Depression’s Upside
nytimes.com
Depression’s Upside
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: Depression’s Upside
#2Blogging as therapy?
He cites as evidence a recent study that found “expressive writing” — asking depressed subjects to write essays about their feelings — led to significantly shorter depressive episodes.
Re: Depression’s Upside
#3Blogging as therapy? He cites as evidence a recent study that found “expressive writing” — asking depressed subjects to write essays about their feelings — led to significantly shorter depressive episodes.
Perhaps, though I suspect many a depressed person might be prefer to write in private. And I would think the goal of the writing would be focused on the problem, not an ongoing commentary on the state of Ruby, democracy in America, or Julie & Julia recipes. An excellent article.
Re: Depression’s Upside
#4[deleted]
Re: Depression’s Upside
#5Re: Depression’s Upside
#6There's productive depression and unproductive depression. Some people aren't compelled into productive depression.
Productive depression is a dignified depression¸ where the person realizes that the object of the angst is a little elusive. They know what the problem isn't, and it is never the most obvious thing. They do their best to manage it and figure out what the real problem is.
Unproductive depression is simply where you stop thinking about the problem too soon. Either blaming a facade of the depression, the most obvious and apparent source of the depression, or by giving up hope that the facade is solvable. Essentially, these people give up and stagnate.
There is nothing more pathetic than seeing someone profusely blame the wrong thing for their depression. There's little chance of these people escaping into productive work, because they've given up. They can't even start by realizing that what they think is depressing them, might not actually be what is depressing them. That's step point five!
Depression does not make genius.
Where do I think productive depression originates? Well, I partly think it's a conscious choice where the intelligent person chooses not to ignore a problem, and there are a lot of problems to be depressed about. Stuff that does not need to exist. This really is only my opinion, but we shouldn't have to deal with depression. We shouldn't need to "cope" with stupid, arcane ideas. But we'll just have to manage for now.
Re: Depression’s Upside
#7How prevalent are anti-depressants?
I get the impression that a large percentage of the american youth are on Prozac or others, and/or even medication for ADD. And also that the normal response for depression is medication.
In the Netherlands this is quite the reverse. Anti-depressants (AFAIK) are only used as a last resort, or as a kick-start for the healing process when it is a very deep depression. Kids in highschool taking drugs against psychological disorders is almost unheard of, except in clear cases of ADD.
Re: Depression’s Upside
#8On a similar note, I found this book http://www.amazon.com/Solitude-Return-Self-Anthony-Storr/dp/... to be quite interesting. It discusses about solitude, its necessity and other related issues like depression in detail.
Re: Depression’s Upside
#9Blogging as therapy? He cites as evidence a recent study that found “expressive writing” — asking depressed subjects to write essays about their feelings — led to significantly shorter depressive episodes.
Maybe they have no one to talk to.
Re: Depression’s Upside
#10How prevalent are anti-depressants? I get the impression that a large percentage of the american youth are on Prozac or others, and/or even medication for ADD. And also that the normal response for depression is medication. In the Netherlands this is quite the reverse. Anti-depressants (AFAIK) are only used as a last resort, or as a kick-start for the healing process when it is a very deep depression. Kids in highsch…
I suspect that reports of this are highly exaggerated by the people that think that every problem is solvable through 'putting your nose to the grindstone' and that everything else is just 'weakness.'