Poll: What do you think of depression?

[Daniel Allsopp]

But there's also a growing fad of not giving a crap about anybody but yourself, especially on the Net. This coupled with a growing fad of 'knowing everything' and having to tell everybody about it. I really don't think that too many people would rather be known as mentally ill than as socially inept. For those that do, they are doing a very real issue a great disservice.

I think the reason for all of these people expressing powerful feelings on the net of sadness, or rebellion or whatever, is because of the anonymity of the internet. In person they might be afraid of showing their true colours, but on the internet they can scream their real feelings out loud with no consequence.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/magazine/13pets-t.html

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/babies-given-mood-drugs/story-e6freoof-1111118375620

Quietly weep for humanity with me?

I dare not read in case I develop murderous tendencies.

 

[skywalkerlion]

I find myself pretty depressed at night. I'm scared, regretful and lonely. I think about my dog dying, or one of my parents dying (hasn't happened, thank Christ) and other stuff. It's pretty irrational. I'm also very nostalgic. All around a depressed feeling. However, this only happens once my parents go to bed (or, you know, night). During the day I feel fine and it's hard to even recall what it feels like during the night.

It's self diagnosed, though. I've never really gone into detail about it, and this post is just to get it off my chest.

So yes, I (think I) deal with it and accept it.

 

[Tim Mazzola]

I get depression sometimes. I usually don't tell anyone about it, though, cuz they'd just think I was making excuses or attention whoring.

Of course, once I get out of it by myself I'm ecstatic and everyone is like "You had depression?! Why didn't you tell us?!" Weird world.

 

[RepeatAfterMe]

"I miss the comfort in being sad."
-Nirvana

 

[Daniel Allsopp]

I find myself pretty depressed at night. I'm scared, regretful and lonely. I think about my dog dying, or one of my parents dying (hasn't happened, thank Christ) and other stuff. It's pretty irrational. I'm also very nostalgic. All around a depressed feeling. However, this only happens once my parents go to bed. During the day I feel fine and it's hard to even recall what it feels like during the night.

It's self diagnosed, though. I've never really gone into detail about it, and this post is just to get it off my chest.

So yes, I (think I) deal with it and accept it.

When I am in company, my mood could be described as "blank", me not being happy or sad.
When I am alone, if I think too much, my chest gets tight, my vision darkens...

Lack of stimulation allows you to think better. Thoughts, in the wrong hands, are dangerous.

 

[Daniel Allsopp]

I get depression sometimes. I usually don't tell anyone about it, though, cuz they'd just think I was making excuses or attention whoring.

Of course, once I get out of it by myself I'm ecstatic and everyone is like "You had depression?! Why didn't you tell us?!" Weird world.

Humans seem to resonate with each other. If you act negatively, people will act negatively towards you. Likewise the inverse is true. <-- Why does this sentence sound incredibly nerdy to me?

 

[PatSilverFox]

Depression is not something to just dismiss.
By any means.

 

[VanTesla]

I think it's odd that so many of those 'anti-depression' pills have 'may cause thoughts of suicide' as a freakin side affect. Yeah...gee that helps.

I feel happy! Oooh that knife seems friendly.

Heh, they have to put that on every label for lawsuits... It happens though...

I've been a test dummy for 12 years and the side-effects run through the gamut.

 

[Not-here-anymore]

I entirely dismissed depression up until the point I was diagnosed with it myself, and realised how much it had actually affected my life.

The problem lies in the language of describing it - one can be depressed/generally a bit sad without coming anywhere near suffering from depression. In fact, given the emotional null-ness that is clinical depression, a number of people suffering from it are barely even capable of feeling depressed. If that word could be avoided in the English language as much as possible apart from as the name of the illness, it'd be much more widely accepted.

 

[badgersprite]

I refuse to help myself, in a way. From my point of view it is utterly impossible for me to help myself, but from any other point of view it seems absurd that I think that way.

Do you take your medication? Do you put one foot in front of the other and attempt to get on with your life as best you can? Do you leave the house at least sometimes? If you answered "yes" to 2/3 of those questions, you're not the type of person who makes me angry.

