Hell ... and Depression

[T]he official textbook of Catholic Christianity, the “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” reaffirms the Catholic belief in the eternal nature of hell. It omits the gory details found in earlier attempts to describe the hellish experience, but restates that the chief pain of hell is eternal separation from God.

Depression, as I've experienced it, is a gray curtain that makes communication with the world, and even movement, impossible sometimes.  Certainly I can't feel God is there, which is sad for me, as I've felt God's existence (or I guess technically speaking the Holy Spirit) since I was very young.  

But, as I've noted before, St. John Paul's favorite theologian, Von Balthasar, taught that Hell may well be empty.   I don't know what that means for others subject to depression here on Earth.  For me it is hope.