The black dog...

[bunny_m]

naamah_darling posted an awesome, intelligent, insightful and remarkably calm post deconstructing some of the most shockingly dense comment-fail I have ever seen. Go here to read it's entire awesomeness, but I'm going to post some of my experiences here on the topic, as inspired by the above-linked post.

..why depressed people may not seek treatment.

Sometimes

Comments

[tygenco_x]

*hugs*

I am a living bundle of been-there; my worst moments were blessedly stopped by other... things. Not people, but things. I'll explain it for you eventually.

Something that wasn't mentioned (at least that I could see, but I'm half awake now) is those rare but real moments where the therapist/counselor isn't actually helping the individual--which happened to me during my first round of therapy--and it becomes painfully evident that you cannot trust said therapist/counselor with the things on your mind. Because the trust is broken somehow and when that happens, it's VERY difficult to get up the balls to go back to another therapist because that experience tends to linger.

[kremmen]

I've thought that there should be a special hell to which to send parents who undermine, rather than assist, their own children. Counter-productive therapists should join them.

[resin_angels]

What a brilliant post! Thank you.

[skwerlie]

And of course a lot of people don't realize that depression doesn't necessarily mean you feel sad... sometimes you just don't feel much of anything at all. It's really not that easy to work out "hey, I'm depressed!", often people need someone else to step in and give them an intervention of sorts, and if you're really good at playing along with social cues sometimes nobody else will notice either.

I really wish that mental illness wasn't so stigmatized. Part of the reason depression is such a "silent killer" is that people don't know much at all about it, and what they do "know" is often just stereotypes and moral judgements passed on from others. It probably should make me angry, but at the moment it just makes me sad. : ( At least Beyond Blue seems to be making an effort to educate and help, I've seen quite a lot of ads, billboards, etc from them and I hope that people really are more likely to seek help because of it.

[divinemissb]

I can wholeheartedly identify with the hopelessness and the unwillingness to be a burden on others/getting help when there are so many other people with "more serious" problems.

I've beaten back lots of my demons, but those seem to be the strongest and keep popping back up at me when I'm not expecting them.