I've had many friends and relatives who basically use their depression as an excuse to become parasitic lumps of wasted space. They don't take their meds, they don't try to live their lives, they just lie in bed and watch tv. To hell with them. They will never be cured, because they don't want to be cured. (Also, i'm using "cured" as a relative term, since clinical depression is typically a lifelong struggle and not something that can be truly 100% cured.)

The thing you don't seem to understand is that, if they could do those things and just walk it off, it wouldn't be a disease. If you can get up and walk it off and be that easily cured, you never had anything wrong with you.

I'm not expecting you to empathise or anything, but this clearly shows a lack of understanding of why depression is a serious medical condition and mental illness. It interferes with your brain chemistry to the point where, no, you can't do those basic things that non-depressed people find so easy. You literally have no will to live.

OT: I think the discourse on depression is damaged by people thinking about depression in terms of their own experience. Like, if they hear someone talking about depression, they assume it must be the same as when they were moody and down and glum in high school, or when they went through a period of grief, and the thing is, clinical depression is not the same as either of those things. People assume that those with depression must be undergoing the same things they themselves felt or went through because human beings tend to find it hard to imagine people feeling things differently from they do. So we often end up with a lot of people confusing their situational depression with clinical depression, and thus assuming it's an easily fixable or not that serious problem.

 

[aei_haruko]

to everybody, there is a group on deviantart who is doing something EXACTLY like this heres teh link
http://getoverdepression.deviantart.com/
JOIN US!!!!! We have all known depression, I myself have tried to kill myself once. We want to change the world, help us do this!!!

 

[Gaiseric]

It's ify for me. I know it is a serious problem for people, but the only people I know who are depressed don't even attempt to try to do something about it and make things worse for everyone else.

 

[FightThePower]

I suffer from clinical depression, and I have seen a lot of people dismiss depression on the internet. They say that depression is an excuse, or to "just get over it"

Take heart in the fact that anyone who says that is a fucking moron.

Everyone goes through the symptoms of depression at some point but the key difference between a clinical depression and just having a hard time is how long you're depressed. If your girlfriend leaves you and you feel like shit for a week or two, that's not depression, even though it really does feel like it. If you've constantly been feeling down for months on end, then you might have depression. People who are depressed also have errors in their thinking - they'll call themselves useless or a failure when there's no evidence to support it, magnify their problems whilst downplaying their successes or see everything in terms of either total success or total failure.

Also, people who say they got over depression without any clinical intervention did not have depression. I used to have substantial errors in my thinking and was generally in a constant 'meh' mood and I needed help to get over that, and that was nowhere near clinically depressed. It's not something you can beat on your own.

 

[SsilverR]

It sucks

 

[Twilight_guy]

That said its important who know who has clinical depression and who is just mopping.

Well, that's easy. If someone is just mopping, you can tell by the mop in their hand, the wet floors around them, and the bucket of water they will have near them. If they are mopping in a public or work area where many people will be walking through, you should also be able to spot various "wet floor" signs near the person mopping.

...Yeah, I know you meant moping. I just couldn't resist.

Mopping makes me sad. *sniff* dirty water *sniff*

 

[frizzlebyte]

I think a large part of why people tend to dismiss it on the internet is because of the growing fad of people self-diagnosing themselves with mental illness as an excuse for being socially inept. Although it's usually something other than depression that people say they have. Aspergers is a popular one.

I agree with you. As someone who knows several people with psych disorders/illnesses, it always hurts to see people dismiss real, often dangerous issues like that. As a related aside, I have asthma, and several people who I've known have, to my face, dismissed it as nothing, or nerves, so...yeah. Just goes to show that some people are real morons.

Of course, I also have issues with the members of the psych community who like to make a disorder out of almost everything. So, I'm not a lock-step medical-model fan, either.

 

[Sinathor]

I've been clinically depressed for 5 years now and counting. It is still really hard to get help and to get people take you seriously, which is even more depressing and really disrespectful.

When this year started, my life started to go upwards significantly and everything was fine for a month or so, and then it began again. There is nothing wrong with my life, but still I'm just constantly sad and everything feels bleak.

I was denied psychiatric treatment because I told my doctor that the medicines I'm using aren't working. So they assumed that since my medicine doesn't work, I'm not depressed. You got to love the doctors here in Finland.

