Encounters With Depression

mental health,on the negative side is often associated with unmanageable dirt, filth and squalor.state-of-the-art hospitals catering for geeneral health too are degraded to a humiliating low, the day the ‘’sweeper’, does ‘nt turn up.the sweepers belong to the most neglected class of workers, overworked and underpaid’’, by the metropolitan administration.there are some welfare bodies like edhi’ s which is most dependable in pakistan, who aare particular about matters of community health and hygiene.they maintain several ‘’homes’’ among which there is one for destitute women.most of them are aged, and abandoned and suffering from depression.as far as i remember through news dailies’ reports, and interview of bilkis edhi herself, that they make sure that the ‘’homes’’, re thoroughly clean,spic and span and neat daily without fail, especially the toilets.Repeat toilets.And there is no shortage of menial staff for this particular work.What iwant to point out now, is that if Mental health accomodation is procured all over the city, in convenient community focalized areas, so that a ''house'' would cater to the needs of a local community , it would be a welcome convenience.Keep it simple otta be the motto.The community could be sole in charge of maintaining without shortage the daily cleaning chores of the ''house,''like Edhi.There could be spacious floors, and rooms, all with ''modular''facilities to adjust the size of available space.The furbishing could be bare essentials. The patient's families if they so desire could bring their own furniture and AC's too.What the higher administration could do would be to ensure adequate number of well trained "psychotherapist support staff"and available "psychotherapy" specialists and consultants, to provide care for the admitted patients.For humanities sake we want a peaceful and respectful atmosphere to treat our mentally ill, right close to our neighborhoods, which make up our one and only city.The cityhas its limits.We are asking something wthin limits!

okhla writes <<< Does it actually take a physical kick on your behind to make you go away?? >>>

No, it will take something more, a jdam probably. I am not going away AH. I will be there to challenge the BS of your kind, supporter of dictators and US hegemony, slaves of the white man. Be afraid, be very afraid because I am not going away, regardless of your lies about rejection and deportation-NONE of which is true...

Re: # 45

Shut up Masadi. Take your weird articles to lulu.com, where they truly belong.
Can you not understand REJECTION?? Does it actually take a physical kick on your behind to make you go away??

I have already pointed out that you have been comprehensively rejected by the US school which got you deported, the Pakistani college which saw your true colors and finally by Chowk editors. Ordnary Chowkies like me had recognized your true Zero-potential long back.

Abb hutt jaa !!!
Hawaa aane de bhai !!!

read the article on Social Movement Structure that Mohammad Gill and other Chowk Editors censored and didn`t publish, because they want to hide things that might benefit humanity, all they are interested in is publishing their pseudo-plagirized, thoughtless, tape-recorder-esque (their brains, the finished products of colonial education designed for the ``inferiors`` and the colonized mindset, can only reproduce stuff that is rote-memorized, in other words their brains function as mere tape recorders that spit out in more or less similar words what they have read in other places, there is no connection of concepts, no original thought and no critical analysis even as there is consistent worship of all things Western by them) articles.

Chowk readers take back the site that belongs to you and not these ignorant AHs.

P.S. Dr. Sohail is one of these AHs as well

Re: # 43

What about Manic-depressives; what kind of sexual lives they lead

Re: # 42
dear dehli walla.... Freud would have loved your obsession with sex and might

have made you his Asian representative. smiles.

on a serious note ....unfortunately people with depression have lack of libido and sexual

desire and sometimes do not even have erection. on the other hand people who are manic

can be so excited and uninhibited that they become promiscous and can sleep with anyone

who is willing to sleep with them. sincerely sohail

ps...are you happy now that i answered your question?

Re: # 15
Drsohail:
why are you not answering my very important question?

does or not does not ``Copulation help fighting depression``?

If you notice I did not use any bad words here. I could have easily said that Choodam-choodai or something like that but as a sincere person I chose appropriate words.

BJKumar: Tum apnee harkato se baaj aa jao....warna....

Re: # 39
I do actually-in Queensland, Australia. Thanks for sharing your views.

#35 by hamidm2

Good One!! :)))

Re: # 38
dear nb...i fully support your ideas. talk therapy works when the person is stable enough to

sit down and discuss emotional problems in a meaningful way. i have used medications in

the first stage of therapy to control symptoms and psychotherapy in the second stage to

resolve conflicts and improve the quality of life. thanks for your comments....by the way do

you practice medicine and if yes where?...sincerely sohail

Re: # 21
Shandana, I don`t think antidepressants work as well as the drug companies would like to tell us. And I agree being sort of flat-line is a bad thing, but it is better than being outright miserable. Being able to be creative is all very good, but I see a lot of peple mechanically going about their lives, they have no energy to do anything except that which they need to exist. They don`t get hospitalised because they are no danger to anyone, but what sort of a life do they lead?
The problem with talk-therapy with bipolar activity is that when people are manic, they will pay no attention to what they are being told, so it is not much use until their mood stablises a little.

