Tangled Mind

Let's talk about depression.

A conversation with a friend got me thinking about what has changed -- what I have changed -- since my twenties, when my mental health was very bad.

Of course, in my twenties it was a lot harder to talk about mental health, and there was no easily-accessible forum in which to discuss it.
( five methods that have improved my mental health and its impact on my life )
TL;DR?
JUST SAY NO. Say no to medication that makes you feel worse; to demands on your time or energy that are likely to exhaust your resources without benefit to yourself; to self-criticism and self-loathing; to frantically keeping up with the outside world when it exhausts and infuriates and upsets you; to anyone who dismisses or condemns your experience of your illness; to 'should' and 'shouldn't'; to depression itself (and / or other mental health issues) for telling you lies about yourself and your world.

I had always assumed there was some genetic basis to depression: about 50%, according to researchers.

Better start working on the other 50% then ...

A friend wished me luck with getting the medical profession to view stress and depression as two different things. Though I used to encounter the view that they're exactly the same, I haven't met it for a while. And personal experience, plus Thinking About It, leans strongly towards a distinction: for me, stress is much more about reaction to external events and depression is either from brooding or .. well, like the sudden squalls we're getting, random and unattributable.

What do you think?

[Poll #1016578]

Ages ago, I posted about whether emotional / mental conditions might be transmissable, rather than rooted in the wiring.

I've just been reading a piece in National Geographic. Snappily titled Cat Carrier: Your Cat Could Make You Crazy*, it does actually discuss the role of infection in mental illness. The article focusses on long-term effects of toxoplasma, but there are links to some other discussions. ( Read more... )