The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: franksolich on August 18, 2008, 08:59:45 PM
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3776098#3781409
Oh my.
Finally, a subject on which the primitives are expert.
Or perhaps not.
philboy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-11-08 11:19 AM
Original message
PSA concerning Depression
Please excuse me for posting this in GD, but it will get more play here than in the Mental Health forum.
I fully intend on changing the world with this one post.
A huge number of people in the world at large are familiar with depression, but another large segment of the population is not.
Here is what depression is: A mental ILLNESS that manifests itself in behavioral changes and changes in thought processes.
Note the emphasis on the word "illness".
Individuals who are profoundly depressed do not merely feel "sad". They feel "sick". They may not be able to function. They may not be able to physically get out of bed. They may not be able to stop crying. They may not be able to read or concentrate. They may not be able to make decisions.
I am writing this post because I am damn sick of hearing joking and offhanded comments in casual conversation from people who truly do not understand this illness. I keep hearing how we, as an enlightened society, have come so far in understanding what depression is.
In my opinion, that is bullshit, and it always will be bullshit, until we, as enlightened and empathetic people try to educate every time we hear someone say "just get over it" or "what do you have to be depressed about"?
It is an illness, and it hurts. It physically hurts because an organ in your body (your brain) is not functioning as it should. When depression is major, it hurts more than anything physical that can happen to you (broken leg, pneumonia, etc.).
We as a society need to stop SAYING that we understand it better today, when based on what I see, we truly do not.
This bonfire, predictably, is enormous.
Sample comment of a primitive:
undergroundpanther Donating Member (1000+ posts) Tue Aug-12-08 02:46 AM
Response to Reply #97
168. Hell yes it does!!
One of the overlooked aspects about the origins of mental illness,it isn't just a dysfunctional brain it is dysfunctional families relationships and culture..
Another comment of a primitive, selected at random:
undergroundpanther Donating Member (1000+ posts) Tue Aug-12-08 02:31 AM
Response to Original message
166. depression sucks.it really does.
I struggle with it too. But mine is from trauma and the damage done.
My view is controversial I know,but I think depression and all the other mental illnesses except for the axis 2 stuff like psychopathy /sociopathy authoritarian personality narcissism and organic brain damage or retardation etc..have origins in things besides the sufferer's mind/brain alone.
Mental illnesses are not just something you 'catch' like a cold,it's not something that can be seen by a brain scan(without trauma evidence) or detected like say,diabetes can be found in the blood test.
I think there is a reason for this illusiveness .I think a large part of what mental illness is is a reaction to a deep social sickness.Mental illness is not really an individual sickness alone,per se but it is also a result from a problem with how people treat others how other people routinely violate people's and children's boundaries and hurt one another.
Over time all those things that hurt get internalized,they get stored deep in our min but cannot be questioned or even acknowledged as wrong, build up and they get denied. Kids have a habit at certain ages to blame themselves first for things that go awry,because they are aware of how much they do not know,and conscious of the powerless position childhood puts everyone into.
So stinging words of a critical parent,it can ring in our minds for decades after the first time it is said.Likewise a mean peer's hostility can affect your social trust. Or a nasty mate can ruin your confidence and sexuality or worse.A vicious boss can kill your dreams,and when you deny all these incidences of years of pain and boundary violations,it eventually cannot be denied.The body & memory cannot hold it all alone.In our kind of society if you were to look at who is most at ease with it,you will see that high functioning psychopaths do the best at living this way.
Those of us who are not high functioning or even low functioning psychopaths,when we are forced, lied to, manipulated, abused,disregarded,bullied,teased,humiliated, shamed,and hurt by others that demands us to doubt our perceptions of reality around us and our self definitions by the way the bullies among us manipulate language and use others. So we behave against what our true nature or will or inner locus of control is about to survive.Be it caused by circumstances ,by desperate needs,relationships, or reinforced by our own defenses brought onto us by previous wounds of the heart.
To survive in a culture such as ours there you find a betrayal of trust,of self,and a catch 22 of epic proportions.It is there right under the surface of our culture invisible to most,including the so called normal people out there.
