luriel, you added considerably to your post since I first replied, and I feel like it now merits a different response. I agree with almost everything you've sai

luriel, you added considerably to your post since I first replied, and I feel like it now merits a different response. I agree with almost everything you've said, but feel like your criticism is misdirected and may do more harm than good. Knowing you have a psychological issue is like knowing your application is crashing for some customers. You might have only vague guesses as to what the triggers are, and no understanding of what's actually going on or how to fix it. But now you are in a position to assess the cost and allocate resources to fix the problem. Maybe it will take years of man-hours (in either case) to handle the problem, but now you have a place to start. I don't think Wil was telling people to take medicine; I certainly wasn't. The only thing I'd like to emphasize is that Depression is a problem that can be addressed. Don't ignore it. If you have a problem with Depression, do your research; find out what helps, and what doesn't. Stop treating your mental state like it's an immutable part of your environment: change your environment and your behaviors as you discover what you need to be healthier. "Changes to your environment" might include drugs, and even they don't work over the long term, they might temporarily be enough of a lifeline to help you get to a point where you can start hacking at the problem in other ways. Doctors can be helpful guides on this path; sometimes they're not helpful, but in aggregate, I believe they help more than they hurt. Scaring people away from seeing a doctor by telling them that they'll be locked up in a kafkian institution against their will is liable to prevent people from getting help. Of course this has happened, and continues to happen, but it's rare. I think a much more common (and in aggregate, more serious) mode of failure is people's belief that the doctor is in charge of curing them---that the drugs are all it takes---and that they can't or don't need to work on themselves.