Yes, depression really DOES hurt, but ignorance hurts even more

There's been a lot of discussion regarding depression, suicide, mental illness, etc. in social media today. I saw a friend make a heartfelt plea to his followers to concentrate on the problem and not the misguded action that a celebrity made in response to his own personal hell full of demons. I then also watched him stand up and call out another who had the disgrace to attempt to explain why it's soooo easy to just fix it, and to ignore the symptoms or not talk about them or even to commit suicide is basically just a coward's response. Trying to prevent a friend's page from being host to one individual's completely assinine, misguided, and flat out ignorant views, I felt I could use MY voice more appropriately right here on my own blog to address these types of ignorant assholes. This is partly directed at one particular idiot, but mostly so I can scream my own views as loud as possible. Am I an expert? You bet your ass I am. It's nobody's business who in my life is or isn't depressed. What matters and DOES need to be known is that there's no easy cure, no medicine to make it go away, and no happiness ever after.

That one (unaffected) person could believe they can completely rationalize the decisions of a mentally disordered person would be outright laughable if it wasn't such a heartbreaking discussion. I wanted to scream reading stupid remarks made like "if you're gay, just come tell me and don't hide it" or "if you're depressed, just talk to me and we''ll figure it out." WTF? Seriously! WHAT. THE. FUCK? Would you talk to a person drunk off their ass and say, "let's just sit here right now and have a discussion about why you shouldn't be drunk?" If a child broke his arm, would you sit with him in the ER and say, "sure it hurts, but it IS fixable, so stop being in pain?"If the next words I see are "let's talk and surely we can pray away the gay," I swear I will batshit lose it for good.

Yes, there are meds for depression. No, many depressed people don't take them. Why? Because they're DEPRESSED! They don't believe a medication can help. And guess what? Many times they're RIGHT! Most people with mental illness have to continue trial and error w/their doctor to find what works for them, and sometimes even something that HAS been working stops working. There are SOOO many meds available so there's GOT to be a solution, right? Sure. Guess what happens when one of those solutions is a newer medication made to fix ALL your problems. Your insurance company steps in with their we're sorry, too new, too expensive, you can just keep using the one we've been letting you use. We (the non-medical degree holding group of idiot agents that make up an insurance company) are certain you'll be just fine. Have you tried to work through almost ANY health plan's mental illness program? Good freaking luck with that. A person is suicidal and barely hanging on hour to hour, and they're being told someone qualified to help can be seen in, oh......3 to 4 months. And even then the insurance assholes are only going to cover a few visits covered, so one has to make sure it all gets said the first time and successfully treated on the first attempt.

And to add insult to injury, guess what one of the biggest side effects is to most depression meds? May cause suicidal ideations. Yes, that's right - you're end-all, be-all, sure-thing fix MAY ACTUALLY MAKE IT WORSE! Guess what else is a big side effect? Loss of sexual desire. Guess what another is? Weight gain. So you take your meds like a good depressed person should and enjoy your even more depressing, fat ass, loveless life.

You think this discussion HELPS because now people are talking about it? Yeah, the NOT depressed people are. Guess what the depressed people are doing? They're seeing that a very famous actor, known particularly FOR HIS COMEDY, even with all of his fame and wealth, couldn't overcome his own feelings of hopelessness to the point that he lost his struggle AND his life. So that's definitely uplifting news for the average Joe trying to keep his job just one more day to take care of his family (who he's convinced hates him), and if he just could crash his car into a concrete wall, at LEAST there's the solace of knowing the life insurance policy will finally take care of them when he feels he can't.

So please, anyone who insists their years of experience studying psychology makes them in the know, you should absolutely go ahead and spew that intolerance and idiocy, enlightening us all with the "just talk about it and don't be a coward" suggestions. I'm sure the phone will be ringing off the hook to get some of that precious advice about the "oh so easily available and fixable options." Why the hell not? It may just cost someone their life in the process, but if it makes one ridiculous self-inflated jackass sleep better at night becausing he was 'there for you' and you just 'couldn't see the reasoning,'well, I guess that's just the price you pay for trying to fix someone who can't see a good thing when it's staring him in the face. Or that person is a fucktard. Definitely one of those.