Jun 18, 2009
While it’s no luxury to have emotional problems, it is a luxury to be able to deal with them.
Like this post?
Combatting middle-of-the-road (that is, non-severe) depression is important, but think how absurd it must seem to people who are impoverished and starving.
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Yes, it is important, and I contend that even the impoverished would see it as such.
Good thought, AP.
Being someone that lost a person close to me because of depression (said person took her own life, had been struggling with depression for years), and having seen the progression of the disorder in that person’s life, I’d argue that fighting “middle-of-the-road depression” is quite important, specially because you never know if/when/how it might turn into “bottom of the pit depression”
Personally, I find that my struggles with grief and depression center around my relationship to God, and while loving God helps, the pain will be with me until heaven. I’ve come to grips with that. I imagine that it would be the same if I was living in India.
Two weeks ago, my dad’s twin, my unsaved uncle tragicly committed suicide, leaving behind two teenage children. My dad is in unspeakable pain, wondering and wishing that he had done more to help his brother, not less.
It is absurd, though, how our materialism feeds our “depression”…buying stuff doesn’t help anything!
I guess I could have just responded to your comment with a “Yeah, what she said,” instead of writing my own.
I’m so very sorry about your family’s loss. I can’t imagine what your dad, especially, must be going through.
Thanks for the perspective.
I’d argue that in some ways emotional problems ARE a luxury. Not in every case, obviously, and I am in no way implying that people shouldn’t seek treatment if they are experiencing any level of depression. But there are certainly plenty of cases of depression that result from the pressures of an overly materialistic life and other aspects of our culture that people in third-world countries can’t even imagine.
Clinical depression is different than stress depressioin–people who don’t suffer from it, don’t get it………..
three thoughts
1. apples and oranges.
2. as a middle-class citizen, i can totally understand how ridiculously privileged people (celebrities with 20 bathrooms the size of my house, for instance) struggle with depression. i’m not like, “dude! what’s your problem? you have everything you could possibly need.”
3. when i struggled with depression, materialistic perspective didn’t snap me out of it. jesus did.
This post makes me depressed.
Not really. It’s actually quite good. Perspective is key.
Mrs Mk…very sad about your loss. Your point is right on. Things never help us to feel better inside. To focus on God, that is the way to go, but sometimes, tragically, that doesn’t help someone enough. I’ve been to that brink…and decided to live with the pain rather than not to live at all. I know that here our problems are minute compared to the rest of the world.
Remember what Abraham said: “impoverished” and “starving”. Does anyone know ANYONE who would truly exchange (or equate) those conditions with a midling depression requiring Xanax?
Although it was no Eden, 120 years ago when 90% of America was working on farms, the sheer amount of required work resulted in a paucity of fatness, funks, and fibromyalgia. Many (I am not arguing ALL) forms of depression, attention deficit, and autism would likely recede to insignificance when following an ox in a field for 10 hours a day.
I like how you said this!
Well, gee, thanks. As someone who has dealt with moderate to severe (suicidal) depression since childhood, I love when my problems become marginalized because it’s not a “real” problem like starvation. Yet another reason I keep my painful struggle a secret from many people because I get slapped in the face with all the supposed causes of it. I’ll just go snap myself out of it now.
Is anybody saying clinical depression is not real and/or should be kept a secret? Rather, I think the points are that 1. most Americans enjoy an embarrassment of riches regarding ways to mute/mollify their emotional problems and 2. those emotional problems either a. vanish or b. remain on the far periphery for cultures in which obtaining food and clean water are the order of the day.
I am with you on this one.
I agree with you Abraham. However, it strikes me that dental checkups probably seem like a luxury to someone facing starvation, too.
I agree.
It is both a luxury and a responsibility.
We should get our teeth regularly checked, just like we should get our mild depression treated.
But it’s because we live in wealth that we can even consider either of these things.
I have written and re-written this comment like 5 times.
I think what you might be trying to say is: don’t feel sorry for yourself?
Which is valid, to an extent.
But like Jenna said, I think it’s also apples and oranges.
The blackness of depression (moderate or severe) is a poverty of spirit, a laying waste. There is a stigma to depression–esp. in Christian circles.
Telling someone that dealing with their depression is a “luxury” is, well, sorta like saying “be warmed and filled” and then slamming the door in their face. Just my .02
Thank you, Elizabeth for your reply. I agree completely. Having a son who struggles with depression (genetically inherited) – I can’ t see how that is a “luxury” in any sense of the word.
I’d have to say I thought much the same thing a few years ago. Now that God has used life to mercifully tenderize me I think I see things a little differently. I’ve watched more than one loved one struggle. I think if they had cancer every one in church would be right there, but as it is, they’re just considered a pain in the butt.
Depression that can be compared to cancer isn’t what I’m talking about. I tried to make that clear.
I think about this a lot!
Interesting that a lot of people leaving comments (myself included) intimately know people struggling with a form of depression, but most of us don’t personally know people living in squalor. My depressed friend has a name. Maybe we all need to go out and get to know more people. If we had a name, face, and memory to go with the impoverished person we might be more compassionate towards them.
Ross, I DO know people living in squalor and poverty AND I know people dealing with depression. I would never compare the two or trivialize either of them.
Good for you Barb. I hope you didn’t see my comment as trying to trivialize this. I was meaning to get involved in the lives of more people, to walk in their shoes, know their name, etc. Which, to me, is the opposite of trivializing it.