A documentary to bring depression out of the closet

Barcelona"Living stuck in a tunnel, long and with no way out." Marce is one of the six witnesses who lend their voices and faces to the documentary. Anhedonia: Inside Depression, which premieres this Monday at the Aribau cinemas in Barcelona (with tickets sold out) and will be broadcast on Saturday night, October 11th at 33rd, coinciding with Mental Health Week. For an hour, Marce and six other patients explain what it's like to live with a fairly unknown, often misunderstood and trivialized illness, and reflect on their future. The title of the film refers to the medical term that describes the inability to experience pleasure or interest in activities that had been considered gratifying. As happened to Joel, a "nice and cheerful" teenager, in his own words, who at age 11 began to feel that He didn't like his image in the mirror. "Things are not as they always seem," emphasizes this young man, who today says he can see the end of the tunnel to the point that he will no longer need to take even the small amount of medication that helps him stay stable. "It's not cool to depend on a pill to be happy," he points out.

Journalist Fidel Masreal followed these people for a year, who in the presentation confess to having lost their enthusiasm for everything after losing their partner or who recount suicidal thoughts as a result of a toxic relationship, or the pain of not having heard the mother-child bond after birth. Masreal, specialized in covering information related to mental health in The Newspaper, is also the co-director of the documentary with Facundo Beraudi and explains that he chose the patients based solely on their diversity of origins and age. "We were very clear that we wanted to be true to reality, without filters or minimizing the disease, to be direct," says the journalist, who signed the film in 2008. Living with depression, in which, following his mother's illness, he sought to understand and explain the causes and treatments for the disorder. Now, the approach is different, and during the 60-minute documentary, the only protagonists are the seven witnesses, who "speak without a script."

A Message of Hope

The camera finds the witnesses at home, with their families, or doing what they enjoy. And in this intimacy, they let loose to express not only their feelings but also the problems faced by people suffering from mental disorders. The lack of staff, the waiting lists at public psychiatric and psychology units, but also the difficulties in finding help among their closest circle due to a lack of knowledge about depression, even though its prevalence is very high: it is estimated that between 8% and 16% of the population will suffer from it at some point in their lives, but 15% will never. Underdiagnosis or the lack of early diagnosis are other negative factors that surface throughout the documentary. Masreal, however, assures that he takes away the "message of hope," that "depression can be overcome." Marce says this at the end, saying that he is beginning to see light out of the dark tunnel.

The documentary is a Broadcaster production and has had the support of the National Pact for Mental Health, Catalonia's roadmap for deploying measures and services to improve the conditions for patients and their families. "We want it to be a useful tool" to discuss depression in schools and community centers, explains Masreal, who offers his work for screenings and discussions.