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We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

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Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#61

Post by eshvk »

khitchdee wrote: post #45
eshvk wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in India and the conditions could be described to be bleak enough to make the most optimistic person sad. Suicide rates there were 10x what they are in the west. I am not even sure there is enough cultural understanding and sensitivity about depression: There used to be an uproar and attempts to treat the symptoms when high school kids used to commit suicide by the dozen (typically after poor exam results). (…

Depression is having a negative outlook on life over an extended period of time that starts effecting your everyday decisions and causing you to withdraw from social situations. It's an extension of being sad. Turn it around. If you're happy most of the time, it will be difficult for a psychiatrist to classify you as being depressed.

Sorry no offense, but you don't get depression. There are people who may have a "positive outlook" on life, appear to be happy go lucky and one fine day not be able to get out of bed due a to crippling overwhelming feeling of despair. This is not just an "extension of being sad.". You can't just shake a person who is depressed or throw a bunch of balloons or bring a bunch of relatives around this person and make them feel happy. Sometimes, a person who is depressed can't even explain why they are being depressed. Sadness doesn't work like that.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#62

Post by wisty »

alan_cx wrote: post #59

I am said to suffer depression myself, which BTW I would deny as I would say its "realism", but I really have an issue with it being described as an "illness". It seems to be that this definition is more about giving depression PR parity with actual illnesses, rather than a correct label. Its like the public will accept an "illness" as real, but a psychological issues as not real. There for making the public see depr…

> I am said to suffer depression myself, which BTW I would deny as I would say its "realism", but I really have an issue with it being described as an "illness".

There's a difference between being cynical, and being depressed. Clinical depression crosses through to the other side, where everything seems unreasonably bad.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#63

Post by InclinedPlane »

alan_cx wrote: post #59

I am said to suffer depression myself, which BTW I would deny as I would say its "realism", but I really have an issue with it being described as an "illness". It seems to be that this definition is more about giving depression PR parity with actual illnesses, rather than a correct label. Its like the public will accept an "illness" as real, but a psychological issues as not real. There for making the public see depr…

This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Sometimes people get down or get "the blues" but this is something very much different from major clinical depression. Depression has many aspects but one of the most important is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It's not just a feeling or an emotion, it's a fundamental change to the way your brain works. And episodes of major depression can last for years, even decades.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#64

Post by noonespecial »

alan_cx wrote: post #59

I am said to suffer depression myself, which BTW I would deny as I would say its "realism", but I really have an issue with it being described as an "illness". It seems to be that this definition is more about giving depression PR parity with actual illnesses, rather than a correct label. Its like the public will accept an "illness" as real, but a psychological issues as not real. There for making the public see depr…

There's something to keep in mind. You are your brain and your brain is you. You're not some sort of cloud of abstract disconnected thoughts. The "loop" you speak of causes real physical changes to a real physical thing (so do traumatic brain injuries which can cause depression, btw). It doesn't really matter how the changes start or take place, once they are far enough under way it becomes impossible to quickly undo them.

It can be and is cured with drugs, and rehabilitation therapy and it takes time. The cure is also a physical change. Sounds pretty disease-like to me.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#65

Post by InclinedPlane »

jtchang wrote: post #32
marvin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depression can be diagnosed pretty easily by running through a form of questions and checking off checkboxes. You are depressed if some statistical measures score above a certain value. To which degree are you...Sad? Have trouble getting things done? Don't find joy in the things that used to make you happy? Thinking about death? Feel any emotions at all? Afraid that something terrible is about to happen? Thinking abo…

Why isn't it an exact science? Science teaches us that things should be repeatable and reproducible. Running through a form of questions and ticking off boxes doesn't seem very "advanced" to me. In fact it seems like the very definition of backwards. Why aren't we aiming for a physics level of understanding in psychology?

