Endal’s Healing Power – Editor’s Comment
“Like many, I watched with great emotion and not a few tears the story of Endal who helped his master come to terms with both physical and psychological injuries received during the gulf war. It was a hugely powerful story.
Two aspects of the story leapt out at me at the time and have stayed with me. The first was an uplifting insight into the dramatic psychological and emotional improvement Endal was able to bring to his owner. According to the documentary he more or less single handedly brought back his master’s ability to speak fluently and to share emotional feelings with his forgotten and struggling wife and famliy.
The second dimension of the programme was unintentional, very subtle but saddened me greatly. And that was that ,although the dcoumentary conveyed visually the devatstating emotional impact of the situation through moody filming, the word depression was barely, if at all used during the entire programme.
I wonder why there continues to be such a stigma and cloud of misunderstanding attached to the term and condition. For some strange reason it seems easier to talk about attempting suicide and the other effects of depression such as social withdrawal than to use the term “depression”.
What a challenge society still has to face when we still away from an open acceptance and common understanding of the debilitating and very real illness that so many people suffer and live with day in and day out.”