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Depression is a funny thing to write about. If someone is depressed reading about someone else's depression is preaching to the choir, but if they aren't or hav

Depression is a funny thing to write about. If someone is depressed reading about someone else's depression is preaching to the choir, but if they aren't or have never experienced it, it's hard to understand what's going on. But for both groups it's kind of crushing because it reminds you that some people just might not ever be happy and it's not really their fault and that's hard in a culture which says "be happy" or "just do X and you'll be happy". I saw the article mentions Noonday Demon. I've never read it but a book that cites it and I personally found a depression classic is Lincoln's Melancholy. It is remarkable both how miserable he was and how far he drove himself because of or in spite of it. I don't think you can know Lincoln, the Civil War, or his impact on the US without understanding his depression. Unfortunately it also makes a lot of modern politicians look very superficial and fake in comparison. https://www.amazon.com/Lincolns-Melancholy-Depression-Challenged-President/dp/0618773444 https://www.amazon.com/Lincolns-Melancholy-Depression-Challe...

quantumhobbit 10y ago
Yup. Telling someone with depression to just "be happy" is like telling a paraplegic to just get up and walk.
- umberway 10y ago
  I agree. Yet scientific and/or moral discussions of depression and other mental disorders are becoming increasingly taboo.
- SketchySeaBeast 10y ago
  "Just run it off."
  - webmaven 10y ago
    Yeah. "No pain, no gain" also comes to mind.
labrador 10y ago
In my opinion it doesn't have a lot to do with happiness or unhappiness. Unhappiness is an emotion that at least fills the void. I'm unhappy now and I'm happy about that because I have a plan to get happy. Clinical depression is about the void, the nothingness, can't find a reason to live and don't want to live because this emptiness and emotionless existence is dreadful.
- NikolaeVarius 10y ago
  I find that stoicism helps with that feeling. Forces you to at least be somewhat functional.
  - Sundiata 10y ago
    Learning about stoicism definitely changed my outlook and attitude towards a lot of things, overall a much calmer and happier person even months into practicing the techniques
- aswanson 10y ago
  Do you think it has to do with being detached socially from other people, even family members?
  - jschwartzi 10y ago
    For me it had more to do with being detached from myself.
  - lazyasciiart 10y ago
    No.
  - cflewis 10y ago
    My experience with depression is that it does what it can to feed itself. Whatever triggers it (for me I am certain it is brain chemistry) doesn't really matter. Depressed people detach socially from their support network because that feeds the depression, and any plausible explanation feels as true as any law of physics. All you have to do is pick one: "These people don't care about me/They can never understand/They are better off without me as I will just hurt them." One way I describe depression is that it's a detachment from reality. Whatever reality you are actually in, depression bends and warps it to such a degree that mentally healthy people could not understand even when described to them.
agency 10y ago
I think David Foster Wallace's description of depression is one of the best I've read. “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

quantumhobbit 10y ago

Yup. Telling someone with depression to just "be happy" is like telling a paraplegic to just get up and walk.

umberway 10y ago
I agree. Yet scientific and/or moral discussions of depression and other mental disorders are becoming increasingly taboo.
SketchySeaBeast 10y ago
"Just run it off."
- webmaven 10y ago
  Yeah. "No pain, no gain" also comes to mind.

labrador 10y ago

In my opinion it doesn't have a lot to do with happiness or unhappiness. Unhappiness is an emotion that at least fills the void. I'm unhappy now and I'm happy about that because I have a plan to get happy. Clinical depression is about the void, the nothingness, can't find a reason to live and don't want to live because this emptiness and emotionless existence is dreadful.

NikolaeVarius 10y ago
I find that stoicism helps with that feeling. Forces you to at least be somewhat functional.
- Sundiata 10y ago
  Learning about stoicism definitely changed my outlook and attitude towards a lot of things, overall a much calmer and happier person even months into practicing the techniques
aswanson 10y ago
Do you think it has to do with being detached socially from other people, even family members?
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  For me it had more to do with being detached from myself.
- lazyasciiart 10y ago
  No.
- cflewis 10y ago
  My experience with depression is that it does what it can to feed itself. Whatever triggers it (for me I am certain it is brain chemistry) doesn't really matter. Depressed people detach socially from their support network because that feeds the depression, and any plausible explanation feels as true as any law of physics. All you have to do is pick one: "These people don't care about me/They can never understand/They are better off without me as I will just hurt them." One way I describe depression is that it's a detachment from reality. Whatever reality you are actually in, depression bends and warps it to such a degree that mentally healthy people could not understand even when described to them.

agency 10y ago

I think David Foster Wallace's description of depression is one of the best I've read. “The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”