I've quit a job because I was going through bad depression before and I didn't think I could do a good job. I even asked for part time work, so I understand where she's coming from, but..

In my opinion, this attitude she's portraying is a dangerous attitude to have. This victimhood seems core to her identity. I'm not trying to shame the condition, I'm trying to say that the condition shouldn't become some core part of your identity. Real phenomenon: Have you ever heard of cancer patients becoming depressed after they've gone into remission, because being a "cancer patient" essentially became a core of their identity, and once they no longer had it they became lost? You don't want your identity to be "depressed person", because the last thing you want is to start feeling like a fraud when the fog starts to lift.

Also, I'm just going to say, it's ok to want your employer to have empathy for you, but you also have to have empathy for them. If you're consistently telling them "well, so, I'm a good employee, but I might drop off the face of the earth for 4 months at a time".. what are they supposed to do?

I wonder how much making being depressed part of your identity prevents you from getting better.

I'm not dismissing the reality of it, but reinforcing it to yourself and others around you on a constant basis probably isn't helpful? Constantly ruminating on your depressed state probably isn't good either.

Pretending everything is great probably isn't a good idea or likely even possible (or desirable?), but I'm not persuaded constantly talking about it is a healthy option either.

I am also in academia (a PhD student), and this resonates with me a lot. I got into major depressive episode by the end of last year (having had a few before that) , and was pretty unproductive until the end of March, which is then I took a month long vacation and moved back in with my parents to get back on my feet. Which I was able to do because I spoke openly about my mental health with my advisor and collaborators. And like this person, I shared my experience in a public blog post (https://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/life/covid_depression...). I tend to agree that normalising being honest and open about depression is good - even just saying you were less productive and went on vacation due to it is good, because then others might see that as the healthy thing to do instead of as something that they can't consider. Granted, 'never not talk about depression' seems like it's overstating things, but on balance I think this blog post makes a good point.

From what I gather, there are some studies that show that dietary intervention helps and that piece of it seems to boil down to "some foods promote brain inflammation and this makes depression worse."

My personal opinion is that a lot of what gets currently classified as mental illness would be best seen as a somatopsychic side effects of actual physical illness.

I have a really serious and incurable medical condition. Somatopsychic side effects are a big part of my life. In many cases, I have figured out "This specific mental or emotional thing indicates this specific nutrient deficiency." And the treatment ends up being "Eat foods high in that nutrient."

Having said that, I think a large part of mental illness is really "you are a product of your social environment and the world can sometimes be amazingly talented at driving you crazy."

But to whatever degree mental illness has roots in actual biology, I really think it should be viewed as illness not mental illness.

I've seen very promising people lose their dreams to depression. Often times, I think back to one profoundly talented programmer who I met in Miami years ago, who is no longer with us. (When I met her and saw what she was working on, I was intimidated to see what a high schooler these days could do, and to be honest I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out she was an outlier.) What a tragedy, and what a loss that was for her community. In other cases, I've seen passionate, curious people fail out of school or work and never recover personally or professionally from it.

There're a lot of people in the comments here who don't seem to know what depression is.

Depression isn't just “I'm sad all the time”. Functionally, depression is a reduction in the set of actions that one can take. For some, it can be bad enough that “fill out this form, make this phone call, write the reference number on the form then post it” is too much. No, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do that. That's why it's called a mental illness. Sure, they could “just try harder” except oops, that's not on the list either. (See http://www.depressionquest.com/dqfinal.html for a good analogy.)

Many depressed people come up with psychological tricks to move necessary tasks from the “unavailable actions” category to the “available actions” category. Possibly the best one I've heard is the “shower heist”: it's not “taking a shower”, it's grand theft of the clean.

If you think depression is “just laziness”, why would someone go to all the effort of reframing basic actions in this way? So please, none of that.

I've noticed it's very common to swap 'sadness' and 'depression' in american english. In brazilian portuguese we have an abreviation for "depressão" which is "deprê". Depression is the illness and "deprê" is slang for "sad" and they do not mix. It seems to me by equating both the american english is making it harder for people to realize the difference (which is tremendous).

When I had depression I found it very therapeutic to talk about it, to put it out in the open, but I also ran into a lot of people who couldn’t stop talking about their depression. at some point talking about your depression is just as depressing to others as the depression itself

I can relate to this. She is bravely talking about a condition that is still somewhat taboo (mental health) in order to 1) help others understand her problem and 2) make it less taboo. This potentially helps her and others in a similar position. I do the same thing when talking about my son who is struggling with addiction, though I am very selective about who I discuss it with. It's surprising how many people have someone they know in the same position or are in a similar position themselves. But you have to talk about it before you find this out. Talking about it helps you (assuming the person you are talking to has some empathy) and gradually makes it more acceptable for the issue to be discussed in public. Good for her.

