I felt utterly alone.

About six months later, he agreed to tell his family. Then we told my family and some friends. But the damage of keeping his secret was already done. He minimized the severity of his depression. He would muster every ounce of energy to appear upbeat through birthday gatherings and Christmas dinners; once home, utterly depleted, he’d crash for days.

The secrecy around his illness had a tremendous impact not just on him, but on me. Yet because it was his illness, and he didn’t want to talk about it, I felt as if I had no right to talk about it either. So outside of my family and a few close friends, I didn’t talk about it with anyone. I didn’t talk about my frustrations in trying to find him proper medical care. I didn’t talk about how helpless and hopeless I felt as I tried to lift his mood. And I definitely didn’t talk about that leaden, sickening feeling I had every day after work as I pulled open the front door of my apartment: I’d check every room one by one, not knowing what I would find.

It was two years before his depression even remotely began to lift. Eventually, I told my supervisor and a few colleagues at work when he was admitted to the hospital’s mood disorders clinic, and I needed to leave for his midmorning appointments. They were understanding, and I started to talk about my situation more freely. Over time, I started dropping it casually in conversation, as if having a depressed spouse was, well, normal.

In fact, it is: about one in five adults in the United States experiences mental illness in a given year.

As I opened up I was surprised by the number of people who empathized.

“That sounds like my entire childhood,” a friend said, telling me for the first time how she grew up under a cloak of confusion and silence with a mother who has bipolar disorder.

“My husband went through a major depression,” admitted an acquaintance at a cocktail party, and we proceeded to discuss the pros and cons of electroconvulsive therapy over a glass of Cab Shiraz. Somebody I worked with revealed that her last vacation wasn’t actually a holiday. She had returned to her hometown for her brother’s funeral, after his suicide.

I had known many of these people for years, yet I never knew how much mental illness affected their families. It made me sad and then angry. Why does talking about mental health in your family have to be such a secret? Why are we not sharing our experiences?