Hello,
It pains me to admit it but if recent reports are to be believed, Britney Spears is the only person in the world that feels the way I do. At least she's got an excuse with the old post natals. I refuse to be Bi-polar. Some of my mates down at the 'mental' are that way inclined and they do the most peculiar things.
Cheerio
3 comments:
The way the media portrays it, you're either mentally "healthy", or else you've got some sort of "disease" which no-one ought to talk about, or try to understand.
It's so stupid and pathetic. I suffer a great deal from periods of depression (though I would hesitate to use that word, it's not clinical depression really, in the way I understand the term). I'm just up and down and so on, like a yo-yo. There seems to be a great deal of pressure to define what is "normal", what we should all be feeling, and that any deviation should be seen as a sign of weakness or incapacity. Personally, I don't want to be boxed in to anyone else's ideas of "normal" mental health. Life is bloody tough, and it affects our minds in different ways. We all have an inner struggle of some sort.
I have been much inspired by the life and writings of Spike Milligan, a man whose mind was sensitive to his surroundings and who struggled with depression-related problems. He wasn't "mental", (I hate that word when it's used to describe people like him), he was a gifted sensitive man. The poems he wrote describing his periods of depression touched me deeply.
In fact, if one's idea of "good mental health" is that one is supposed to feel "happy" or "at ease" the whole time, given our crazy, hectic, out-of-balance lives these days, I'm sorry bit I think it is completely "normal" to sometimes feel depressed/bewildered/confused by life. It is totally normal to look on your life and wonder who you are, where you're going and at times to think "what is the point of it all" and to get depressed by the incoherence of it all.
Yes I think you're spot on. I think doctors are partly to blame. I read somewhere about a survey of GP's where the majority said that they would offer anyone who cried in their surgery anti-depressants.
I've certainly felt pressured to consider myself as someone with a long term disability rather than having the odd bout of illness.
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