> I talk about my mental health to anyone who will listen, and also try to those who won’t. I don’t launch into the story of my life and whole disease history but I need everyone to understand that depression is something that affects every aspect of my life.

I can't relate to this at all. Maybe it's a big difference in personality, culture or place in life, but the last thing I want to do is to openly share things that are very personal with people that I barely know.

> although the Covid-19 pandemic definitely hasn’t helped

If anything, people who have experienced depression before would be more capable and resilient when dealing with the pandemic restrictions. Because they're used to dealing with negativity. I know at least that was the case with me and some friends of mine who are also affected.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure 15 to 30% of the population experience depression. Severity varies, but it's difficult for psychiatry to draw a line between melancholy and depression.

I'm pretty certain there are depressed people who are somehow functional and have unhealthy ways to cope and are able to go through it.

But it doesn't mean that people who are functional can give lessons to those who are not.

Talking about depression is okay, and medicating is good, but in my view there are way more people with depression than we like to admit. So talking about it it'sy okay, but it's more about being able to admit weakness.

We don't like to show vulnerability and weakness, but we should.

I used to have depression from early to mid adulthood that I could not shake off. Many times, it felt like it would never go away, almost like it was an integral part of me. When I was deep in my hole, I thought thoughts like "don't kid yourself, you're always depressed, this is how it is", and I certainly did not have any reason hoping I would some day suddenly not be depressed. But while it was not sudden at all, I am happy to say that I am now, by all means of assessment, not a person suffering of depression anymore.

I think in my case I was "lucky" that I did not want to take medication against it, any at all, and that my causes of depression did not require it. With a very big warning: It was lucky for my situation, and my apparent causes of depression. I do not want to assert that medication cannot help. My reasons for not taking medication were partly misguided, partly right (again, for my specific case). For example, I had the fear that medication would change my "personality" beyond removing depression, and I did not want to change my personality, because I liked the "good" part of my life, in the intervals where I was not suffering from depression too much (I say "too much" because I'm not sure I was ever really happy during that time). I don't think that's how the medication works, though.

So that left talk therapy, a lot of it. Years of it, sometimes interesting, often difficult. And through all of that, I discovered that I had reasons to be depressed, but I was very far away from seeing and understanding those reasons just on my own. They manifested as "generic" depression instead. Getting to those reasons and talking about them straight cured me. Part of it might have just been understanding my emotions at all. I am probably very lucky in that regard, going from "almost always depressed, sometimes too much to properly function" to "basically cured" by finding out what actually bothered me.

Not everything is rosy now, life does not work that way. Sometimes life situations make me sad, overwhelmed, even desperate, and may still send me into a depressive hole for some time. But when that happens nowadays, I can always attribute a specific reasons to it. I am then depressed because depressing things are happening, and it is an "appropriate" reaction. To go back to the beginning, understanding the obvious reason why you are currently depressed entirely removes the "this is a part of me" aspect. Nobody thinks a person mourning for a loved one suffers from "depression" as a condition, for example. I think I learned a new skill.

Second disclaimer: I can only speak for what I went through, and I am not a professional. It is entirely possible that your depression has other causes, and cannot be fixed by talk therapy. For some, knowing that it worked for me might instill hope, though.

>> I talk about my mental health to anyone who will listen, and also try to those who won’t.

Sorry, that's just plain rude.

Ok, there's a lot to unpack here. The thing that people are saying about clinging to an identity has truth to it and it can hold you back.

However this is the way I look at it and interpret it. Depression is often an invisible illness. There are physical invisible illness too. Depression is a disability just like any other. It is very possible to a form of chronic treatment resistant depression that lasts your whole life. There is nothing dangerous about "normalizing" the fact that you can have a mental illness that will never go away. My 20s were awful because people who didn't know me were constantly trying to tell me this was a phase or I would "get over it". I didn't. Once I learned to embrace that and not listen to those people I started recovering further. However it still never went away, but I never expect it to go away. It is what it is, it's a pain sometimes, just like having a physical disability is, there are more steps to take, and more things you have to watch for but if you have some support and educate yourself you find ways to navigate it just the way someone with a physical disability does. As you get older you find more areas in life that are not for you, or you need more help in, and so on, and it gets better with age to some extent because of having more of these experiences to draw from and being secure about what your needs are and sticking up for them. It can be lonely as a lot of people try to tell you something else but if you know certain environments lead to hospitalization for you, you shut that out and stop engaging with that crap anymore.

So as someone with chronic TRD I look at what she's saying like this. When you're in "recovery" (I kind of hate that term with mental illness but it is what it is) your environment is very, very important to you. Let's forget the psych part of it now. Is someone with a physical mobility disability going to thrive if they're in a 6th floor apartment with no elevator that's not ADA compliant? No. No question. The disability is relevant to that situation because it's not a good fit for them and will contribute to worsening symptoms. If someone is physically in a wheelchair or physically has a cane or whatever someone may step in and be like, hey, yeah this apartment isn't ADA compliant, let's find you something else, whatever. But with invisible disabilities you don't have anything to go off of.

