Professor Patrick McGorry, officially “Australian of the Year”, yesterday criticised Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s recent pledge to provide $277 million for suicide prevention.

He seemed to think it wasn’t enough.

He called the failure of Australian governments to put more money into mental health services for the depressed a “national obscenity”.

He told reporters: “We wrote to the previous Prime Minister in April, and we’re three months down the track, another 600 Australians are dead from suicide.”

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So what is depression?

Depression is a sad/miserable/despondent emotional response to the experience of suffering.

Human suffering cannot be understood properly unless one has a proper understanding of what being human means.

Human suffering cannot be properly responded to without an awareness of the human capacity for relationship with God.

Believing in God, one sees depression and suffering from a different perspective — still a challenge, but less overwhelming.

Without that, no matter what pills, electric shocks, counselling sessions etc. are employed, the root causes of depression are not touched.

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To quote Elder Zachariah, “Depression is a hangman which kills the energy essential for the receiving of the Holy Spirit in one’s heart. A depressed person loses the ability to pray . . . .

“We greatly offend the Lord when because of our afflictions and sorrows we fall into depression . . . misfortunes and sorrows are sent us by God’s providence to test us.”

S0, seeing somebody in the throes of major depression, should we say to them, “Pray more!”?

No, not in most cases.

Unless a person has prepared himself by a lifetime of disciplined prayer . . . you’ll be hard pressed to start teaching him a prayer-life when his spiritual energy is at its lowest ebb.

If one’s life doesn’t already have a supernatural foundation, it will collapse under pressure like a house with no proper foundation.

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One person who coped with personal suffering, and helped hundreds of other sufferers by her words and example, especially by letters that she wrote, was . . . guess who?

Blessed Mary MacKillop.

Reading her published letters recounting her hardships – and her temptations to depression – is a real inspiration.

Especially in the second volume (entitled “Mary MacKillop in Challenging Times”).

It can be purchased online at www.marymackillopplace.org.au/store/view_category.asp?id=30