I was reminded of this article recently
Food for thought. Illness is illness, wherever it’s located, it’s all real. ‘All in the mind’ is a real place!
The writer, broadcaster, actor, avid twitterer (to name but a handful of labels), Stephen Fry, has spoken at length on this subject. Living with bipolar he does so with the hope of enlightening and openly addressing something that is still treated as shameful, embarrassing, or a weakness.
Ask someone with depression ‘what caused it?’ and you ostracize them, you’re suggesting blame – a thing or an event which can (could, should) be reduced, eliminated, forgotten, overlooked, gotten over. And it must be valid, it must have the appropriate magnitude. Maybe a bereavement or a diagnosis, a catastrophe that outweighs someone else’s definition of manageable.
Chances are there wasn’t a single event that triggered the episode, maybe it was a long grinding line of things added up to a tipping point. Or maybe it came from nowhere and side-swiped them.
Be kind, don’t judge, you don’t know their story.
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