Not sure why I expected better from the media

[jadislefeu]

I just read this article about the small subset of the population who never experiences mental illness (based on a study with a fairly small sample size), and it absolutely needs to stop assuming causation when all it knows is correlation. Maybe the causation is the other way around! Maybe they aren't mentally healthy because they do xyz, maybe they are capable of doing xyz because they are mentally healthy! I'm also just generally annoyed at it. "But is complete freedom from mental disorder the unalloyed triumph it first seems? [...] 'depression seems more like the vertebrate eye – an intricate, highly organised piece of machinery that performs a specific function.'" A specific function of making me never want to do literally anything, including feed myself or generally be alive. Sure. That's very evolutionarily optimized. Perhaps consider going to hell and ceasing to tell me I should be grateful I'm depressed. Oh, I see, the author had a single episode of depression and it activated their compassion. Not fucking well enough, it seems, and my lifelong chronically depressed as will fight you behind the Denny's, as soon as I get some antidepressants so I can bring myself to take any action whatsoever. I can't even make myself do things I want to do and actively enjoy. Aaaand now it's praising, basically, inspiration porn. God I just completely despise people who lump together transient acute mental health episodes that--this is the important part--at some point end, with lifelong disabling conditions. (My dad does it all the time. "I read on a forum on the internet that people stop taking antidepressants after six months and they're cured, when are you going to stop taking yours?" I DON'T HAVE SITUATIONAL DEPRESSION I HAVE LIFELONG CHRONIC DEPRESSION. IT WILL NEVER BE 'CURED', ONLY MANAGED.) Ughhhhh. Yeah, hated that.

Comments

[kidhedera]

Back in the day when I first got my bipolar diagnosis one of my friends at the time was really freaked out by the idea of me getting treated. She said something along the lines of the world punishing me because I'm different, and treatment would just make me fit into a little box.

It really hurt me at the time, especially because I'd resisted a diagnosis for so long, and then wasn't sure about treatment. After all, I hated my depressive episodes, but there was nothing quite like mania for making me feel on top of the world.

Now though, I have to say I am so glad I found treatment that works for me. For years I'd admired the heck out of the sort of stable, together people I never thought I'd be, but now I'm one of them. I have a good job, a nice house, a stable friend group, a healthy bank balance. Sometimes I'm sad, sometimes I'm happy, but I'm never bouncing between black moods and lightning excitement. I'm actually ME, not some shadow person, or tin foil facsimile.

Ironically that friend likes me better now than they did at the time they said that foolish thing.

People who say that mental illness performs an important evolutionary function don't know what they are talking about and have no idea the harm they are causing and stigma they are creating.