~~~my anecdote~~~ During my first semester of university, I suffered crippling depression and at some point tried to kill myself. Soon after I entered a mental

~~~my anecdote~~~ During my first semester of university, I suffered crippling depression and at some point tried to kill myself. Soon after I entered a mental hospital and started journaling. In one of my first journal entries, I noted that I was fairly smart, had great friends, had parents that loved me, had a full scholarship to university, and yet I hated my life and wanted to die. At the time, my condition certainly seemed like some sudden contingency resulting in brain malfunction. What I did not then realize, and in fact did not at all realize until last year, was that I spent the first 16 years of my life in a literal doomsday cult. I was raised a Jehovah's Witness, and since that was really all I knew, even when I eventually came to the point where I disagreed with some of the doctrines, it never crossed my mind that there was anything at all nefarious about how that organization treats its members. What you have to realize is that without exceptional self awareness or being adapt at adopting multiple perspectives, people are mostly blind to context of their own circumstances. That's usually fine; such awareness takes a ton of energy and most people just don't need it to stay alive. But when things do start going seriously wrong, and you're experiencing non-congenital mental disorders, is it really reasonable to believe that your mental state is "independent of external factors"? As if that's somehow the one thing the brain's constant processing of sensory data and immediate experience and past memories isn't effecting?