(August 10, 2015 at 12:36 pm)abaris Wrote:(August 10, 2015 at 12:30 pm)Philomath Wrote: Well, I personally believe that we should educate people on the real consequences and ways to overcome depression.
That's a job for professionals. Not Gurus, pastors, priests or well meaning individuals. You don't know what a real clinical depression entails until you suffered from it. I did and to say I underestimated what other people said about being depressed, would be an understatment. To an outsider, who never had been in that situation, it's virtually undescribable. And that's why nobody, not trained to treat that illness, should attempt to do anything about it.
I'm not the sort to exaggerate or delve into stories of personal hardship, but I had quite a struggle with depression when I was just a bit younger, and it landed me in a crisis management center, and it didn't matter what personal experience or professional training anyone had, they didn't have the answers I needed. This is what makes it so difficult to overcome depression, because you have to do it on your own, and when you're truly depressed (not just sad or down) you feel like there isn't any way out of it, and convincing people otherwise is the real struggle. Psychology is one of my few true passions, and I have a great deal of respect for the APA and DSM-V , but they aren't perfect. I believe anyone under emotional distress should first seek professional help, but they shouldn't expect mental health professionals to have all of the answers. Medications like anti-depressants are also very helpful in many cases, but too many people expect these medications to be the solution to all of their problems, and that's not how it works. Unfortunately, in many cases depression just isn't "curable" (as with biochemical discrepancies), but in many others it is. I believe it has a lot to do with perspective. In my case I was focusing on the wrong things (the things that made me depressed), and it took years for me to realize that. Preventing and managing depression is a lot easier than preventing suicide, and as a society we should promote education that does exactly that.
