Myths and Misconceptions About Depression!

This is sort of a personal journal entry sort of triggered by two other people’s blog entries which claimed depression is a myth or depression is the result of personal guilt, this from someone with a religious bent.

I have to disagree with the both of them as depression is a real illness which effects a large proportion of the population plus it shows a denial on these people’s part what depression exactly is. They perpetuate both misconceptions and prejudices against depression which has lead to lack of understanding of depression both from within and outside of the medical profession.

The greatest problem of people who suffer mental illness, including depression, is lack of understanding from the people around them and lack of real and productive research by the medical profession itself who do not take mental illness seriously even now!

It is high time society in general started to treat mental illnesses with the same seriousness as physical illnesses like cancer and stop trying to sweep the problem under the carpet with their baseless prejudices.

Mental illness exists and blights a large number of people who have to suffer alone because of peoples attitude towards them and their mental illness. Even now people show a fear and prejudice towards such people which shows a great lack of basic humanity and allowing unfounded fears to colour their reactions to people with mental illness.

Saying all this there are those people who cynically use depression as an excuse to be for their antisocial behaviours, like drinking too much or taking drugs, or not to work because they are ill. Frankly they do a disservice to real depression suffers as they perpetuate myths about depression. Basically what they are doing is immoral as a large majority of people who suffer depression can still lead relatively normal lives and be very productive at work and do!

In my own case from my personal experience of depression and the fact that every time I come off my antidepressants I quickly fall back into a depression it really starting to look my depression being not a pure mental illness but has a large physical component. The antidepressants I take are SSI antidepressants which block my brains uptake of Serotonin in my brain which effectively stops me falling back into a depression.

So in my case my depression may have been triggered by events early in my life which effected by mental imbalance but now is not a true mental illness but a physical problem inside my brain so I am starting to question if it is now a true mental illness as it looks like I may have to be on antidepressants for the rest of my life to keep me from falling back into depression.

In conclusion we as a society and as people have to treat mental illness with far more compassion and humanity and some people to stop using it as excuse not to work or for flaws in their characters. In addition in the case of depression it is being over simplified as a pure mental illness it may well also have a physical side which needs to be looked into sooner than later.


Please note: If want to see my second life journal then go to the Journal of a Spectral Traveller.