“Depression is the flaw in love,” says Andrew Soloman in his book, “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression.” I have been drawn to depression in literature and our lives here on the coast of Oregon for two reasons.

I have been struck in my research on the affliction as to how many authors have admitted to acute attacks of this deadly disease. Emily Dickinson, Robert Burton, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and William Styron are only a few of these.

In addition I once received, at school right before lunch, a sealed note in my mailbox that said, “Mr. Mohr, by the time you read this, I will be dead.”

Fortunately, with the aid of the principal, we were able to hunt the student down, still alive. The writer of the note had had a most excellent friend who stayed with the victim as the barbiturates and booze came up late at night, and the friend took my student to another school that morning. This was my first experience with depression among the young and not the last.

Depression is never easy to talk about. Even Hamlet had trouble with the disease. He has been called the ultimate melancholic, as depression used to be called. He wore black and walked morosely around, muttering inanities - stereotypes all.

Antonio in “The Merchant of Venice” says, “It wearies me, you say it wearies you Š such a want-wit sadness makes of me, / that I have much ado to know myself.”

John Milton wrote a whole poem on melancholy, “Il Penseroso,” where he celebrates monastic isolation, gloom and old age. Melancholy was not necessarily bad. Robert Burton in “The Anatomy of Melancholy” anticipated Freud by trying to find a connection between mind and matter in depression but only succeeded in recognizing that the disease is multifaceted.

It is easy enough to find other talents who have described depression artistically. Emily Dickinson said, “I have a Funeral, in my Brain.” Vincent Van Gogh's last picture, of black crows flying over a bright yellow cornfield with a road that goes nowhere, was painted just before he shot himself.

Virginia Woolf is just as indirect in “Jacob's Room.” Jacob, looking out a window at people, muses: “Their lack of concern for him was not the cause of his gloom; but some more profound conviction - it was not that he himself happened to be lonely, but that all people are.”

Woolf herself was a classic case of depression. Her husband after her death wrote: “pervading her insanity generally there was always a sense of some guilt, the origin and exact nature of which I could never discover.” Woolf eventually weighted down her pockets with rocks and walked into the Thames.

William Styron, the author of “Sophie's Choice,” has written a marvelous little book on depression called “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.” The title comes from Milton's description on how Hell is lit in “Paradise Lost.” It is also an apt metaphor for the disease.

Depression is a disease, though doctors and scientists have been hard put to make any physical connection within the body to the mental condition. Biologist Lewis Wolpert wrote “Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression,” available in our local libraries as are all of the books mentioned above, and he says scientists are not sure where depression comes from and what to do about it.

Nor am I. The student mentioned above had given me personal poems to read, dealing with suicide and other symbols of death. As teachers have been trained to do, I confronted the student and was given a denial of such intentions. The note in my mailbox had been an apology for lying to me.

Unfortunately that was not the last student I have had with such intention. Josh Messerle was a delight in second-year Latin a long time ago, and his death through depression shook me as well as this whole community. His mother has given me permission to mention him specifically as a victim of depression so that other teenagers can be kept from that final solution of their disease.

I was lucky once in intervention through quickness and help by the principal and the student's friend. Later the student realized that depression can be controlled. In the first book mentioned, Soloman said that he had a friend who came to his rescue in the midst of an attack, and later he could control his depression through medication and support from friends.

Whatever works with depression and suggestions of suicide, use it. For local help, contact South Coast Hospice Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention program, 267-6606.

Ralph Mohr taught English and Latin at Marshfield High School for 31 years. He welcomes comments and suggestions regarding the column at rmohr1565@charter.net.