Maybe it's because people who don't suffer from mental illness can't really grasp just how horrible it is. We (as in society) use the term depression too lightly - as in people will say "oh i'm so depressed about ..." when what they really mean is they're just down. And they get over that. So they figure someone who is actually depressed will eventually, you know, get over it. Or they just need to try harder to get over it.
Jon's gone through some really black periods where he was suicidal, and I could see what it was doing to him, and I knew it was real, but I still don't understand what it's like in his head when that happens. And even though I know it's real and not just him being melodramatic, there is still this little part of my brain that says "FFS - snap out of it already". Terminal illness we can understand. Mental illness, if you don't suffer from it, you can't really. We can imagine ourselves being told we have 8 months to live or whatever - we can't even begin to imagine what any serious mental illness is like to live with day in and day out.
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zvi
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Date: 2013-02-23 01:09 am (UTC)Jon's gone through some really black periods where he was suicidal, and I could see what it was doing to him, and I knew it was real, but I still don't understand what it's like in his head when that happens. And even though I know it's real and not just him being melodramatic, there is still this little part of my brain that says "FFS - snap out of it already". Terminal illness we can understand. Mental illness, if you don't suffer from it, you can't really. We can imagine ourselves being told we have 8 months to live or whatever - we can't even begin to imagine what any serious mental illness is like to live with day in and day out.