An Opinion Piece

I think we need to redefine what a serious mental illness is.  I think depression should NOT be included in this category.  I seriously don’t think state funds should be allocated for depression.  A serious mental illness to me is a defect in the brain that a person either inherited genetically or though some mutation in their biological function.  I realize that it’s a very hard line to draw considering depression follows the definition of a mental illness in that it “affects the brain and influences the way a person thinks, feels, behaves and/or relates to others and to his or her surroundings” (MedNet) but if you really think about it, what doesn’t affect the way a person thinks or feels.  Isn’t that the beauty of being human–emotion.  Emotion really has yet to be explained and I think this is where people are getting carried away.  They are starting to classify emotion into a mental illness–STOP!!

We have all felt sad, happy, angry, or even furious at times.  And, at each of these times when we felt such a feeling, we make specific decisions that would not have been made the same way if we had felt differently.  Can’t we just consider our decision-making ability to be a part of our individual personalities and not manic depressive.  Maybe define them as personality disorders, just not mental illnesses–it just doesn’t make much sense to me.

An example of such a senerio would be a person feeling so sad about a loss in the family that they stay in a dark cool room all day and miss out on horseback riding camp that they had been looking forward to for the last couple of months (loss of interest in things they once enjoyed); however, had their relative died just a week later, that same person would have enjoyed their horse vacation.  I just think that the ability to become depressed should be considered a personality trait; if society deems it to be a bad or extreme choice call it a personality defect.

Granted some people take it to the extreme in which they are unable to really help themselves and become extremely saddened or vice versa–where a person lacks the ability to really feel any emotion from the death of a close relative/friend.  In these situations a possible mental illness may be considered but under a different category from metal illnesses caused by something that a person inherited genetically like schizophrenia or autism.  These latter serious mental illnesses are incurable but in most cases manageable.  Depression is curable (at least in my opinion)– either with a balanced diet or a change of environment I think depression will dissipate.  For example, if a person is taken completely out of their surroundings and placed in an environment that has no melancholying affects I believe that a person would become “normal,” i.e. their behavior would change.  If the same protocol, however, was given to someone with autism or schizophrenia, their behavior would not change–not even if feed a proper diet.

If it really isn’t practical to remove depression from the mental illness category completely, than at least assign it as a completely different category and emphasize this difference to the public!!