This is an article proposing that depression has not evolved itself away because it inspires a cycle of improvement to prevent depression in the future. vossk tumbl’d it ages ago, then vael reblogged it not long after I started my tumblr, and I didn’t want to re-reblog it so soon. So I decided to wait until later. And now it’s later!

However, over the many months that I’ve been planning out a giant post about depression, it no longer has anything to do with that article. It is absolutely worth reading, and many of the things it proposes (rumination being used to help you avoid the same problem in the future, depressed people having a hard time caring about things they deem as unimportant because they’re too fixated on their own pain, thinking analytically when depressed) are brilliant and should feel familiar to anyone who has been depressed. I just don’t really have anything to add to it, and I want my post to stand on its own. There are two quotes I would like to draw particular attention to, though:

“I remember one patient who came in and said she needed to reduce her dosage,” he says. “I asked her if the antidepressants were working, and she said something I’ll never forget. ‘Yes, they’re working great,’ she told me. ‘I feel so much better. But I’m still married to the same alcoholic son of a bitch. It’s just now he’s tolerable.’ ”

And also:

"We end up having to keep people on the drugs forever. It was as if these people have a bodily infection, and modern psychiatry is just treating their fever.”

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I would also ask you not to reblog or otherwise share my post until you fully believe it’s complete. I won’t call it finished until I’ve incorporated the input of everyone who has anything to say about it. If you’re going to reblog it and write about it, I would instead like to talk to you about it and improve it first. If I forgot to mention something, or simply didn’t know about something you have personal experience with, I would love your input. Questions and concerns, constructive criticism, hate mail, love and adoration… I will accept all of these things and more! I have MSN, AIM, and xfire listed at the bottom of my tumblr. Whether you use Yahoo or ICQ, send me an e-mail at my hotmail address and I’ll get a hold of you somehow.

The post should be up shortly, I just thought I’d take this part off because it doesn’t really belong with the main post anyway. It feels awesome to actually sit down and write for once.