Older Posts about Mental Health Issues

can be found here. Some of the more relevant posts:

• Shrink Rap Sheet, January 8, 2004.
  "But, reading about ECT last night, it seems that shock therapy might, after all, be in the same class as lobotomies."

• (Do "Verse Writers" Still Wear Knickers?), December 12, 2003.
  "This article is so amusing, I have to post it in full: Death Stalks Poets."

• The Slings and Arrows of Otrageous Fortune, October 30, 2003.
  From The Economics of Suicide: "… Now attempting suicide seems a rational choice, as long as the attempt isn't too successful."

• (What About Des Women?), July 10, 2003.
  Excerpted from a poorly reasoned article: "Creative genius and crime express themselves early in men but both are turned off almost like a tap if a man gets married and has children, a study says…"

• Dreamcatcher, April 13, 2003.
  "New Scientist interviews Joe Griffin, 'who says there is a way to lift depression in a day.'"

• Art and Madness, March 24, 2003.
  "Those who suffer from mental illness tend to like the madness-art association … Mental illness can inhibit creation, but creation allows for the sense that ones mental suffering, otherwise senseless, can be redeemed."

• INTJ, February 24, 2003.
  "I rarely get lonely, and so call myself an introvert. But I think loneliness is the healthy impulse to spend time with people."

• Can Anti-Depressants Cause Depression?, Janruary 13, 2003.
  "I wanted the throw myself in front of cars, or jump out of windows."

• Lucky-Go-Happy, January 4, 2003.
  Quoted from here: "These two women were lucky to be born with a joyous temperament, which in its most extreme forms is called hyperthymia … In a sense, they are the psychiatric mirror image of people who suffer from a chronic, often lifelong, mild depression called dysthymia, which affects about 3 percent of American adults."

• Damage Control, September 12, 2002.
  "Anti-depressants aren't candy. 'In fact, the withdrawals were so intense that during the entire month of January 1998, I never left my house.'"

• You Don't Drink TheraDate, September 9, 2002.
  Lifted from WebMD: "Depression feeds on itself. Every time someone has a single episode of depression, their likelihood of a subsequent episode increases by 50% … After three episodes, one is almost surely going to have a [long-term] course."

• Thoughts on Depression, July 11, 2002.
  Quoted: "Even supposing that society is more inhuman than in the past, when socialised medicine and unemployment benefits didn't yet exist, why would this give rise to depression rather than anxiety, fatigue, 'nervous breakdown' or just plain anger?"

• What if Van Gogh took Paxil? Well, you're not Van Gogh., June 10, 2002.
  "Another article on depression and its causal relationship to art…"

• And, still not Van Gogh., May 25, 2002.
  "This article is one of the week's most linked-to: Stanford Researchers Establish Link Between Creative Genius and Mental Illness…"

• Untitled Post, May 20, 2002.
  "An interactive computer program [has been] designed to understand, alleviate, and prevent depression."

• Untitled Post, March 24, 2002.
  Quoted: "She found that 80% of the writers said they had experienced either manic-depressive illness or major depression, while only 30% of the people in noncreative jobs said they had."