We're not talking about clock work machinery, we're talking about the human brain. Asking why issues of the brain aren't an exact science is like asking why we haven't solved the halting problem yet. Cognition and sentience are still far from solved problems. Moreover, the way that different minds react to different physical problems of the brain is inevitably going to be hugely complex. Some people will brood alone in their room and write poetry like Emily Dickinson, some people will throw themselves off a bridge.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#66

Post by khitchdee »

eshvk wrote: post #61
khitchdee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depression is having a negative outlook on life over an extended period of time that starts effecting your everyday decisions and causing you to withdraw from social situations. It's an extension of being sad. Turn it around. If you're happy most of the time, it will be difficult for a psychiatrist to classify you as being depressed.

Sorry no offense, but you don't get depression. There are people who may have a "positive outlook" on life, appear to be happy go lucky and one fine day not be able to get out of bed due a to crippling overwhelming feeling of despair. This is not just an "extension of being sad.". You can't just shake a person who is depressed or throw a bunch of balloons or bring a bunch of relatives around this person and make them…

There's despair and there's sadness. Can you highlight the difference?

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#67

Post by DanBC »

chris_wot wrote: post #47

Right now I am depressed. I feel terrible, and very, very guilty that I feel the way I do. I don't want to do anything, but I do want to do something to distract me away from my awful feeling of numbness. I worry about the future at times, and feel I'm at a dead end. I worry about my kids, and my wife, and my ageing parents. I'm sleeping constantly, but when I sleep my dreams are too vivid. Despite it all, I'm a func…

I hope you're getting some treatment.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#68

Post by chris_wot »

DanBC wrote: post #67
chris_wot wrote: post #47

Right now I am depressed. I feel terrible, and very, very guilty that I feel the way I do. I don't want to do anything, but I do want to do something to distract me away from my awful feeling of numbness. I worry about the future at times, and feel I'm at a dead end. I worry about my kids, and my wife, and my ageing parents. I'm sleeping constantly, but when I sleep my dreams are too vivid. Despite it all, I'm a func…

I hope you're getting some treatment.

I am - definitely getting help, medication can be tricky to get right also.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#69

Post by lusr »

andreasklinger wrote: post #39
austenallred wrote: post #23

Thank you, Mark, for writing this. I have lost three close friends in the past three months to depression. Their deaths were so similar it was shocking; they were all among the most brilliant people I had known, and all had been suffering from depression almost their entire lives. At the funeral of the one who was closest to me, another girl told a story of how on one day when his depression was particularly bad, he…

I love the comparison to being paralysed. Being "mentally paralysed" is actually a good description.

And even if you move past the paralysis, trying to cure oneself of depression is like trying to debug the operating system of your mind using a debugger running the exact same flawed logic that you're trying to debug!

Worse, those bugs are live and their nature is to slowly but surely corrupt the rest of the system software pertaining to beliefs, memory, perception and thought processing. Eventually you reach a point where it's almost impossible to tell what's a lie and what's real, or how to non-dysfunctionally process what you do discover!

This is why therapy is so critical - you have an objective third party to help debug things, identify your blindspots and point out where the bugs in your beliefs and thought processes are. A reference manual for identifying and repairing dysfunctional thinking is also incredibly valuable and to that end I recommend David Burns' "Feeling Good" to anybody in this situation.

Re: We Need to Have Sympathy for Those With Depression. It is an Illness

#70

Post by chris_wot »

austenallred wrote: post #48
chris_wot wrote: post #47

Right now I am depressed. I feel terrible, and very, very guilty that I feel the way I do. I don't want to do anything, but I do want to do something to distract me away from my awful feeling of numbness. I worry about the future at times, and feel I'm at a dead end. I worry about my kids, and my wife, and my ageing parents. I'm sleeping constantly, but when I sleep my dreams are too vivid. Despite it all, I'm a func…

Thank you for your excellent explanation. There's no way I can comprehend what you're going through, but I have the utmost respect for you. Carry on, you're a champ.

Thanks :-)
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