Quote Originally Posted by christopher leigh View Post
I've said on here before that some people deserve to be depressed, for all the wrong choices they make. Choices they knew were wrong when they made them. Others feel down for things they have no control over. BUT, giving pills out to people so they never have to deal with personal grief just proves what a bunch of wimps we are.

The truth is, life is about ups and downs. You're not supposed to feel good all the time. In fact the dishing out of these happy pills, is the surest way of preventing people from facing their problems, because it produces a sense of achievment in people who haven't earned it.
I've been biting my lip on this one but missed this comment..... unbelievable!

Firstly, Stagger I'm so sorry about what you're going through and that your thread has been hijacked in this way. I suffer from intermittent bouts of depression myself, much fewer since fleeing London, but the "Black Dog" still occasionally pays me a visit. For me, seeing a counsellor with my wife, being taught practical coping strategies and how to recognise the signs of a bout coming on has been invaluable. However, there are so many different types, degrees of and causes of the illness that qualified professional advice and diagnosis is essential. There's nothing worse than being told to "buck up", "snap out of it" or "chin up" as this just worsens the feelings of helplessness and inadequacy.

CL, you started off quite sensibly stressing the importance of exploring possible physiological causes but this post is crass, insensitive, patronising, ill-informed and incorrect on so many levels. No-one deserves to be depressed. If you'd ever suffered from genuine clinical depression you wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy. Depression is not feeling down or sad, it's a crushing, energy sapping and all encompassing blackness from which, at the time, there feels as though there's no escape. Yes, life is about ups and downs, but that has nothing to do with depression. You're not supposed to feel good all the time but depression is not about not feeling good and no-one should have to suffer it alone, undiagnosed or untreated.

I agree to a certain extent that some GP's have probably been guilty of too readily dishing out anti-depressants but the fact is that, for many sufferers of the illness, without these pills they wouldn't be able to physically and psychologically function. Many cases of depression have no external cues and are due completely to a imbalance of brain chemistry. A pharmaceutical approach is the only solution in these cases and is no different, or more wimpy, to taking an aspirin for a headache.

Dishing out your uninformed advice, opinions and purposely inflammatory posts on Sports Science, politics or economics is fine but this wasn't the thread for it.