To all fathers and men on fathers day.

[MrAnonymous]

Not sure where to put this but you can move it where ever..

Yesterday a mate of mine committed suicide. He left behind 2 young sons on the eve of fathers day. I'm still trying to figure out what was so bad that he had to end it. I wasn't real close mates with him but it has really hit me hard. Seeing him on facebook you would never think he was having troubles. Always with mates partying, drinking piss and fishing on boats travelling around Australia, the guy was living the life.

The reason I'm writing this is to remind all men to not be afraid speak up, your more of a bitch if you don't. If only he would of told someone he probably would of been with his kids today. Don't be afraid to ask a mate how everything is going either you could save a life, even if their life like perfect. Nothing is ever that bad that you have to end it.

I wanted to write something better but I have f**king horrible grammar but you get the point.

Happy fathers day to all the dads on the forum.

 

[miguel de cervantes]

Sorry to hear this.

Seeing him on facebook you would never think he was having troubles. Always with mates partying, drinking piss and fishing on boats travelling around Australia, the guy was living the life.

This is an incredibly telling statement. Ironically Facebook is likely to be high on the list of causes of depression.

 

[Skinner]

Very sorry to read that mate. Don't you ever worry about any perceived grammatical errors on here. The message came through loud and clear and that is the important piece.

 

[Twizzle]

Depression is a mental illness and some people hide it well.

There really is no explanation.

 

[soc123_au]

Sorry to hear about your mate Mr A. Such a horrible thing for those 2 kids. Just after I read your post my 8 year old daughter gave me my fathers day card. Bought a few tears, both because of her & thinking of your mates boys.

 

[McLovin]

Sorry to hear. Depression is a horrible thing.

Happy fathers day to all the dads

 

[Misanthrope]

This is an incredibly telling statement. Ironically Facebook is likely to be high on the list of causes of depression.

How's that?

Not sure where to put this but you can move it where ever..

Yesterday a mate of mine committed suicide. He left behind 2 young sons on the eve of fathers day. I'm still trying to figure out what was so bad that he had to end it. I wasn't real close mates with him but it has really hit me hard. Seeing him on facebook you would never think he was having troubles. Always with mates partying, drinking piss and fishing on boats travelling around Australia, the guy was living the life.

The reason I'm writing this is to remind all men to not be afraid speak up, your more of a bitch if you don't. If only he would of told someone he probably would of been with his kids today. Don't be afraid to ask a mate how everything is going either you could save a life, even if their life like perfect. Nothing is ever that bad that you have to end it.

I wanted to write something better but I have f**king horrible grammar but you get the point.

Happy fathers day to all the dads on the forum.

Sprry to hear this, mate. As somebody who suffers from clinical depression/major depressive disorder, I can say that it's scarily easy to hide. When I wrote a big tell-all post about my ongoing struggles for my site, I was surprised just how many people were surprised. Even family members who I figured had known for years didn't realize.

It's definitely a lot easier to cope with once you've got people who know and care. It's sad that your friend didn't realize this or didn't have a support network that he felt comfortable in relying on.

 

[miguel de cervantes]

How's that?

Social media by its very nature portrays a largely exagerated picture of people's lives - why bother showing the world the daily humdrum? Besides, showing-off, even if only subtly, is deeply ingrained in human nature and somewhat subconscient, and social media is just a mass vehicule for this.

If you are constantly exposed to everyone else's wonderful lives, you can't help but make comparisons with your own life. Unless you are philosophically sound and have a good solid dose of realism and humility (which is a highly underated quality in people) this will likely lead to depression.

Australia, coming off a long period of prosperity and heading into harder times with higher levels of inequality, is going to be a real hot spot for depression in the next 10 years.

Personally, I reckon a good treatment for depression would be sending people to do volonteer work in the third world.

 

[Misanthrope]

Social media by its very nature portrays a largely exagerated picture of people's lives - why bother showing the world the daily humdrum? Besides, showing-off, even if only subtly, is deeply ingrained in human nature and somewhat subconscient, and social media is just a mass vehicule for this.

If you are constantly exposed to everyone else's wonderful lives, you can't help but make comparisons with your own life. Unless you are philosophically sound and have a good solid dose of realism and humility (which is a highly underated quality in people) this will likely lead to depression.

Australia, coming off a long period of prosperity and heading into harder times with higher levels of inequality, is going to be a real hot spot for depression in the next 10 years.

Personally, I reckon a good treatment for depression would be sending people to do volonteer work in the third world.

I'm not sure you understand how depression works if you think the solution is a dose of perspective. True clinical depression has nothing to do with a person not realizing how good they have it. If anything, it's this awareness an being unable to reconcile the life you have with the way you feel that exacerbates it.

