From: Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net>
Date: Monday, October 12, 1998 1:02 AM
>Gerhard Kessell-Haak (Gerhard Kessell-Haak) wrote:
>
>> >> Who says clinical depression is bad, anyway? Negative thinking is
>> >> inherently more powerful than positive thinking, despite the silly...
>
>there are a lot of different mental conditions that are grouped together
>under the name clinical depression. seems to me it can be either
>positive or negative. i decided, during a case of clinical depression
>at age 20, to deeply investigate my fundamentalist christian belief
>system. this lasted for a number of months, at the end of which
>i decided the system was false, and all religion is essentially false,
>that science was way, the path to truth and enlightenment.
>
>tho excruciating at the time, that "depression" was a positive thing,
>for comfortable people do not wish anything in their lives to change.
spike
I have to weigh in here.
Even those with mild levels of depression experience lower levels of self-efficacy. They tend to underestimate their capacity for problem solving in the future as well as their past performance. Their problem solving abilities are rarely superior to those who are not depressed. More severe levels of depression have been shown to actually disrupt and distort normal cognitive processes, sapping mental energy. I'm surprised Spike had the energy to "deeply investigate" her fundamentalist background (glad ya did tho). Deeply depressed people don't really want to do much of anything. As for Mary Therise Gleason, if you have gone from feeling depressed to feeling nothing, then it's possible you have nor fully recovered.
Best wishes,
Scott Badger