Comments: Depression In Public
Hi, Philip. What's wrong with this picture? You're the one supposed to be the cynic and I'm the one supposed to be the optimist.
Lincoln wouldn't stand a chance of being elected dog catcher today, thanks to stigma and unrelenting media scrutiny. Neither would the one in four of the first 37 presidents who had a mood disorder. Back in Lincoln's day, his "melancholia" was well-known, but living successfully with the affliction was seen as a character virtue, analogous to working his way up from poverty.
Our population gets screwed from all over: Very little research dollars, unconscionable personal abuses, precious little legal protections, hundreds of thousands of us warehoused in overcrowded jails with sadistic guards, homelessness, a health system that's a national disgrace, and on and on.
Whew! I needed to get that out of my system. Tomorrow you go back to playing bad cop and I'll play good cop.
Posted by John McManamy at June 26, 2006 01:36 PM
It must be nice for Ms. Jamison to be able to be in a field where she can be out and in the open about her Bipolar condition. I tried that once and I have been paying for it ever since. Maybe she can help me find a 65,000 a year job and the goverment health benefits I once had until I decided that it was okay to open.
If we only lived in a perfect world.
Posted by Angie at June 26, 2006 02:42 PM
I found the The WaPo article discouraging, but what mental health bloggers are saying fucking destroys me. Why bother. Not a single inquiry, just catapault the propgaganda, it goes without saying we're constitutionally defective, it's a genetic path, and it's set in stone.
So the House is going to hold hearings on "Mental Illness and Brain Disease: Dispelling Myths and Promoting Recovery Through Awareness and Treatment."
Words fail.
Posted by flawedplan at June 26, 2006 05:10 PM