Now let's go back to that same analogy with someone with depression. People you surround yourself with, again, your environment, can heavily influence how this disorder plays out. Just because someone is "nice" and well meaning, it doesn't mean they are safe. Let me say that again. Someone can be the nicest person in the world, but not safe for you and your symptoms. This is not a value judgement, just like the apartment example is not a value judgement. It's not a good fit and it's better for everyone as someone with a disability that you have a good fit and environment for your disability as things are hard enough already.

But depression is an invisible disability. And depression is stigmatized. And now we can throw gender or other things into the mix. Maybe we don't want to tell someone about this, or people at our job, or whatever. There are different reasons for this. But at the end of the day you will run into disability related issues and people won't be able to contextualize them as disability related issues, and they will snowball, and you most likely will suffer as a result.

By being upfront and honest about your disability it's the same thing as having a wheelchair or a cane, although it's more stigmatized and less well understood in this case. In society we are at the point where we look down on people making fun of those that are physically disabled or not assisting them but it still happens to a crazy extent. A lot of the work is already done in that case. Even if people don't understand physical disability they are pressured at least to not be an asshole and pressured via ADA to help people out. The reality is that this does get a lot trickier and people who are really just surface level pressured by society and legal issues to help someone out in the workplace, well, you're going to run into a wall at some point with a physical disability too.

By talking about your disability it's a litmus test to gauge what people are "safe" for you. It will help you get further in your personal and professional life if you have a feeling for who will be helping you because they either have a better understanding (usually people personally impacted by going through it themselves or having a loved one) or someone who has an open enough mind to want to learn about it. The reality is that a lot of people don't fit into those categories. And in many many personal relationships and environments you will fail if you try to get people to understand who don't.

I'm guessing some of the people who are having a reaction to this article are people who just are in the camp of not being "safe" people and need to think about it more or spend time with a loved one who is affected by these things to understand this stuff further. Use the physical disability analogy I used to challenge your views on this subject.

People who don't understand this often think I'm passing value judgements on "perfectly nice" people. I'm not. I just need to cultivate the people around me in the same way that I need to cultivate a space that's physically accessible to me if I had a physical disability. The people you surround yourself can effect your emotions and depression is an emotional disability. If my health suffers when I'm around someone it's not going to do us any good for me to force it for their benefit or for appearances, especially when the risk for me is that I could end up hospitalized. You need to keep very strict boundaries as someone with a disability like this and since people don't contextualize it in the same way that they do a physical disability people are often berated and misunderstood for it, a bit like I see in the comments here. She needs to keep herself safe. It can be that you get wrapped up into the identity thing and I can't speak for her but being able bodied/disabled is just as relevant to your outward way of interacting to the world as is your gender expression or so on and you can't leave it off the table, nor should you really if you want to be healthy.

Similarily, I found that having mental health diagnoses have reframed my already negative tendencies to merely assign concrete reasons to my failings that sound more justifiable to me.

So many decisions and feelings in my life have become framed around statements like "that was because my attention was lost," or "my attention is probably not going to hold up for another hour if I try that," or "I just wasn't paying attention." Every accomplishment and every mistake is colored though a lens of attention, or my lack of it.

The fact that I procrastinate is no longer because "I'm lazy," but "I have a debilitating lack of executive function." It sounds reasonable, and it can be useful to understand the reasons to find better ways of dealing with them. But merely changing the reason from a less specific to more specific one doesn't ultimately solve the problem of procrastination.

It can be tempting to indicate the diagnosis as revealing the one major problem interfering with a normal life, but for me that isn't the case. It provides me with an easy distraction from the problems with how I carry myself and my usual thought patterns.

If I try learning to draw, and reach for learning materials focused on drawing skills, almost none of them will go out of the way to state: your attitude may prevent you from making progress on this lesson. Someone who's in pristine shape and someone who can barely find the motivation to get out of bed each day could read the same book with the intention of learning how to draw and have significantly different outcomes without any explicit indication as to why from just reading the book alone.

There's a saying therapists use, "What we resist persists."

The research has shown that being open with others about your experience alleviates the symptoms of depression, including constant rumination. Putting on a happy face for the benefit of others, on the other hand, tends to make it much, much worse.

There are of course confounding factors like whether the person has a victimization complex or whatever, but those need to be handled on their own terms. I don't personally experience anything like that, so I don't know much about it, but my guess is that they would also generally be exacerbated by encouraging people not to talk about it.

