Interesting article, but disappointing since I didn't learn anything I didn't already know (depression is real, ppl. who don't experience it think it's a "mood" that can be fixed with cheerful music, etc.). I do wish I could find an article I saw long ago about a university study that suggested that ones percieved social standing caused depression (and anxiety). This is seen in animals - I remember a video on pbs of some Baboons and one of them got rejected from the group. Soon after he started developing nervous tic like pulling his fur out and getting sick. And we've all heard about how when a gorilla becomes the alpha male that his serotonin levels shoot up.

Personally I think the whole issue revolves around the tendency for ppl. to take things personally. You should never take anything personally, insults or compliments. It just isn't logical. But habits die hard...

Great to see someone promoting Szasz's ideas!

The only thing I wanted to add which Szasz doesn't take on adequately in my view is that of adults who accept psychiatry. Szasz doesn't question the way that the business of psychiatry, like any business, works to make sure that there are no alternatives known to the one being promoted.

So, people come to a psychiatrist because they have no real alternative. They simply do not know of any other ways of seeking help, so inundated they've been with professionals telling them that "expert" assistance is all that is possible.

Now I know Szasz cannot do everything, but I think it's an important point that he's not taking by the horns, and I don't know why. Any thoughts on this are appreciated.

Vosh, I've been depressed, many times over. Sometimes I've been so depressed that I've virtually become paralyzed. I've even considered, on numerous ocassions, the ultimate personal solution to this mind situation, but happily abstained from carrying it out on myself. Over time I came to realize that virtually all of my depression was environmental (broken family, school hell, unsatisfactory employment-- especially being a high school teacher) and through much soul searching along with the birth of my children, and a brilliant, caring friend at the Naropa Institute in Boulder I finally broke loose from this horrible state of mind. I, with the help of a loving family and friends, no longer labor under the clutches of this frame of mind, but more importantly did it without further scrambling my brain with psychotropic, big pharmaceutical company, mind destroying dope. Depression was and is VERY real, the only question being is it a mental illness? From where I stand I'd say 99% of the time "NO"!

I can see that... I was thinking that if that Baboon I mentioned had "mastered solitude", as Gatto says it, then being kicked out of the monkey group (are they monkeys? I dunno) wouldn't have effected the thing in such a way. As an act of imagination I can simulate what that means and when I do I find my sense of being defeated, being surrounded on all sides, being depressed and anxious - I find that it lifts.

I'm also convinced that a lot more ppl. suffer from this than is generally counted -- how many ppl. could not go to work, much less get through the day, without coffee!? I once worked at a place that was straight out of a Dilbert cartoon called Associates Bancorp. (you may have heard of them; I had not known they were this big famous company). Everyone was really perky and I felt like killing myself. One day it hit me, these ppl. inhale coffee like there's no tomorrow! One guy practically performed a blood transfusion with the stuff and was just brimming over with personality. I wonder what sunny conformists they could be without their coffee drug? Lately I've found I can get out of bed if I have my own good reasons and I'm very glad to have discovered this because I'd hate to live my whole life having only ever been able to get up in the morning and face the day thanks to a chemical stimulant (and I've never been able to tell that weird lie to myself that coffee tastes good - it tastes like sh*t - we really underestimate peoples ability to talk themselves into thinking and believing things).

I don't know that I want to define "illness" as that which you treat with a pharmaceutical...

Illness can't be defined as something treated with a pharmaceutical, but how do you define it? And if "mental illness" isn't illness, are all other illnesses illness if their psychosomatic components are taken into account? Aren't many physical illnesses bodily ailments that may have an origin in mental distress? How is the immune system affected by mind and the brain?


"The intensest light of reason and revelation combined can not shed such blazonings upon the deeper truths in man, as will sometimes proceed from his own profoundest gloom. Utter darkness is then the light, and cat-like he distinctly sees all objects through a medium which is mere blindness to common vision. Wherefore have Gloom and Grief been celebrated of old as the selectest chamberlains to knowledge? Wherefore it is, that not to know Gloom and Grief is not to know aught than an heroic man should learn?"

nt

just testing