Out of Pod Experience

If a person hasn't eaten in awhile, we don't go around calling them "diabetic" because their sugar would be naturally low. We call them "hungry."

(Taking too much medication [insulin], skipping meals, eating less than normal, or exercising more than usual can lead to low blood sugar.)

When a person is drunk, we don't call them "depressed" even though alcohol is classified as a "depressant."

(Alcohol is a depressant, which means it slows the function of the central nervous system. Alcohol actually blocks some of the messages trying to get to the brain. This alters a person's perceptions, emotions, movement, vision, and hearing)

Yet we use the same word "depression" to describe a major mental illness and for feeling blue because your favorite team lost.

That waters down the seriousness of this illness and lays it open for all kinds of misconceptions.

You cant "snap" out of depression any more than you can "snap" out of a drunken binge.




Remember that last paragraph. When you have clinical depression, people will call you lazy, stupid or lacking somehow.
Depression is a slippery beast that makes life miserable especially when you live around those who don't understand or even believe it is an illness.

Like I said, you cant snap out of depression any more than you can snap out of a hangover.

It wouldn't be the first English word to have a dual meaning.

In America here, at least the part I live in, they have a fairly clear line between being depressed, and clinical depression.

I am certainly guilty of this.

However, it is difficult to say at which severity the term OCD should kick in. Some of my obsessive-compulsive habits do get in the way of real life. These habits affect some of my productivity at my job (as I've been told in more than one year-end review). But neither of these impacts are all that hugely significant.

I don't know..

Also, the show Monk really bothers me.

This is a rant, and i really should not be on the forums at 2 in the morning

It is very true that many people feel that things like depression can just be removed if a person wants it badly enough, and yes, it can be extremely frustrating.
Depressions is a serious illness, and still to this day people get made fun of, trash talked, mocked and shunned because they suffer from it. There are things that can make it easier, but i dont believe that there is a cure that will remove it 100%. Luckily many of those who suffer from it manages to cope with it, and many live close to normal lives.

However, in a way i can understand those that avoid people with depressions and similar, and i know that at times i have done similar things my self . Especially in EVE i find this happening on a semi regular basis.
Maybe because its more anonymous people feel its easier to open up and share, and in some cases its used to get attention, or even pity.

And that last one, pity, becomes very scary in EVE.
Im sure there is a lot of people who have faked various disorders in order to get something, be it depressions or being suicidal, or other things that makes you feel compassion with the person in question.
Personally i know at least one person who used this method to try and get attention from every female player he came across, and amusingly enough the disorders and issues became worse and worse the more girls he talked to.

But thats the sad thing... I know that people will try to do stuff like this, pretend that they have some sort of illness purely so they can use it to their own advantage. Thus its hard to feel compassion or want to help people that reach out and want to talk, and the only way to ensure that people dont event try is to close your self off and prevent people from getting to actually know you, which in turn is hard on your self because suddenly you have to "fake" everything you do around most of the people you socialize with. Im sure this is fine if your into RP, but if you like to socialize as who you are this is difficult.

And at least for me its not something i enjoy, or feel is right. I learned to accept and understand my own issues trough EVE (small villages in Norway does not look fondly upon anything that can label you as "abnormal" ), and here over 8 years later im finding my self withdrawing from everyone and avoiding making new friends purely to not be put in a situation where someone can abuse me by making me think they need help because they want my pity and attention.

The worst thing is that i think that the people who do this, the ones who really are quite happy with life but needs that level of attention, knows exactly how trapped the person they are doing it to becomes.
You cant tell them to go away, or ignore them, because then suddenly your the inconsiderate jerk and even if you know you have good reasons you dont want to be viewed that way.
So all you can do is put up with it, and eventually the conversations become like a script and while your "reputation" remains intact you still feel like a bad human being because you know that you really dont care.
You cant win.

And then you have the people that really do suffer from depressions, the ones that actually do need help. Even in those cases it can backfire on you. And in even worse ways then the ones that are just looking for attention.