MDD is caused by a chemical imbalance - not a sense of entitlement.

It could be that you're confusing true depression (the kind that leads people to kill themselves in spite of what they might have going for them) with people who are feeling depressed or going through a depressive period. They're very different things.

 

[Twizzle]

I'm not sure you understand how depression works if you think the solution is a dose of perspective. True clinical depression has nothing to do with a person not realizing how good they have it. If anything, it's this awareness an being unable to reconcile the life you have with the way you feel that exacerbates it.

MDD is caused by a chemical imbalance - not a sense of entitlement.

It could be that you're confusing true depression (the kind that leads people to kill themselves in spite of what they might have going for them) with people who are feeling depressed or going through a depressive period. They're very different things.

this

 

[miguel de cervantes]

I don't subscribe to the chemical imbalance explanation, neither does wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_depressive_disorder#Causes

Besides the clinical observations that drugs that increase the amount of available monoamines are effective antidepressants, advances in psychiatric genetics indicate that phenotypic variation in central monoamine function may be marginally associated with vulnerability to depression. Despite these findings, the cause of depression is not simply monoamine deficiency.[39] In the past two decades, research has revealed multiple limitations of the monoamine hypothesis, and its explanatory inadequacy has been highlighted within the psychiatric community.[40] A counterargument is that the mood-enhancing effect of MAO inhibitors and SSRIs takes weeks of treatment to develop, even though the boost in available monoamines occurs within hours. Another counterargument is based on experiments with pharmacological agents that cause depletion of monoamines; while deliberate reduction in the concentration of centrally available monoamines may slightly lower the mood of unmedicated depressed patients, this reduction does not affect the mood of healthy people.[39] The monoamine hypothesis, already limited, has been further oversimplified when presented to the public as a mass marketing tool, usually phrased as a "chemical imbalance".[

If I had to vaguely sum up what I theorise depression to be I would go with: "emotional disjuncture between what ones environment is providing and what ones mind needs". I would suggest that the emotional needs of the mind are mostly dependent on genes/hereditary makeup, but also the environment itself which can influence these needs over time. Chemicals may have a slight impact on the way the mind processes emotions but can't modify these more static genetic and environmental setups.

This theory means that on one side of the coin, those living in poverty, or who have difficulty in relationships for example, don't have the means to obtain their emotional fill - let's call this 3rd world depression. On the other side of the coin, you may have others that become emotionally saturated - the emotional system becomes so bombarded by the environment that emotional processing suffers, emotions lose their significance and everything seems dull - let's call this 1st world depression. Notice how to an external observer the cause of 1st world depression would appear much more invisible compared to 3rd world depression.

The secret to a contented life is to walk the ridge between the two cases.

Anyway, all of this is simply conjecture and poorly explained. Hopefully you get the gist.

 

[Twizzle]

you've seriously got no idea and Wiki is not a reputable source

try a reputable source like the medical profession

 

[miguel de cervantes]

The wiki quote is a summary of two journal articles from within the medical profession.

I'm happy for you and misanthorpe to shoot holes in the theory which should be a piece of cake if it is so wrong. I just can't accept depression to be explained as a chemical imbalance when I thouroughly believe genetics and environment play a crucial role - some people are more predisposed to depression and mental illness than others.

 

[Twizzle]

you obviously have never had to deal with it or looked into it in any depth otherwise you wouldn't make such an uninformed statement

 

[miguel de cervantes]

you obviously have never had to deal with it or looked into it in any depth otherwise you wouldn't make such an uninformed statement

sure, I'm only thowing out a theory

but, an uninformed statement about what, genetics and environment? or chemical imbalances?

 

[Twizzle]

the chemical imbalance

look it up

 

[Red Bear]

That does ring true, the way someone can seem so fine on the outside but be suffering inwardly. A friend of mine killed herself last year, was a real shock. Never had someone my own age who I knew die, so that brought things into perspective a bit. Pretty horrible.

 

[Misanthrope]

Having spent a considerable amount of time living and working in second and third world countries, I can say confidently that miguel's 'see how the poor live' theory had no impact on my diagnosed and in treatment for the past five years clinical depression.

The copy + paste from Wikipedia also says that genetics have quite a bit to do with depression, which would be just as beyond the control of the sufferer as the chemical imbalance theory that prevails in modern mental health.

 

[miguel de cervantes]

I'm not claiming the 2nd/3rd world thing is a cure for depression, it depends on the case and in some cases I think it would not do any harm.

Would the prevalence of the chemical imbalance theory have anything to do with the pharmaceutical lobby? They no doubt sell drugs to help restore this chemical balance.

 

[Twizzle]

They do but the people that suffer from it dont know they have it and dont know that they need treatment.

Some take their own life without ever knowing they have this problem.