How super­hero cul­ture helped me to over­come my depression

Super­hero cul­ture is at an all-time high, tran­scend­ing com­ic book pan­els to leap onto big screens across the globe. At the same time as this surge in pop­u­lar­i­ty, evi­denced by box office records, there has been a dra­mat­ic increase in depres­sion among young peo­ple. In 2016, a sur­vey con­duct­ed by Par­ent Zone revealed that 62 per cent of teach­ers in the UK were aid­ing stu­dents’ men­tal health prob­lems on a month­ly basis. A sim­i­lar study added that 20 per cent of the UK’s youth suf­fer from depres­sion before reach­ing adult­hood. In fact, dur­ing both of these stud­ies, the NHS’ bud­get had a mere 0.6 per cent allo­ca­tion toward Child and Ado­les­cent Men­tal Health Services.

Although the dis­cus­sion around men­tal health is now much broad­er, with less stig­ma attached to it than in pre­vi­ous decades, it is still a tragedy that so many young peo­ple are liv­ing with depres­sion. In the US, close to three mil­lion ado­les­cents between the ages of 12 – 17 have suf­fered from at least one depres­sive episode. Though not direct­ly linked, these stag­ger­ing sta­tis­tics coin­cide with the rise of super­hero movies. While they are most­ly goofy, fun­ny and action-packed, super­hero movies also rep­re­sent many hard­ships in life that can offer heal­ing, or an escape, to the youth of today – the same way com­ic books did for me.

But before they helped me, they were help­ing gen­er­a­tions before me. Super­man, Bat­man and Won­der Woman were cre­at­ed as a means of help­ing a belea­guered nation cope with the after­math of The Great Depres­sion in the 1930s; their pop­u­lar­i­ty rose through­out World War Two. They have always exist­ed in times of need, and have for­ev­er inspired ado­les­cents to tack­le their problems.

Grow­ing up, I nev­er real­ly fit into any social group. I strug­gled a lot with my weight, hit­ting lev­els of obe­si­ty before I had even reached the halfway point of sec­ondary school. I was often ridiculed for my weight, as most kids are, though mine entered lev­els of vio­lence. Kids would hit me, telling me I could ​“take it.” I took many gut-shots. I nev­er real­ly under­stood why I let myself get hit, or even ver­bal­ly abused. But I did. I want­ed to show that I was above abuse, that it could wash over me and be gone with­in moments.

The truth is, I not only car­ried my own phys­i­cal weight. I car­ried the weight of expec­ta­tion – a first gen­er­a­tion British kid from a His­pan­ic fam­i­ly with the poten­tial to one day go to uni­ver­si­ty (every His­pan­ic parent’s dream). I didn’t know how to bal­ance these things, but I was incred­i­bly depressed. I didn’t know about depres­sion at that age. Sure, I under­stood the expres­sion, but I didn’t know how to iden­ti­fy it. Look­ing back now, those moments spent absent­ly star­ing at a wall, pray­ing to a god that I didn’t real­ly believe in to keep me safe at school every sin­gle day… they all speak of seri­ous depression.

My cop­ing mech­a­nism? I was (and still am) a nerd. Being a nerd is cool now. You can say it aloud and most peo­ple will think, ​‘Okay, cool’. Shows like The Big Bang The­o­ry have cer­tain­ly helped pop­u­larise this sub­cul­ture. But back then? Being a nerd was pret­ty tough. Friend­ship cir­cles were hard to craft, top­ics of dis­cus­sion with fel­low peers near impos­si­ble to agree on. Weird­ly, though, I found solace in that lone­li­ness. Look­ing back, I some­times pity myself, but it’s reas­sur­ing to know that part of me was hap­py dur­ing those years. The years of being obese and a com­ic book fiend.

My real cop­ing mech­a­nism was com­ic books and super­hero car­toons. If I wasn’t devour­ing issues of Jus­tice League, I was rewatch­ing episodes of X‑Men: The Ani­mat­ed Series and X‑Men: Evo­lu­tion. With the lat­ter in par­tic­u­lar, I final­ly found a char­ac­ter I could relate to – not a hero but a mor­bid­ly obese super vil­lain: Blob.

I devel­oped this men­tal­i­ty that, to help hide my frus­tra­tions and sad­ness with the world, I would instead be hor­ri­ble and hard-head­ed. Blob rep­re­sent­ed all of that, and then some. In his first appear­ance in the series, an episode titled Jean and Blob, he was con­stant­ly harassed and mocked by high school stu­dents. The only per­son to show some sym­pa­thy his way? Jean Grey. Blob fell in love imme­di­ate­ly, though what he real­ly fell in love with was not Jean’s per­ceived beau­ty, but rather her care toward him.

This was some­thing I had been yearn­ing for. This episode, though, made me realise that my aggres­sion was mis­placed. Jean only took a lik­ing to Blob because he was friend­ly; when he turned vio­lent and pro­tec­tive, she shunned him. While that’s the ori­gin of his exis­tence in the car­toon realm, that was my ori­gin of learn­ing how to inter­act with peo­ple. Kind­ness often begets kind­ness, after all. While the days after that episode per­ma­nent­ly became etched into my mind were tough, I start­ed to talk to peo­ple at school. I still received some abuse, but I was at least mak­ing friends – form­ing my own Jus­tice League!

I fin­ished sec­ondary school still a recluse, with bare­ly any friends to my name, but I was at least able to talk to peo­ple. I once con­sid­ered end­ing my life, but X‑Men comics con­stant­ly made me realise the beau­ty of being an out­cast and feel­ing per­se­cut­ed. I realised that my emo­tion­al intel­li­gence was high, that I could out-write any­body in my age pool and then some. I start­ed telling myself ​‘maybe peo­ple out­cast me because they fear me.’ This mantra has echoed in my mind ever since. I would nev­er have realised these things with­out super­hero cul­ture, with­out a band of char­ac­ters who resem­ble my own exis­tence, either phys­i­cal or men­tal. Nobody would talk to me about my san­i­ty, nor would I seek help. My aid came sole­ly from read­ing com­ic book pan­els and watch­ing car­toon super­heroes go about their awe­some activ­i­ties on a dai­ly basis.

In the pro­ceed­ing years, I met the woman I even­tu­al­ly became engaged to. I went from wear­ing XXXL t‑shirts to Medi­um. I adopt­ed my out­sider nature and helped it evolve into a skill. I became a writer, using my years of iso­la­tion to hone my craft and become even bet­ter at what I do. I still have some night­mares of my past, some things that still trig­ger me, but I would not have over­come my dan­ger­ous youth depres­sion if not for superheroes.

Nobody can promise that super­hero cul­ture will erad­i­cate youth depres­sion – that’s bar­bar­ic and impos­si­ble. But it can at least offer young peo­ple the chance to con­nect with some­one – or someone’s strug­gle – with­out being judged in the process. They can find their own moment of heal­ing, or their own cop­ing mech­a­nism. The same way kids in the ​’40s had Superman’s bat­tle with being an out­sider, or I had Blob, this gen­er­a­tion has their own pletho­ra of won­der­ful char­ac­ters to find some form of solace in. Its grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty will only spawn more sto­ries and strug­gles that audi­ences can con­tin­ue to con­nect with.

When­ev­er you next find your­self groan­ing about yet anoth­er super­hero film being pro­mot­ed, remind your­self of what it is doing for ado­les­cents and young adults. Its exis­tence means more than sim­ply being an enter­tain­ment franchise.