I know some people who can talk about their psychological struggles and remain likeable (it's some kind of charisma superpower), but other people where it's just a massive bummer (myself included). Step number one of getting along with people has been masking my internal state where possible. That lets me get by. The endless pit of despair and hopelessness that long-term depression can present, as with many chronic illnesses, it can just be a massive downer (especially when there's literally nothing the other person can do - why burden them with knowledge of my pain more than necessary?). And I can be likeable and fun to be around, and I appreciate it when I know other people who are struggling internally manage to play along also in their own way [ I know it takes them a lot of effort and I appreciate it deeply ]. This is how making it work works for me.

Though I guess I can appreciate the principled approach of the person writing the article, that would be a disaster for me given how I am (and I don't think it reflects badly on my social circles). I have to struggle to not be a happiness vampire, and this would tip the scales.

>I’ve been in therapy on and off and I’m taking meds (and no, yoga, essential oils and exercise are not sufficient to treat mental illness)

Often neither is medication.

> I wonder how much making being depressed part of your identity prevents you from getting better.

I had the same thought recently when Bikepacking.com posted a short video documentary about two obese women doing long-distance cycling. The women claimed that their goal was to end fat-shaming. Yet maintaining such a heavy weight while engaging in such physically demanding activity is difficult indeed. I therefore got the impression that they had so made being overweight a part of their identities that it was no longer a condition they just happened to be stuck with, rather they were deliberately maintaining it at some half-conscious level.

From my personal experience, depression is something that's there whether you think about it or not. Of course if you just think about it that'll just make things worse. But I don't think that's what this post is saying.

The conclusion is - "The majority of people are still uncomfortable when I casually mention my depression, but that doesn’t silence me. I do this not to elicit pity, or to be inspiration porn about overcoming obstacles, but to normalise this – people like me are here, everywhere, you could be me at any point in your life." and that sounds fine to me. If someone asks how you are, it is a positive thing to say you are dealing with depression to normalize it. I would probably not so it for everyone, but to friends and Co workers I think it is ultimately a good thing.

I agree. I wonder why it's so different for depression vs. other illness/challenges. When we see someone without legs, we accommodate them however possible and try to treat them equally, but we also celebrate those who manage to be competitive wheelchair racers or accomplished at calisthenics. Yet for depression, we almost try to convince people that it's simply not possible to be functional and you shouldn't even try. I sympathize with people who have depression but I feel like the current way people try to deal with it is similar to trying to encourage cathartic releases of anger, not knowing that it only makes anger worse.

The problem is you don´t get to choose the content of your ruminations. When you are experiencing severe depression judgment is misguided and you don´t get to choose the contents of your mind the same way you don´t get to choose the contents of your mind in the middle of a maniac episode.

You gotta find a balance but talking about it regularly, whenever you realize it affects your behavior is a good way to deal with depression. It also helps others to deal with it better.

"Depression" is more the term our medical community has today to describe low mood, lack of energy, loss of interest et al.

It's important to understand that there exists no weird illness that is causing these symptoms. Instead, the symptoms can have all sorts of roots, but depression is just what we call them.

I suffered from bad depression in my youth. Couldn't get a haircut or buy new shoes, things like that. I think the worst moment came when I was so depressed I just stood there in my room. I couldn't even lie down. No way to explain that to a normal person.

One day my mom said, "I know you're not faking this because no one would deliberately be this miserable."

It was more comforting than you might imagine.

- - - -

(I debated adding this because I don't want to get drawn into an argument about my own personal history, but FWIW I was cured completely in a single session of hypnotherapy that lasted less than ten minutes. The therapist was Dr. Richard Bandler, co-inventor of Neurolinguistic Programming. (Yes, the NLP that is decried as "pseudoscience".))

I think the larger sentiment (and you're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong) is that dealing with depressed people is tiring. I have a few friends who deal with chronic depression, and getting their input on things or checking up on them is always a production. I still greatly appreciate their position in my life, but my sanity (and patience) is finite. More often than not, I'm equally (if not more) helpless, which makes it extremely difficult to disengage or move the discussion forwards.

I welcome an honest dialogue around mental health, but a dialogue requires two people to be dynamic. If the two become mutually incompatible, then there's effectively no way for me to contribute.

I agree except for:

>No, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do that. That's why it's called a mental illness.

That's not the reason it's called a mental illness. It's called an illness because it's a source of suffering. Also, of course there's a reason - otherwise it wouldn't happen.

> There're a lot of people in the comments here who don't seem to know what depression is.

There is a lot of people who don't seem to know what depression is because no one really knows what is depression.

It is complex, it is multi-faceted, it can be subtle, it can be overt. It varies from person to person. It varies in causes.

> There're a lot of people in the comments here who don't seem to know what depression is.

> Depression isn't just “I'm sad all the time”.

I always see these comments in threads about depression but I almost never see people actually making the comments in question. Can you point to an example in this thread?

Thank you for sharing. I am going through something very similar right now. Less than a half-year of therapy but it's helping.