thread: 2007-02-13 : Exorcism
On 2007-02-15, Julia wrote:
If you were to replace "anxious, joyless prig" with "depressed" it would imply that there was something wrong with you beyond just the normal anxious joyless existential stuff that comes with adolescence and early adulthood. If you give your unhappy existence the name of a bona fide problem with symptoms and a course of treatment defined in the DSM-IV, like say "Dysthymic Disorder" you might have had more options to help with the suffering. Maybe all you really needed was some wacky fun times where you had to take yourself out of your comfort zone, live a little, etc. If you had a diagnosed mood disorder, then someone would feel that his or her profession ethics or code compelled him to help you in the way he was academically trained to do, or with a prescription for some mood elevating drugs.
My Psych Nursing instructor once reminded us that one person's crazy is another person's beatified.
