rayrena wrote:
> -even the uninformed layman might display sympathy rather than the standard
> reaction that 'depression' evokes, something akin to 'So what?' or 'You'll pull
> out of it' or 'We all have bad days.' The phrase 'nervous breakdown' seems to
> be on its way out, certainly deservedly so, owing to its insinuation of a vague
> spinelessness, but we still seem destined to be saddled with 'depression' until
> a better, sturdier name is created."
The person who suffers from depression cannot "understand" it in the sense of "imaginatively grasp" it after a remission of two or three weeks -- so it is somewhat unreal to expect those who have never experienced it to "understand" it -- but information about it is in fact so plentiful that those who have not experienced it no longer have any excuse in not abstractly believing what they are told about it.
Doyle, incidentally, is probably not quite correct in comparing "situational" with clinical depression. A psychiatrist told me of a patient, a woman in her forties, who in one week suffered the following disasters: her husband was killed and her son crippled in an accident and she was diagnosed with breast cancer. When asked how she was feeling, she said, "terrible--but pretty good." Her clinical depression was in remission.
Except for a glorious 3 weeks in October, I have been almost continuously depressed since mid-April. (Previously, my longest session had been less than 3 months.) I disagree with Styron's liking for the term "melancholia": it is far too romantic, and while a fellow depressive is free for terminology of his/her own choice, for a non-depressive to use that term provokes a certain contempt in me. I would not care for such a person as a neighbor or dinner companion.
Carrol