For this one i will tell a small story, since it gives a pretty good example on what i want to express.

This was many years ago, and at the time the corp joined a small 0.0 alliance. The alliance leader and one of his directors where very close friends, and had been for years. At that point i was also very naive on how people can act online (i had just learned about this weird thing called cyber shortly before that and i still thought it was something that rarely happened).
The director in the main corp was very.. disturbed. He had several issues, depression being one of them and something i could relate to. Thus i ended up talking to him, and as time went on he seemed to become.. dependent on me. When i logged in, there he was in a convo, if i was on voice, there he was to talk to me in a private channel, if i werent online private messages on the forums... you get the idea.
Now i would have picked up on the warning signs, but remember i was a lot more naive back then (EVE being my first online game).
At this point the alliance leader had realized that i could actually control the director (remember he had a lot of issues, and they came trough ingame on a regular basis, in bad ways), and he asked me to give him even more attention so he would stay calm.
Eventually i finally had enough, being a diplomat for the corp, and second in command in the alliance i found that i could not neglect my duties because of one person who had evolved an obsession about me. I started to avoid private convos, stayed in channels with corp and alliance members on ts, and withdrew my self a lot.
His response? Start to blow up corp members because if i was angry at him i would at least talk to him!
And when stunts like that became impossible, well share internal information from the alliance forums, give said information to our allies and make sure the entire alliance becomes KOS

I truly wish that was the only time that happened.

Looking back at it its weird how much i have changed.
EVE, or rather the people that play EVE, has hardened me. I know for sure that i dont care as much anymore, but im not sure if that makes me a bad person. People come, people go, people will abuse you, and people know no limits on how low they will sink to get to you. Because of that i find my self less willing to take the risk and provide what help i can, despite the fact that i know if it wasent for the people i have met in EVE i would be a much less happy person then i am, and it's unfair of me to not being willing to help others the way people helped me.

It depresses me that:

Everyone who is orderly has OCD
Everyone who is blue is depressed
Everyone who is energetic has ADD
Everyone who is ambitious is narcisistic
Ad nauseam.

Blame the the rise of the Psychologist, the DSM V and it's pharmaceutical sponsors: everyone is sick, but luckily we have pills for everything!

It's a therapy, not a cure. And 36 hours is still within the acceptable limits. I've had worse. Halluzinations only start after 72 hours, especially if you try to read a book.

But, the big thing here is, IF those guys can figure out WHY it works at all, they might be able to find a way to achieve that without sleep deprivation.

And, what would you rather be? Depressed with a sincere death wish or tired but happy?

I know I am currently in a depressed state but I feel odd as I feel the worst when I am alone and would rather be around others because interpersonal interactions help divert my thought processes away from all the **** that has happened in the past 3+ years. It has been pretty bad this week as my sweet 2.5 year old daughter has been away the whole week. She is the only thing that really makes me smile anymore.

I am trying and will continue. When time and money are free enough I may seek someone to talk with about to help deal with the anger I have built up inside but I will refuse to take any medication.

Social contact has actually been proven to be a big help in reducing depression in nearly all cases, and I've had personal experiences reaffirming it as well. Being with your daughter and getting out there to be with friends or just to be around people at all can be a big help in improving your mood, especially when you're feeling isolated.

this is important stuff and it's great to see it spread around, but it's unfortunate that mental health psas are mostly limited to informing people about depression or occasionally anxiety. i haven't seen anything discussing the stigma around psychosis anywhere except for in circles specifically based around discussing psychosis, which is why i guess a lot of people still think that the way the treat a psychotic is to forcibly institutionalize them and medicate them, with or without consent, for an indefinite amount of time (and there are mental health professionals, that i've had the bad luck of meeting irl, that seriously think this)


this reminded me of one of my favorite doctor blogs, which i highly reccomend to anyone skeptical of modern psychiatry and also is a pretty good read if you're into family psychology. his posts on how flawed the process of diagnosing and treating add in children really illuminate the damage that capitalism has done to mental health treatment.