Janet Street Porter Calls Depression a Trendy Middle Class Fad

[dizietsma]

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

But JSP's stoopid innit?

She's an ignorant bitch and should keep her ugly gob shut.

i've had the doctor trying to shove tablets down my throat,and the nhs provides you with eight sessions with a counsellor,but thats all the help i've had,i can't afford to go to a counsellor independantly,so i basically suffer day to day. i really really don't want to go on anti-depressants,my mum was on them for years and i don't want my children to remember me the way i think of my mum. i find it very hard to make friends,alot of women don't like me because i was a younger mum,i had my first daughter at seventeen,so whenever i try and join a group for mums and toddlers etc i get left out,it has happened more than once so i don't try anymore.im 33 now,but as soon as i get asked about my children their ages and stuff like that i can see them look at each other.

@Sarah - you sound like you have a lot of spirit despite the fact that life has not been easy for you. I don't know where you live but organisations that train counsellors/psychotherapists offer low-cost therapy from trainees under supervision and it can be a useful option for people on low incomes.

I haven't read the original article but it seems a wildly inappropriate thing to say. If depresion was a fad, surely more people would just opt for 'being happy'.

I am afraid that long-term or serious psychological states are not that easy to manipulate. Particularly (it seems to me) if you ar the one actually expiriencing them.

What a misguided article. JSP's drivel of personal opinion (because that's all it is) has the potential to do real harm to people currently suffering from depression and for that she should be ashamed.

A real debate about the true nature of depression, what causes it and how society can respond to it more appropriately would be of value. But that would involve proper research and a modicum of sensitivity and intelligence.

There is a huge difference between having a shitty life/shitty things happen to you and feeling bereft because of it but otherwise coping, and depression which is like being trapped inside yourself, unable to even find the motivation to put a pair of shoes on or make a meal. As far as I know, it's perfectly possible to be gripped by depression seemingly completely out of the blue. Doesn't make it any less genuine.

Very disappointing Janet Street Porter.

There was a good counter-article by Alastair Cameron last Friday, in the Daily Mail (no, I don't read it, but my Mother Out Law does!) At least it's provoked debate - people need to get depression and mental illness in general out into the open, to de-stigmatise it. Very good programmes on BBC4 last week.