Ignorance kills

[kengr]

Last night on the news in the wake of Robin Wlliams' suicide, they had a lot of stuff about depression and suicide.

And I wanted to reach through the screen and strangle the talking heads on the local station. In talking about calling help lines they kept talking aboput "if you are feeling sad" and other such stupidities.

DEPRESSION IS NOT BEING SAD.

Feeling "down" or feeling apathetic, but *sad*? No. Not even close.

I'm sure they thought they were being helpful, but AT BEST they were being insulting. At worst, their mistaken characterization of what depression is or what it feels like are going to get people who *should* call the help lines to decide that what they have isn't depression and *not* call.

Protect me from well-meaning idiots and fools.

Comments

[stickmaker.livejournal.com]

Yeah. There have been segments on the news in the US cautioning people that some types of phrases intended to be comforting to friends and family can actually encourage suicide in others. (Things such as "their suffering is over.") There's a lot of misunderstanding in the general population about depression.

[kengr]

There's also mindsets that "normal" people don't understand but are *way* too understandable if you've been there.

Years back I encountered an item about a particular "kind" of suicide. Folks who had everything going great and suicided.

The explanation scared me silly because I could *so* see how seductive it was.

They did it because they'd had a life of ups and downs and didn't want to risk having another "down". *shudder*

I talked about it with a friend who was one of the moderators of an online abuse survivors group we both belonged to (on the old CompuServe Human Sexuality forums).

We both agreed that it made a scary amount of sense. And that we'd never, *ever* mention it in the group.