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Depression is not a state of mind, but a disease. Unfortunately, mental health is still a taboo, which we need to break down.
The disappearance of Manuel Vallicellawho committed suicide at the age of 35, led me to make a reflection that I would like to share with you.
Often, more or less unconsciously, we use phrases that reveal how little we know about some mental illnesssuch as the depression. How many times do you happen to say or hear “I feel depressed today» o «This news depressed meAs if depression were one momentary moodtransient?
The fact that we know little about certain diseases, then, leads us to take them little seriously, to believe – erroneously – that we can decide to avoid them or to heal. And so we end up saying or being told “Forget about it», «Think about who is worse off», «You don’t miss anything».
No one with a headache would ever dream of saying (rightly) “Today I feel like a tumor“, As no one would ever say to a person with cancer”Forget about it“. The problem is all here: it is thought that mental illnesses are not diseases or that, at best, they do not have it dignity and the danger of other diseases.
Depression is not a state of mind, it’s not stressit is not a character side, it is not even the triggering cause that caused it: it is one specific pathology and represents a pathological lack of energy. As a disease, it can be cured (both psychotherapeutic and pharmacologically) and from which it can be cured.
Mental illnesses, useless to go around it, still represent a taboo. It is hard to talk about it, to be heard and taken seriously. It is hard to even understand the most important thing: they all concern, no one is excluded, there is no age in which one is more predisposed to the disease. The sooner we are aware of it, the sooner we will learn to intervene in time.
Need treat mental illnesses as you do with all the othersbecause they are not “a moment that passes“. A broken arm won’t work again if you pretend it works, the same way a mind does not return sane if it is not treated. And the treatment is not postponed because “there are those who are worse off“, Why mental illnesses are dangerous and they are life threatening, just like all other diseases.
