Nancy,

As someone who has an academic degree in psychology, I must take exception to your description of depression as an illness. While the condition is painful to the victim, it is certainly not in the same class as paranoid schizophrenia or the other major mental illnesses. Depression is, in essence, having the blues, being sad, etc.

An Indian writer named Jiddi Krishnamurthi is gaining a bit of an Internet audience these days for a pithy statement that he’s made, “it is not a sign of mental health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”.

There is every reason for the surviving relatives of a suicide to question their relationship with that person. That would seem to be something that came naturally to our forbears when they lived in more rural and tightly-knit communities. Alas, a full century of rampant urbanization and atomization of individuals into mere “consumer-selves” has stripped a lot of the humanity from us. And made us much more vulnerable to sadness about our living condition; a condition which is really extreme if you take the long view of human history.

So, if there is one thing I’d hope to get across it is that “depression” isn’t an illness. In fact, it is often the absolutely proper response to the improper and corporately created “reality” that most of us are forced to live in today. Furthermore, by characterizing sadness as an illness, you are furthering the goal of greater profitability for the Big Pharmaceutical conglomerates who love creating or fantasizing new illnesses for which their products can be prescribed and profits be garnered.

Perhaps if people would concentrate for a while on why America is just such a freaking weird Empire and how we might roll back this madness we could lower the suicide rate and not have to read about how the staff at Walter Reed Army Hospital have to deal with about 1,000 suicide attempts per month at that facility. Didn’t read about that in the Bulletin? You never will. Reality is being kept from the public, while we’re being fed a diet of social illusion and “reality TV” that ought to be enough to drive any sane person to consider suicide as an intelligent response.

***
For those not prone to thinking that they live in a country that is driving each of us crazy, let’s look at two events:

November 22, let us not forget, is the 45th Anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

And in 39 cities across America this Saturday, activists will be demanding “End The Fed”, a campaign to force the U.S. Government to stop abusing the American public by doing business with the secretive, privately owned and extremely lucrative (for insiders) Federal Reserve Bank. Just think about this. Without the Fed creating the monstrous mortgage scandal of the last few years, hundreds of dispossessed and foreclosed upon individuals would not today be considering suicide as their only way out.

“So, if there is one thing I’d hope to get across it is that “depression” isn’t an illness.” Clearly, you missed the chapter on “clinical depression versus “situational depression.” The former is an illness per the AMA, the latter is the “blues.” Your credentials for making this statement are invalid unless you are an MD.

Cherokeewill,

The AMA is a self-interested lobby that hardly can be considered an authority on much of anything other than it own aggrandizement.

Look at the history of the AMA on racial discrimination and you’ll see a woeful record of abuse of minorities.

Look at the AMA’s position on universal health care, its historic opposition to the amazingly popular Medicare system, its opposition to universal health care, its outrageous position that medicine should be a for-profit enterprise rather than a humanitarian service to the community and I’d say I really don’t give a hoot what your AMA says.

The physicians I totally admire today would not think of joining the selfish members of the AMA. If you want to see what a real medical association should look like, do a Google search for “Physicians For a National Health Plan”. These are the people I admire. They are interested in serving the People, not as is the case with the AMA engaging in endless philosophical sophistry in defense of selfishness.

Check out Duray’s blog at

http://www.911blogger.com/blog/434

and you learn everything you need to know about him, his personal and political views.