Brought to you by the Depression Is Real Coalition, The Down & Up Show is dedicated to the reality of depression. Each week our hosts will talk with some of the world's top experts on depression, as well as people who have been impacted by this illness. The reality of depression is that it is a debilitating and potentially deadly medical condition that affects more than 15 million Americans every year. The other reality of depression is that there is hope.

Down & Up Show #34: CNN Editor, John DeDakis, Discusses Depression

REEF KARIM:
Hey everybody, welcome to the Down and Up Show on Depression is Real.org, I'm your guest host, Dr. Reef Karim, I am a psychiatrist and addiction specialist in Los Angeles, on faculty at the UCLA Neuro-Psychiatric Institute. On of the directors at Wonderland, the residential treatment center and a private practice in Beverly Hills.

And one of my goals in life is to really bridge the gap between academic medicine and really what's going on real-time on the street, in your home, at the office. And we have a guests (unint.) Down and Up Show that are really helping us in regards to depression advocacy, understanding depression, understanding suicide.

And one of those guests I'll be talking to right now. Today we'll be talking with Doctor sorry, today we'll be talking to John Dedakis, a former White House correspondent who is now a copy editor for CNN's Situation Room. John is also the author of the mystery suspense novel, "Fast Track" which was inspired by his sister's suicide in 1980.

The novel deals with the issues of suicide as well as journalistic integrity, anonymous sources and mentoring relationships. So I want to welcome you John, thanks for speaking with us today.

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Thanks very much.

REEF KARIM:
Great so John let's just start out with the book, tell us about your book, "Fast Track".

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Well it's the story of 25 year old Lark Chadwick, she's a feisty smart women but she's vexed that she doesn't know what to do with her life and and the book begins when she discovers the body of the aunt who raised her from infancy, after Lark's parents were killed in a car accident.

And the carbon monoxide poisoning of Lark's aunt, an apparent suicide, launches Lark on a search to find out more about her past. She goes to the small town where the accident that killed her parents happened, she gets a newspaper clipping and discovers, much to her astonishment, that she's the miracle baby who survived the accident.

The fact that nobody had ever told her before, well why not? So she convinces the newspaper editor to let her do a follow-up story. Two her of her sources are the mayor and the sheriff, they're running against each other for Congress. The election is one week away and each guy has a secret that will unravel the mystery.

REEF KARIM:
So it's interesting, what made you decide to write it?

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Well a bunch of things I guess you could say. I needed a creative outlet because I had been a reporter for a long time and then a writer, news writer at CNN, but when they made an editor, that's a little more tedious

REEF KARIM:
Right.

JOHN DEDAKIS:
And so I needed a creative outlet. I'd been researching a biography on a family friend who'd been murdered, but that project got bogged for a number of reasons, so I turned to writing fiction. And the story in a sense unfolded into the fiction the I'm sorry the non-fiction work in a sense folded into some of the fiction that I was doing.

And it I guess the nub of the story came from two different places, one is a car/train collision that I witnessed when I was a kid and that trauma, I guess had been long suppressed and when I was doing a writing exercise, I began to imagine what it might be like to have survived something like that as an infant and then be wondering more about your past.

And then of course there was the suicide of my sister that was also of course traumatic and so that is really the first scene in the book. And it was catharsis to kind of write that and so you know most writers will draw from their personal experience and I did.

And it was it was you know the story is not about the accident I witnessed nor is it about my sister's death, but you draw on those things to then weave your story.

REEF KARIM:
Was writing the book more of a therapeutic outlet for you or was it more of a I'm going to write this fictional story and it's going to involve things that maybe down the road can actually help my readers?

JOHN DEDAKIS:
I think that it was really just to be writing and creating and I think that one of the by-products has been that I discovered that it really might be able to be helpful to other people. It's not really a how to book, it's it's just dealing with real characters or characters who are drawn from real life in many ways, they're composite.

And it wasn't really thera it wasn't meant to be therapeutic although I think that the more I wrote, the more purposeful I felt. And the more I felt that what I was writing was helping would be helpful to others and that I think it helped me as well.

REEF KARIM:
Okay what can you talk a little about depression and how it's impacted you and your family or you know where's your (inaud.) with depression?

