And with these toxic positive remarks comes the convenience card. There are people who are only "depressed" when it's convenient for them. There are these people who don't really reach out to people, who don't really cheer up people, who ridicule other people's sufferings. But when it's their time of sadness, they suddenly become "mental health advocates".
On the silver lining, this is a tool to spread mental health campaigns, too. Because of the increased number of people claiming they are depressed, infographics and other researches are more spread and better reach the intended audience. The catch is, depression becomes less significant and more "mainstream", that seemingly anyone who is "sad" with certain symptoms lookable in the internet can claim that they are "depressed". This contributes to the reduction of the actually clinically depressed ones.
Source: FreeRangeStock
This leads to a lot of aspects of life being minimized. Sadness is a natural part of human life. Corny as it may sound, but sadness is a vital emotion to sometimes appreciate happiness. Even anger is a natural emotion. Even pain. Even agony. A lot. These emotions happen even to babies. Depression can happen to anyone, even to the economy. But for mental health context, we can agree that we are talking about the serious depression here. Clinical depression is different from depressed episodes. Clinical depression is more than just feeling unpleasant emotions—it's a lot more. The thing is, there is a certain limit one can take, and that's one of the triggers people break down, or eventually succumb to clinical depression.
This also leads to minimization of the role and expertise of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals, which is discussed in the next section.
This is not to automatically point fingers to those who self-declare their depression. Everyone can be in a depressed state, and everyone has the freedom to deal with their battles quietly or to announce for help. We just need to be responsible in our words, so that we don't accidentally belittle the battles of others.
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