Shawn Andrews is battling depression (or not?)

[AbeBeta]

Follow your own advice... and in case you haven't noticed, your straw man has pretty much been obliterated.

Are you serious? Not a single person here aside from you has argued that clinical depression isn't a physical condition.

Perhaps you should be treated for being out of touch with reality.

 

[AbeBeta]

without more symptoms indicated, we cannot tell what he has, but in order for it to be a diagnosis of some type of clinical depression (major, dysthymic, etc) it needs to really disrupt his daily life, causes significant distress, or somehow impair him from living his daily life (social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning).

Sure - we can't diagnose the guy. I never said we could

But that is very different than saying people with depression just need to get over it and suck it up - for many depressed people it is a serious disorder that will persist unless there is a medical intervention.

 

[Kilyin]

Are you serious? Not a single person here aside from you has argued that clinical depression isn't a physical condition.

I guess you're a selective reader, or you have some sort of chronic short term memory loss.

Just because you claim I said something doesn't make it true. I never said that it isn't a physical condition. I said it doesn't physically kill you, like cancer. Plenty of people overcome depression without surgery or chemotherapy...

And why is it that the U.S. has the highest concentration of these sorts of mental disorders, e.g. depression? Are other localities less predisposed to the 'physical' causes of depression?

 

[AbeBeta]

I guess you're a selective reader, or you have some sort of chronic short term memory loss.

Just because you claim I said something doesn't make it true. I never said that it isn't a physical condition. I said it doesn't physically kill you, like cancer. Plenty of people overcome depression without surgery or chemotherapy...

And why is it that the U.S. has the highest concentration of these sorts of mental disorders, e.g. depression? Are other localities less predisposed to the 'physical' causes of depression?

1. A physical condition does not have to directly kill you to be serious. Very few people overcome legitimate clinical depression without drugs. The complications associated with that condition may be just as if not more severe. The World Health Organization ranks depression as the 4th leading worldwide cause of reduced life expectancy/life years lost to disability. The WHO projects that by 2020, depression will rank #2.

2. The US has a higher concentration of depression diagnoses? Diagnosis requires adequate levels of health care, and for many nations that does not exist. WHO notes that in one third of the nations across the world, there is no mental health care available. In countries where care is available, there are rates as low as 1 psychiatrist for every 300,00 residents. In many countries with larger numbers of psychiatrists, those people work primarily in mental institutions. The WHO notes the as a Worldwide problem, not one concentrated in the US. We have better mental health care in the U.S. that’s why we have a higher concentration of diagnoses.

 

[FuzzyLumpkins]

i wonder how they handled ADD, depression, not having a drug that cures 1 "problem" while only creating a few dozen more and all the germ killing salves we have now back in say 1735.

with debtors prison, insane asylums, floggings, exorcisms, stonings and slavery.

this argument is almost as bad as the 'people were better off smoking asbestos and eating paint chips and dirt 40 years ago' argument despite life expectancy being 15 years shorter.

 

[iceberg]

with debtors prison, insane asylums, floggings, exorcisms, stonings and slavery.

this argument is almost as bad as the 'people were better off smoking asbestos and eating paint chips and dirt 40 years ago' argument despite life expectancy being 15 years shorter.

well actually i agree that there are thing we can diagnose and help with. however, i think it's a crutch for some as well. no, not all. but i do feel some use all these "advances" as an alternative to actually doing something.

kids were raised for how long successfully and suddenly we're a culture of drugging them for ADD type issues? being "hyper" (a kid w/energy, you're kidding, right?)

so yes, it's not the best of examples, no. but it doesn't change my core point. however, as you and others have said, it was a poorly stated argument on my part.

guilty.