Depression is not a disease in itself, but a symptom of another condition. Thinking it is a disease is probably the wrong approach society is taking. They want to be rid of the problem without knowing what is causing it. A certain amount of depression is normal and society may be over reacting to it by treating it as a disease when it is not. Often, what is taken for a diseased condition is nothing more than chemical changes in the body. This temporary condition may need some expert advice and some looking into but to label it a disease is an over-reaction.
After the birth of a baby, as an example, it is normal to be somewhat depressed. The new mother should be told to expect this by her obstetrician and should it need mild medication, some should be given. But never should it be considered an abnormal condition; not unless it continues on and incapacitates the mother.
And another way society may be over-reacting to depression is to link it to serious mental illness and consequently attach a stigma to it. Depression as a mental illness is serious and it is by no means rare and yet society in general has hang-ups about mental illness. This is an abnormal attitude for a society that supposedly leans towards normalcy.
A person once afflicted with a mental illness has a stigma attached to them that follows them throughout their life. Any time they act a mite irrational,society reacts with its own irrational comments. Society, as a learned group, should know better. An example of that statement could be, well you know she’s not all here, she has been in the nut house. That’s one large house and most of us have been there, or have needed to be, at some time or another.
Society in general does not understand the nature of mental illness, nor does it have a collective understanding of what makes for good mental and physical health. As a group it stands together and is in the danger of falling for anything. So, whatever the latest report out about mental illness may be enough to get it taken in as fact. Most illnesses have some sort of an inherited tendency and when the conditions are right for them to appear, they will. It may take years of poor nutrition, lack of sustaining nutrients, and poor life styles, or simply time itself to have them appear.
Yet depression as an illness is serious. Suicidal thoughts and remarks should not go unnoticed as these give clues as to what might happen when sufferers are in the deep and dark pits of depression. It is often hard for the person so afflicted to be aware that help is impossible. And help is out there and saving lives is something society can do and should do where depression is concerned. This, however, does not need to have any sideline effects such as stigma’s and ridicule attached to it.
Writers as a rule are always in danger of depressed states and it has everything to do with the depths they go to search for answers since this often leads into dangerous avenues of thought. Writing, without some anchoring system that can act as a rescuer when one gets in deeper than one intends to get in, is often necessary.
High profile writers and others out in front of society that has succumbed to depressions and other mental afflictions may sometimes give wrong clues about the overall condition of depression. The thought behind this probing is more likely to be their occupations as thinkers and writers. But they are simply ready statistics and others who are likewise afflicted are out of the spot light and would paint a different picture.
Society over-reacts to what it hears. It over-reacts to pessimism and agrees that the world is headed in the wrong direction. It does this while at the same time contributing to its wrong directions, knowingly or unknowingly.
It takes individual involvement to create a society that attempts to speak for all of a group and its sheer force in numbers is daunting, yet its facts and figures may not be true. All people do not do this and all people do not do that, and certainly not all of them do it at the same time. A person is a lone individual and has a voice of their own and may not care to lend theirs to group intelligence. Everyone has a right to be somewhat contrary at times, and is expected to be when what is being said is contrary to their beliefs.
Simply because practices and ways of thinking are socially acceptable and the larger part of a society supposedly agrees to this norm, does not make it right and justifiable. An individual alone has access to his conscience and it is not a commodity that the society can control. Yet if enough believe as this lone individual does that what society is engaged in at present is wrong, and they set out to change the minds of the larger segment, then society begins to reform.
An example of this happened in the year thirty-three AD. Now these 2007 years later, society is still engaged in activities that are reminiscent of the society that perpetuated that incident. Kill him, kill him, don’t even let him get a foot hole is the silenced cry every time a baby barely starting a new life is flushed from the womb of a pregnant woman.
Is society reacting or over-reacting to this?
Source:
http://www.philosophicalsociety.com
