I had a big long post written up about crippling depression, and how it really can stop a person from functioning in life.
Instead, I'll just post and call you a fucking idiot.
Instead, I'll just post and call you a fucking idiot.
I'm interested in this topic, and might have spent some time reading the thread, but when I see stuff like this I just bail.
Some times people need tobe told harshly they're being an idiot.
> I've been very depressed, and never took drugs, I
> picked myself up and fixed my damn problem.
"I've been running Windows for 15 years, and never had a blue-screen-of-death, therefore anyone that has issues with a blue-screen-of-death is either lying or a fucking moron. My anecdote proves that Windows is 100% stable 100% of the time."
The machinery of the mind is chemicals. Drugs are chemicals. When a chemical machine malfunctions, chemical treatments are not unreasonable.
At any rate, this comment is probably being downvoted for this line:
I picked myself up and fixed my damn problem.
Edit: also this: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Typical_mind_fallacy
Based on everything I've read from others who have talked about clinical depression, it sounds like there is no picking oneself up. The metaphorical train has gone so far off track that its conductor doesn't even remember what tracks look like.
Depression is so often a side-effect of other, real, mental disorders. These aren't things you can 'pick yourself up from' and walk it off. Doctors 'screw with the mind' of consenting adults who agree that they have a problem and are trying exactly to 'pick themselves up.'
You should expand your notion of a drug and what treatment is, along with the machinery of the mind. Depression is caused by drugs in your own mind, which are so much more complicated and nuanced than the pharmaceuticals one would take to offset them.