Depression is so common and is even natural when encountering hardships in life so not all doctors take it seriously. But 5 years of constant fighting and feeling like shit isn't normal, and it's so wrong that you can still after this time, be denied of treatment.

 

[Biosophilogical]

]What I've always wondered is whether it is an actual disease, or more like a predisposition to a personality type. In which case, do people call it a 'disorder' because they see it as a negative disposition, and would they call something a disorder if it made someone predisposed to confidence or happiness or something that people strive for?

Excellent point. If it were something like a general constant feeling of happiness, confidence or anything of that nature, yet still meant the same or a similar type of chemical imbalance was present, it wouldn't be seen as a "disorder." Hell, it isn't seen as a disorder. I know the types who are somehow immune to depression or any sort of sadness. Still, I guess that's better than being sad. That's seen as more hazardous to one's health and life so I guess that's where why the term "disorder" is coined.

What worries me though, si because people view it as a disease, rather than a personality trait, you get this socially ingrained view of them being 'sick'. Instead of seeing them as a type of person, they just label them and pump them full of drugs. It seems like bigotry that is so ingrained in society that nobody sees anything wrong with it.

And what really worries me is that how far does it go? If you start labeling personality traits as an illness, then you get the support of the people to 'treat' them. And what happens when they find there are chemicals directly responsible for religious beliefs, or the personal traits associated with certain politcal leanings? What's to stop people disconnecting the chemicals with the trait and trying to make it seem that the chemicals cause the view, essentiallly labelling views, traits and what-not as 'disorders', or chemical imbalances.

I have no issue with noticing the predisposition towards certain characteristics, but that's what makes the person 'them', and taking drugs should be about the individual wanting to be different to who they are when it is beyond there own control. Thise whole 'disease' label seems too close to some truly terrible atrocities that could be commited in the name of 'health'.

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

The thing you don't seem to understand is that, if they could do those things and just walk it off, it wouldn't be a disease. If you can get up and walk it off and be that easily cured, you never had anything wrong with you.

I'm not expecting you to empathise or anything, but this clearly shows a lack of understanding of why depression is a serious medical condition and mental illness. It interferes with your brain chemistry to the point where, no, you can't do those basic things that non-depressed people find so easy. You literally have no will to live.

Where did i ever say they can just "walk it off" or that i was "easily cured"? It took me years to get to a point where i could function normally. Even now, i fucking fight every single day not to fall into a black hole and put a bullet in my brain. All i said is that i had to take the first step. Actually, i didn't even say that, but that's the implication i was making in my condemnation of those who refuse to take that step themselves. I'm not trivializing depression. I've been there. I'm still there, even if mine isn't as severe as some. All i said is that i have zero sympathy for those who can't even bother to work toward their own benefit. I'm not saying they can "snap out of it"; anyone who says they can is full of shit. But no one can help you if you refuse to help yourself. That's it, and that's all i've been saying. Even those who are terribly depressed have some will to live. If they didn't, then everyone who was depressed would die.

 

[badgersprite]

The thing you don't seem to understand is that, if they could do those things and just walk it off, it wouldn't be a disease. If you can get up and walk it off and be that easily cured, you never had anything wrong with you.

I'm not expecting you to empathise or anything, but this clearly shows a lack of understanding of why depression is a serious medical condition and mental illness. It interferes with your brain chemistry to the point where, no, you can't do those basic things that non-depressed people find so easy. You literally have no will to live.

Where did i ever say they can just "walk it off" or that i was "easily cured"? It took me years to get to a point where i could function normally. Even now, i fucking fight every single day not to fall into a black hole and put a bullet in my brain. All i said is that i had to take the first step. Actually, i didn't even say that, but that's the implication i was making in my condemnation of those who refuse to take that step themselves. I'm not trivializing depression. I've been there. I'm still there, even if mine isn't as severe as some. All i said is that i have zero sympathy for those who can't even bother to work toward their own benefit. I'm not saying they can "snap out of it"; anyone who says they can is full of shit. But no one can help you if you refuse to help yourself. That's it, and that's all i've been saying. Even those who are terribly depressed have some will to live. If they didn't, then everyone who was depressed would die.

Okay then, in that case I'm sorry. I clearly misunderstood you and what you meant.