Even though I’ve never suffered from a chemical-induced depression (I had a severe circumstantial depression on my mission triggered by knocking on doors eight/ten hours a day only to have the door rudely slammed in our faces, and then face chastisement and criticism from leaders for lack of success)
I had a fairly easy mission compared to that, and I still found it very upsetting. No matter what company you're working for, WalMart etc., the leaders are always going to pressure you for more. I guess going through what you're mentioning and watching the philosophy of the Church leaders just not add up is what got me questioning in the first place. I think I understand exactly what you're talking about Beastie. We don't agree on everything but I think you're right on target with this one. I was so sick and depressed by the time I finished my mission. I wanted to run as far from the Church as I could when I got home. I wonder if other missionaries secretly felt this way. Otherwise they wouldn't be giving these talks on "saving the missionaries." I don't think my feelings were all that odd. I just think other people would like to believe they were.
Our area leader would always say, "If we were a business we'd expect a lot more success than we get out of you." Or the favorite, "If you're not baptizing, you must have done this, this, and this?" Hearing these statements made me doubt the Church more than any antiMormon literature. I got see what the leadership was really all about, what they really believed, and what tally system they were really using.
In addition to this, our society, in general, has little patience for negative emotions – even in completely understandable situations (like death of a loved one). Yeah, we understand that people are going to feel badly at times, but we want it to be short and preferably hidden. If it lasts “too long”, society becomes impatient and uninterested. Time to move on. Cheer up! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!! Buck up!! Geez, as if anyone suffering the particular hell of depression wouldn’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps if it were possible at all. Society seems to think people “wallow” in depression because they want to for some reason – likely the attention Bond mentioned. People who think that obviously do not understand how severe this state can be. It would be like suggesting that someone purposefully got cancer in order to win the sympathy vote….
Yeah it's amazing how much more sympathy I got at work when I lost my voice. People understand and empathize with a bacterial infection quite well, but only if it clears up within a day and you're back to work. Being sick is simply not permitted in our current work force. Our world is not as far from the animals as we like to think. It works out better for other people to blame others state on attitude and poor choices. It's how they overcome the feeling to help this person out when they believe helping them out would mean making a sacrifice or simply not driving them as hard when they work for you. Every day is a fight for survival. Once I realized this I started functioning better. I was still depressed, and I don't think I'd have every been able to graduate college or do what I'm doing now without Zoloft. I can't imagine what my ancestors went through. All they had was alcohol.
I think I induced part of my depression with my obsession about some issues, but there comes a point when you can't make it go away even if you try to. I think I just overloaded my brain so bad with emotional turmoil that set a screw loose. At this point, nothing you do or think will stop you from feeling depressed. A lot of people don't understand what it means to be locked into depression. They think you can still choose not to feel it. It takes a long time for your brain to heal, or the person just gets used to it and learns to adapt.