Janet Street Porter Calls Depression a Trendy Middle Class Fad

[dizietsma]

link

Sorry if I'm duplicating any threads here, but I've only just heard about this disgusting article.

I used to like her. Now that she's said that I think she's a nob.

I read about this in last nights standard they had a snippet about the piece:

WHAT does Allison Pearson think of Janet Street Porter?s Daily Mail column lambasting middle-class depression as ?just the new trendy illness!?? Pearson recently wrote about her own depression in a column in the same paper. ?The good news is depression is a manageable condition and you can get better,? Pearson tells me this morning. ?Unfortunately, there is no known treatment for being an unfeeling bitch so Janet Street Porter has no hope of recovery. Anyone that insensitive is unlikely to develop depression so she will never know how wrong, how ignorant and how deeply cruel her article was. The reader comments under her Mail article say what most normal people know to be true. After I wrote my column on depression, hundreds of people felt able to contact me and say they had been on the verge of breakdown. I think it?s good to remove any remaining stigma and offer people the help they need to get better.?

Lucky for her that she's never had it then.....

"Unfortunately, there is no known treatment for being an unfeeling bitch so Janet Street Porter has no hope of recovery"

I like

Sounds like a silly hooha about somebody who is clearly a bit ignorant spouting forth. Lots of people say crap like this all the time- most sensible types shrug it off.

'Middle-class' seems a daft label too- depression amongst working-class people and the unemployed is at epidemic proportions. JSP probably doesn't meet many of them though.

wow - that article is offensive in the extreme

Hilarious quote from Pearson

JSP has clearly led a charmed life.

I wouldn't criticise anyone for being depressed no matter how rich or cash / time poor they are.

nice of her to name and shame the people she feels are suffering from "the new black"

does she know that the person-type most likely to be diagnosed wih depression is a single mum with her first baby? an that the less wealthy you are, the more likely you are to be diagnosed?
so not just crap,but wrong....

... and I suspect her mum and their generation weren't all happy being 1950's housewives and baking victoria sponges on a sunday. My gran was on bloody valium all the time as it was so grim.

i rather like the come-back from Alion Parson though.

What pisses me off the most about this article is that when I was seriously depressed I became paranoid that people were all thinking the kind of nasty stuff about me that JSP says in her article about people with depression. I'm willing to bet she's just confirmed the worst fears of a lot of people with depression. Her article could well prevent people who need help with their depression from seeking it, thinking they should just put up and shut up

And for the record JSP, I was cripplingly poor when depressed, as are a lot of the people I know with depression.

ah well you really had it diz - isn't she saying its only the rich that are just playing at it?

Stupid bitch.
'Iam not denying that clinical depression is a real mental illness, or that it can be debilitating for sufferers. But let's take a moment to consider whether depression is common among the poor or the working class?'

No, I think what she means is that she doesn't know any poor or working class people so has no frame of reference. Nasty article, right in tune for the DM though.

Loving AP@s comeback though, brilliant.

Clinical depression is a terrible problem and a tragedy for many. However, I think she makes a good point that celebs are morphing personal affliction into a 'depression industry' complete with book tours and interviews. It's totally obvious that the autobiography format was getting stale and so publishers needed new angles - more harrowing revelations. There was a rash of books about child abuse that hit the best-seller lists last year.... that was the trend then, this is the trend now.

so true voulezvous. She clearly does not know any poor or working class people, or unemployed people or single parents, or those caring for others on carers' allowance etc etc.

I used to think she was OK, but this is the second thing she has written about recently which is disgusting.

It would be a different argument if she thought that depression did not exist- there are some arguments out there for what depression is or is not, but the fact she has to bring class into it is simply pathetic

So then her argument is that if you have material wealth and are successful then you have no reason to be depressed? It's understandable when the plebs get depressed cos their lives are pitiful, but rich people shouldn't have sad feelings because happiness is all about money?

Wow. What a joke.

Glad this has made it to discussions of the day. We and JSP will be in the Guardian tomorrow!

in a way, you need a certian level of money to be depressed (after all, if you live in the third world and don't have enough food for your kids, if you are unhappy - that isn't depression)

however here in the first world, lack of money is definitely a factor in depression and mental illness.

and frankly, the whole point of depression is it is unhappiness with no defined cause.
therefore although the poor may suffer from more - the wealthy aren't exempted. One of the most famous depressives of all time was Leo Tolstoy....(although i believe he called it melancholy)...

Fuckwit

diz 'It's understandable when the plebs get depressed cos their lives are pitiful' - yes, she contradicts herself here (or rather, loses the thread of what she saying so goes on to sleb-bash instead). She's saying it's OK for plebs to get depressed, but that they don't, because they're far to busy scrubbing floors etc to suffer such a self-indulgent fad. It's just wrong and offensive in so many ways and on so many levels.

Did you know, even men are suffering from depression these days. I dunno, men are always taking things from us aren't they? She's obviously never heard of Winston Churchill's black dog

I aslo dislike teh 'depression inductry'

BUT

I almost lost my great - job - having, high earning 9then) DH to depression and itc an affect anyone; indeeed i;ve had a few bouts myself due to being a carer

It's quite possible to have an important debate about depression, such as whether we now medicalise difficulties arising from understandably traumatic events. Ad if societal dispersal is a contributory factor. the media however seem unable to understand the nuances of mental illness and cannot see the difference between a genuinely distressing but basically normal 'low spell' (usually what they are referring to in the articles) and clinically significant, life threatening mental disease. I ahd the former, Dh the latter. The latter is scary.