Re: # 33
dear ahad...i am glad you shared your dilemma openly and candidly. Depression is a

painful condition and we need to try our best personally and collectively to decrease human

suffering and increase health and happiness. Science and psychology have been trying and

will keep on trying. thanks for your comments...sohail

Desi immigrant’s challenges in adjusting to new life in western world are no different than other professionals back home who need to face relentless competition and balance family and work time. In fact, in many respects, making it in corporate and business life here has many rewards that make up for the normal “depression” caused by work.

Spouses face entirely different challenges. In most cases, if not all, they were not hungry enough to come here. They just followed their spouses and hence after initial excitement miss their social and family network and that perhaps is the primary cause of their sufferings. Some of them develop new interests while others keep shrinks busy or make every ones’ life miserable.

Children are much more flexible and adjust to multi-cultural environments. If parents are normal and do not make big issues about their ``uniqueness``, ``superior culture`` or ``injustices to their people``, kids turn out fine and take what’s good from all the cultures they are exposed to.

Re: # 32

bj,

........ you are right, but depression is equally, if not more widespread among desis in desilands - at least in pakistan ......... the reason that we don`t hear about it as much is because a) people don`t recognize it as a disease, b) if they recognize it, they try to hide it because of social stigma, c) there are very few facilities to treat it and d) there are no statistics available .......... pakistani women, in particular, have an extremely high rate of depression due to many factors - abusive husbands or the lack of husbands, nagging in-laws, financial problems, obesity and facial hair ......... a lot of men too suffer from chronic depression because of unemployment and sexual guilt brought on by oppressive religious indoctrination ......... nobody knows what the suicide rate is, because there are no official statistics available and - get this - both suicide and attempted suicide are a crime; unless, of course, you are a suicide bomber - in which case it is considered to be an honor to be rewarded with all-you-can-do sex in heaven ! ............

........ however, the denizens of chowk are not depressed, they suffer from a much more serious condition - psychosis : ``a severe mental disorder, with or without organic damage, characterized by derangement of personality and loss of contact with reality and causing deterioration of normal social functioning``

bjkumar #24

{{… Newton … Beethoven …}}

The case of Isaac Newton is quite interesting. He was born posthumously and his mother remarried early in his childhood leaving him in his grandmother’s care. He was on bad terms with his mother and stepfather and bore through his adult life the scars of being an abandoned and unloved child, inordinately fearful of criticism, and seemingly with no truly close relationships. Apart from this he seemed a more than competent adult until his first nervous breakdown, in his late thirties. He recovered but suffered a second breakdown in his early fifties, after which he apparently made no further contributions to science. He remained however more than competent by normal human standards, whether in rooting out and hanging counterfeiters or in political manipulation (as in his masterminding the Royal Society’s campaign against Leibnitz in the priority dispute over the invention of infinitesimal calculus). Quite a character, in short.

It is highly likely that Newton’s breakdowns were caused by heavy metal poisoning. Apparently physics and mathematics occupied only a small part of his labours. He was also an eager alchemist. Further, a large fraction of his manuscripts was devoted to his heretical researches into the Bible and especially the Book of Revelation. It was probably the alchemy that did for him – mercury (the flux of choice) and perhaps also lead.

As for other creative people of the past, some of them may have suffered from chronic infections for which no effective treatment existed then and which induced the symptoms of mental illness. The most obvious candidate is syphilis, which likely accounted for Beethoven’s deafness (and the insanity and/or premature death of at least two more famous European composers). One can speculate that without the terrors of approaching deafness Beethoven would have remained a more conventional composer for his times rather than the revolutionary he became. He may have had a longer and more normal (if less prominent) life, but music would probably have been poorer for it.

Dear Dr.

Nice Comprehendible article, for me being depressed means I can spend all day in bed, and still not get a good night’s rest. Depression had been closed to me like a shadow; but suicide hasn’t been.
Wallahi it can seem worse then deadly cancer because most cancer patients feel loved and they have hope and self-esteem, I have had this problem since I was in other planet, they don’t call it manic depression anymore;They call it bipolar disorder, and I am a Type 2 :-)
Na Pucho Hamse Koi Baat Ke Zindgi Ek Sawal Ban Ke Rah Gai Tee,
Dard Itna Ta Sine Me Ki Khushi Ek Khayal Ban Ke Rah Gayi Tee.
If our war is spiritual, then our despression is our lives, Think positive !
Think global!
Ahad