationship'.

The pre-condition, however, is maintaining fairness, and avoiding a know-it-all attitude – qualities which we professionals have often lost touch with due to routine or even to cynicism. With these qualities, the film becomes a true 'document of the encounter between people under difficult conditions'; the catch-all category 'depression' recedes into the background and becomes merely the occasion for this difficult enterprise. And we understand how Dieter Gränicher succeeded in doing without all the gimmicks and tricks of his trade. Stubbornly and capably, he remained a 'participant observer'; it was only later that his endlessly long efforts grew into this wonderful film.