Thanks to The Mary Sue for bringing Dr. Janina Scarlet‘s interesting Harry Potter-inspired articles on depression, bullying and anxiety to our attention. Below is an excerpt from the depression article (followed by a link to the full text) as it appears on The Mary Sue, using the Dementors in Harry Potter as a metaphor for Major Depressive Disorder. If you have struggled with depression, perhaps you’d already recognized these characters as symbolic of that experience. And if you’re in the greater Cleveland area and would like to talk to someone about depression diagnosis and/or treatment, remember that we are here.
In the third book of the series, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” we are first introduced to the Dementors, awful creatures that feast on human emotions and consume their souls. The Dementors are said to suck out all our happy memories, causing depression, hopelessness, and emotional devastation. The stronger emotional baggage one has, the more likely the Dementors are to sense them. It is therefore not surprising that the Dementors have such a strong effect on Harry, who has experienced more trauma in his childhood than most people do in a lifetime. When the Dementors are near him, Harry is able to relive the specific moment of his mother being murdered over and over again. He is able to hear his mother’s voice, scared and pleading with Lord Voldemort to spare Harry’s life. This is the only memory Harry has of his mother’s voice.
The Dementors not only retraumatize Harry, they disable him. The first few times he faces them, he loses consciousness, unable to fight them off. As strange as this reaction may seem to some, it serves as a great metaphor for the effects of Major Depression. Did you ever feel so overwhelmed by depression that you could not move? Did you ever feel that the world around you is too dark and hopeless? Did you ever think that nothing will ever get better? The truth is, many of us have. J.K. Rowling purposely described the Dementors this way, as a kind of a demented tormentor, that forces us to experience the most excruciating emotional pain. Rowling is no stranger to depression, having struggled with it herself.