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Well as I mentioned, I used my sister's suicide as a way to jump start Lark's story and the opening scene is very much about what happened on the day my sister died. But and in her case I mean I can talk a little bit about that you know she was an extremely bright and talented person.

But she got married young and then she started making choices that took her farther and farther away from following the dreams and using her natural gifts. And I think that she she really just allowed herself to get more and more isolated and then it became harder for her to admit that she'd made some serious mistakes in her life.

She became, I would say, sort of a chronic liar, lying even about inconsequential things. And then at one point when she was confronted on that, she said, you know the lies sound better then the truth. And I think that may have been sort at the root of her problem, an inability to face the truth about herself and then doing something constructive to turn around that situation.

Does that help?

REEF KARIM:
Oh yeah again (inaud.) yeah it helps to see kind of where you were where you were where you were (inaud.), where you were going in the (unint.). How do you think your book raises awareness about depression (inaud.)?

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Well the I mean if I go too much into the book it'll probably ruin the plot for everyone, but I would say that suicide and depression are themes that run throughout the book and they're inextricably linked to the plot. Lark has trouble accepting that her aunt's death is a suicide.

She investigates the deaths of her parents. As she does that the issue of suicide and Lark's reaction to it persists. At one point she's faced dramatically with her own to be or not to be question. And I tried to deal constructively and redemptively with the issue.

In the end Lark finds purpose in life and consequently hope, so I guess I tried to deal realistically with the the issue from the standpoint of how people react to it in the lives of people they're around and you know in their sense. I mean I had to face you know my own question about whether I was going to take my life.

I mean this really wasn't a result of my sister's suicide, it actually preceded it. I was in college I was feeling more and more isolated, I was going through sort of a situation where I felt conflicted about what I was going to do because for the longest time I was going to into law and politics.

My dad was a lawyer so he and I were going to go into practice together I was going to then go into politics but when I came to the University of Wisconsin in the late ï60s, you had the anti-war movement going on and that really was a difficult time because you had the draft, you had you know a lot of major issues going on in the world that were impacting me.

I mean the the reason I think I went into journalism instead is because I felt that the rhetoric on both the left and the right was so overheated that I didn't really know what the truth was. I mean when I would go home from school, I'd argue the left wing line of my friends to my parents.

When I was at school I'd argue the right wing line of my parents to my friends. And then when I was alone I was confused and I think that that confusion in a sense sort of fueled my own isolation and that's a dangerous thing, or at least I found that it was because you get these feelings that life is meaningless, that there's no hope.

And if you don't really reach out, talk to anybody out it, you can give yourself some tunnel vision. And that's what was happening to me and what really turned it around, or at least what began to turn it around for me, was when I began to think about well I think it's time to kill myself.

And when I started thinking specifically about how I would do it, that got my attention and really caused me to step back and turn around and go a different direction and ultimately I think I was able to kind of walk myself you know out of it or it got to be a real serious situation.

REEF KARIM:
We're talking about stigma right and the Depression is Real campaign speaks to the diminished stigma that surrounds depression. So what's your what's your experience with stigma? You know in writing this book obviously there's history there with your sister and you as well. What stigma have you experienced in regards to treatment, in regards to diagnostic depression and suicide?

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Well I know that the stigma is out there, I can't say that I've personally experienced it but I know that well what I do, I'm comfortable letting people know about my sister's suicide and by doing so, my intent is to send a conspicuous signal that a person who wants to know more or who might be struggling with their own depression, has permission to talk about it with me.

To a certain extent, I can understand why a person is hesitant to talk publicly about their depression because it's it's personal and they're still figuring it out or they're struggling with it and it can be used against them, whether it should be or not I think that's a fact of life that has to be acknowledged.

But that's different then getting professional help, there shouldn't be a stigma about getting professional help. You can still keep that personal and private, but it's an important thing to do because that's the way you should get help, to to make sure that you're not just covering up the problem by, you know, drinking or drugs to anesthetize yourself or to cover up your feelings

REEF KARIM:
What advice do you have for people who have loved ones who are depressed?

JOHN DEDAKIS:
That's a good question I think that you need to reach out, you need to invite the person to talk. You need to be willing to listen non-judgmentally. I think you need to be willing to ask probing questions, but at the same time, let the person know that they have permission not to answer or that you know it's not like you're being intrusive, but you're at the same time giving them an opportunity to talk if they want to.

