Are You Depressed?
- Yes
- No
0
voters
Are You Depressed?
What of it ?
Is depression something that should be considered outside a normal human emotional cycle?
Not while I’m on my Prozac.
No. Anxiety, depression, frustration, anger, resentment and so on are all perfectly normal human emotions. The ONLY reason they are medicalised is so that drug companies and psychiatrists can make money out of life not being perfect. We suppress these feelings so that when they do surface they become unmanageable. Kinda like secretly funding terrorists so that they’ll eventually bomb something of ours so we can declare war and the military-industrial complex can boost its profits. Like we’ve done with Islamic terrorists over the last 30-odd years (and continue to do).
When I grow up I wanna lobby against pharmaceutical companies for a living. Right now my job is to create red tape for people who publish biological images in journals. If I could use those same skills to shut down a drug company it would please me greatly.
SIATD, I’m going to have to disagree with you on the necessity for drug companies. Most people can recover from depressing thoughts on their own, but for some it becomes a habit and a chemical imbalance in their constitution. For these, drugs are an alternative that helps them function normally.
(I’m not just an advocate for anti-depressants, I’m a user!)
I still think there should be better rules for research and development of drugs. The companies use the insured public to line their pockets while acting as experimental animals while a homeless person in an emergency room with a broken leg may have to sit there all day for a surgeon and then still get billed even further into poverty. Follow the money to the bad ethical practices in any industry. Drug companies have tons of it.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see a connection between a drug company and a surgeon. No money flow.
Uh, anesthetics?
Me too. And for what it’s worth, I think you’d be damn good at it.
I’m not sure I said that they were unnecessary. I just said that the only reason that normal human emotions are medicalised is for profit (and control, as a sort of side-effect to making money, but it’s essentially the same process).
I’m not sure anyone is chemically balanced. I feel different from moment to moment. Admittedly, I’m quite a sensitive person who is allegedly suffering from ‘mild manic depression’, whatever the fuck ‘mild manic’ is supposed to mean beyond a convenient oxymoron for doctors to use when they haven’t a sodding clue. And besides, I think that whatever chemical ‘imbalance’ is detected (and medicated) is just another symptom, rather than a cause.
And while I’d much rather see you overcome these problems without drugs, I’m not going to bitch you out in any way for using them. You do what you can/need to in order to make your life worth living.
Nonetheless, the reason you’ve been diagnosed and medicated is not because all medicine aims at being beneficial. Much of it is, and there are few better people in the world than good doctors (if any). But capitalism has its horns in medical institutions, and ultimately the two sets of motives are not compatible.
Wow, I can’t believe the majority are depressed.
We need more surgeons and less shrinks. Too much money goes to shrinks. Alot of it comes from drug companies who use the general public as lab animals. I’d like to get a team of actuaries to study this and tell me how much they’d have to potentially pay in lawsuits before it would become more efficient to do proper research and development, (particularly more long term clinical trials).
That isn’t true – at least, not at the inception.
The reason emotions are medicalized is because students and doctors make discoveries of ways to manipulate the mind, and present those findings. Lots of people – such as me – are very grateful for this as well.
The reason your poll is not 86% – or whatever – depressed, rather than the 60-40 it is, is because I take anti-depressants.
I have PTSD. I did therapy, hypnosis, EMDR, and all were enormously helpful. But Zoloft has been the key to consistency.
Depression may be normal, but it SUCKS BALLS.
I’d rather get up tomorrow and whimsically, irresponsibly fling myself onto a jet to San Diego than to lay in bed and wish I were dead.
Depression sucks. There are cures. Depression sucks. Depression sucks. It’s a zero-sum game.
Life is huge, endless, exhilarating, fantastic. You should wake up each day in a spasm of awe. If you don’t, you’re missing out, HUGE.
Yes, depression is a normal emotion.
It’s also ridiculous (no, not “YOU are ridiculous” – the silly emotion).
AWE should be your natural state.
Life is stellar.
Bear in mind that the question asked is ‘are you depressed?’ but the question being answered is ‘do you consider yourself depressed?’
Are people in the best position to diagnose themselves? If they are, then there’s no need for psychiatry.
They do now, they didn’t before drug companies got involved.
And you can be grateful for it. Doesn’t mean that I have to be.
So you are welcome to believe. I believe otherwise. Are you familiar with the Rosenhan experiment?
You have been diagnosed with that. You don’t ‘have’ it. It is not an inherent part of your make-up. I firmly believe that you could achieve the same or greater happiness without the drugs. Now, I don’t know you personally so I could be wrong about that.
Consistency, balance - is this a natural representation of human emotion? I think not. Perhaps it makes you happy, and if so, fuck it, who am I to disagree with you? But humans by default are not balanced or consistent.
So does having your sports team lose or being fired from your job or having your wife leave you for the cable TV installation man.
So next time you’re lying in bed wishing you were dead, do something whimsical.
‘Cures’? What sort of cure is it that denies humans a perfectly valid part of their emotional make-up?
If you woke up each day like that, you’d get bored of it. Difference and fluctuation is and will always be the key to keeping people interested in life.
Change is the human natural state. ‘Should be’ is somewhat redundant.
Life is fate.
Couldn’t you say it’s natural or normal to lose a limb? And wouldn’t your argument suggest then that the artificial limb companies are making people think that they need limbs?
That is not natural. Your arm will not naturally fall off unless you do something to it. His happiness can not be taken away. You just have to find it.
I’m not depressed now, but I could be sometime this week. 
I dont care what’s natural or not. One’s subjective state of mind is all that matters. Depressed? Happy? Whatever, just take it for what it is; if you dislike, find ways of changing.