Through experimentation, science has been able to discern that, when certain chemicals are of certain quantities within the brain, it has certain effects on perception and behavior.
I visited one of my friends from highschool recently, hearing that she had been diagnosed with chronic depression. Not something too far fetched for a high school student, and I wanted to see how she was. I caught her on her break from work.
I held her for her entire break while she bawled on me, and she couldn’t explain why she was crying. This is a girl who grew up in a regular home, with good parents, went to a good school and had friends who cared for her. But more than that, she couldn’t figure out why she was crying.
Fast forward a few months, she’s been taking anti-depressants, and ya know what? She doesn’t cry randomly during the day for no reason. She feels sad normally, she feels happy normally. Her medication corrects certain imbalances in her brain chemistry that have a negative effect on her life, allowing her to lead a normal, healthy life.
Further back, I had another friend who was much worse off. She lived with her semi-abusive father, couldn’t go to a normal high school and, had she ever been taken to a shrink, would have been diagnosed and clinically depressed (just my guess). She can’t get or afford medication, her dad isn’t helping her out, even the priest at her church couldn’t help her out. Eventually, she committed suicide.
Would she be around today if she had been put on anti-depressants, I don’t know. But she’d have had a better chance.
And those are just a few of the people I’ve known with depression, not even coming near the people I know who’ve had bipolar disorder or diagnosed with schizophrenia. A lot of people I’m friends with would not be able to function or behave like a normal person without clinical psychology and their medications.
Do some people get better from depression on their own? Yes, I’m sure some do. I had depression, but now, years later, I took control and, without doctors or physicians, I’m fine. To this extant, I don’t believe I would have been diagnosed clinically depressed, and if I had been I would have taken the medications and possibly shaved years of pain from my life and the lives of my friends.
So don’t call the people who need to stay in mental hospitals zombies, they’re not, no more than someone who has broken bones. Psychologists aren’t criminals running around selling people snake-oil, because if they were, there would be very few people able to survive with depression and schizophrenia.
This argument is over. When you interact, live, maybe even love someone who has a serious mental disorder, maybe then you’ll appreciate what science has been able to learn and do for the sick.
-Gendou