And then if it's obviously a really serious situation, you know, don't try to handle it yourself, but you know, try to encourage them to get professional help and I'm sure that there are you know in extreme emergencies, you know suicide intervention type programs that are available.

But you know I think people, what I've experienced and I've talked ever since my sister died and I feel that I missed some of the signals and she was also pretty far along so that when I did recognize it, it was a little too late because she wasn't receptive. So what I do is I'm I just I just ask questions.

I mean part of it is the reporter in me. But I just have found that people really have a hunger for deep connections with other people. I mean loneliness is I think a chronic problem in this society even though we are around a lot of people. And I've discovered that people love to tell their stories, they love to have an opportunity to talk about themselves.

And in many cases I've discovered that my questions help people think through issues they've been struggling with privately, but they they don't think anyone else cares or they don't want to burden someone with their issues. So I just think that you know reach out, take that risk. I mean what you know what they can say, no, I don't want to talk, okay, you know nothing really you haven't really lost anything.

But I think the failure to reach out, you know you could loose someone forever if if only there were an opportunity to connect.

REEF KARIM:
So okay, let's keep going. What other work do you do as a mental health advocate?

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Well I most of what I do is in a sense one-on-one and and unconscious. I mean I'm not a big joiner, I'm not involved in any kind of you know major programs, but I really I think on a very deep level, feel that it's important to be able to connect with people.

And I really like to reach out to people and get to know them better and so I guess, you know, most of what I do is on a one-on-one basis I think I unlock a lot of issues that a person is struggling with. If I know someone is depressed I will ask them straight out, are you think you know are you thinking of killing yourself?

And that really gives them an opportunity to get it on the table you know maybe they weren't really serious considering going through with it, but they'd gotten to that point of hopelessness where you know they were beginning to feel sort of like that was the only way out.

REEF KARIM:
A lot of people don't know they have depression, the just know they feel lousy and they don't want to talk to anybody.

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Right

REEF KARIM:
You know I I think it's a good it's definitely a good thing there. Where can people go for more information on your work?

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Well let's see, there are a couple of resources that I can I can put them in touch with on my work there's my web site www.John Dedakis.com and I'll spell it, John all one word, JohnDedakis and those are d's as in dog. Then there's of course the situation room web site, that's cnn.com/situationroom, that tells you a little bit about what we do here at CNN.

And just parenthetically Wolfe Blitzer, my colleague is he's a great person to work with. He's incredibly upbeat and he's really I think a great example of you know someone who loves his job and I think he's in large part loves his job so much because he's committed to finding the truth.

He really wants to know what it is and he's a fair and even-handed broker of of the truth and his search for it. And I think that really you know that search for the truth, knowing yourself, is is a key toward mental health. There are a couple of other resources as well there's the Dart Center which is at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

This is a a center, it's a global network of journalists, journalism educators and health professionals who are dedicated to improving the cover the media coverage of trauma, conflict, and tragedy. They really are a great resource for reporters who are stuck in a war situation or a natural disaster.

It helps them cope with it and it also gives them tips on how to cover it more compassionately. Then there's one other resource that I think is valuable Cope Moyers, William Cope Moyers, the son of Bill Moyers, the journalist living in the shadow of a famous father, was really traumatic for Cope.

I was one of his editors when he was a writer for me at CNN in Atlanta and this was at a time when his drug and alcohol addictions brought him really to brock [sic] bottom and he wrote a book. He's now an official with the Hazelden Alcohol and Drug Addiction, a treatment center in Minnesota.

And he wrote a book called "Broken" which is his story and very positive. Hazelton is www.hazelden.org and that's another really valuable resource that I think people might find helpful.

REEF KARIM:
That's great, well John I want to really thank you for speaking with us today and I I hope we have an opportunity speak again.

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Thank you, this was this was enjoyable, I appreciate it.

REEF KARIM:
Okay we appreciate you joining us to tell your story. Join us next time for another segment of the Down and Up Show. If you have any questions or would like to talk please contact the the web site at depressionisreal.org, okay, thank you very much.

JOHN DEDAKIS:
Thanks.