For three years at their home in the historic town of Bergen op Zoom in the Netherlands, Omar and Cissy Dekker began each day the same way: waking their teenage daughter, Iris, lifting her out of bed, and trying to coax her into a life she no longer wanted.
When Cissy, a former forensic nurse, asked Iris what else she could do for her before leaving for work, the answer never changed: “Can you put a pillow over my head so I can die? Please make my suffering stop.”
Depression was not new to the Dekkers. Omar has a history of it, as do other members of his family. But Iris’s was different. Her symptoms were psychological and physical—a condition called functional neurological disorder, associated with severe psychological distress and depression. It often presents with symptoms like paralysis, seizures, and chronic pain, and was once referred to in medical psychology as hysteria. Iris had spent more than two years in a wheelchair after a seizure left her unable to walk.
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Think for yourself, not by yourself.
Cissy described the look in her daughter’s eyes as “empty,” and her father called it a “black hole of depression.”
The symptoms began early in Iris’s adolescence. In 2019, at the age of 13, she began complaining of constant pain in her back, head, and stomach. At first, she pushed through it at school, during shifts at a bakery, while babysitting, and playing tennis, relying on a combination of painkillers and antidepressants, counseling at school, and cognitive behavioral therapy.
