Atheism Doen't Equal Depression

[Nope]

@GC
I'm not condemning you. But your actions here are not limited to MTL. You're taking things that other members have shared about their personal life and emotions and throwing it in their faces in a way that's not even relevant. To me that is just a low blow.  It takes courage to share such things, and at AF we try to create an environment where people feel safe doing that. You do the whole community a disservice when you drag up stuff from people's personal life to use against them.  

Do you have credentials to diagnose if someone is depressed. If you think five years on a message board qualifies you to make such a sweeping diagnosis then the answer is no.

Sure you are, just as in this post and I resent this, people here have made their depression public on a public forum and they know it can come up at anytime, it's been done to me at times and you do not hear me crying about it, and I stated as a matter of fact that I wouldn't name one solitary person. I stated in my first post that what I was saying was from observation and not fact or research and as usual everyone want's to make something different out of what I clearly stated as opinion. Everyone can blow it out their ears, atheist treat Christians as the scourge of the earth and that's okay as long as you can live with it.

GC

I don't think that most atheists treat Christians like the scourge of the earth. Believe it or not, I don't dislike most of the people on this forum including you. We'd probably get along just fine if we met.

For some people, religion might provide short term help for depression. When you attend church, you have a built in friend base even if those people are only your friends in the most superficial manner. You can ask for prayers and feel like someone is rooting for you. Two of my children suffer from depression. My daughter went through a difficult year where she just stopped caring about her life. Her way of dealing with depression was anger and sarcasm. My son talked about his problems. My daughter does not always share her emotions as easily as her brother so we just thought she was becoming an unpleasant person to be around and grew frustrated with her. Luckily, we are getting her help and she is improving. If she had attended church, she might have been able to sweep her problems under the rug. I suppose in church she would have been encouraged to put on a happy face but, at what cost would that be to her? Yes, she might have been less unpleasant but how long before she reached a point that she could admit she was sick or we would have realized something was off? In the short term, attending a church might have helped her but in the long term, I think it would have done more damage.