So people because they have been messed up and denying it,they play make believe and scapegoat the"mentally ill" for their symptoms.
A person's symptoms reveal the truth.The truth all of society represses about life just to function in a culture that favors the behavior traits of psychopathy over the traits on non-psychopaths. People will deny the things that hurt until they can't contain it and symptoms of what is called mental illness appear.We all grow up in an environment and often it is hostile one way or another.To a sensitive person it can be downright depressing.
I think stress and abuse"normalized",and un solve able catch 22's and this psychopathic culture like ours is a perfectly horrid recipe for crazy -making.
I know when I feel suicidal it is because I just want the pain inside my mind and body to stop.Sometimes I seek the source of that pain and if I cannot see it or don't want to look at it,because I am exhausted,or scared, or whatever.. I'll just say I dunno why I feel that way,and seek to relieve it other ways.
But if I dare to try to find the cause,within my own mind,and seek it myself, often it is because I was hurt before and I pretended it was not painful for me, or I denied my true will for a stupid or self defeating reason,or I blamed myself for something that is not my fault.
I know trauma ,even emotional trauma or verbal abuse really can and does literally fry your neurons.My brain has scars in the tissues themselves because of the abuses I faced over time.I can see them in my own MRI scans.
I know the environment can affect your moods and stuff,everything from allergies to toxins,to diet,to stress,and relationships can and do affect how well you can deal with a society that is totally contrary to your own inner locus of self..
I think mental illness is a environmental,social,traumatic based, sort-of like an illness,that is also a kind of damage that during younger years it builds up slowly over time,and the body and mind deals with it,until it cannot continue to do so,than symptoms appear,than you seek help.
Drugs can affect mood,so can pollution or allergies,and because living in this culture,under this kind of stress causes subtle changes in the brain,changes that medications can help control when the brain and body can no longer contain it.
I used to use splenda,But I found I was allergic to it, it caused me such a bad bout of depression my therapist at the time suggested I get shock treatments.(I never went back to him) When I stopped using(splenda)the rash ring around my neck went away, and my moods became more manageable.I have had psych meds cause effects as bad as splenda did on me. So medications don't always work, but sometimes they do. My meds right now help.I don't take a medicine unless it helps me and it does not endanger me or cause bad side effects.When I no longer need it or feel as if I can cope with the emotions without it,I taper off and work with my docs to do that.
Mental illness origins will stay illusive when all the therapies are all focused on individuals and personal recovery alone,with no environmental context and it's not taken in the social contexts as well,contexts that also shape the way a person develops and copes..or can't cope with life in a crazy-making world.
Beaten children very early on assimilate the violence they endured, which they may glorify and apply later as parents, in believing that they deserved the punishment and were beaten out of love. They don't know that the only reason for the punishments they have ( or in retrospect, had) to endure is the fact that their parents themselves endured and learned violence without being able to question it.
In the midst of insanity, sanity:
Dr_eldritch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Mon Aug-11-08 12:24 PM
Response to Original message
9. Yes, depression is a 'mental illness' that can be solved with 'mental effort'.
Those efforts include going for walks, setting goals, eating right, drinking water, avoiding drugs, and getting to the root of the problem through introspection.
I know, I've been clinically depressed on and off for years. I pratically have a knack for it by now.
It's not easy. The odds are against you when your neurochemistry is skewed. Doing any of those things is hard, let alone all of them. But once you start, it gets easier.
The drug companies love to tell people that everything is a 'disease' or an 'illness' that can be cured with their expensive drugs. While depression is indeed an illness, it's one that is better treated with proper diet and activity.
Working in a job does wonders for dissipating depression, by the way.
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Depression comes from separating oneself from the Light of Our Lord. Yes, it is a mental condition, but it is one that can be controlled and cured by forcing yourself to stop being an emotional island and seek the Truth of Life.
Now you know why liberalism is a mental illness.
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I know that depression is a very real thing and not to be dismissed out of hand but from everything I have seen wandering the island DUmmies seek it.
Happiness and contentment is the enemy of liberalism as their misery is only soothed by the constant feeling they are the victims of something or someone.
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Didn't they do a poll there once that showed a shocking number of them have been or are currently on psychotropic meds?