I totally agree with Garrison, Fiona, and with osuzana here. I did not come to this board, or to this forum, to get involved in arguments or to be perturbed. I think that depression is one of the most difficult things for people to deal with and that combative posts are not helpful. The fact that somersizer says that she (or he) has studied psychology is meaningless: I, too, took Psych 101 in college and that does not make a huge difference in how I perceive my own emotions and my depression. I learned about things like the Hawthorne Effect and the Skinner Box and the studies on how easy it is for people to be blindly sadistic.

I got a huge red flag when I read that S. believes that Andrea Yates should burn in hell. I continue to come here because almost all of the posters here are sympathetic and I have learned a lot and I hope that perhaps I can sometime help somebody.

While I don't have much scientific understanding of the mechanisms of depression, I have plenty of experience and that can often help much more than all the scientific citations in the world.

Natalie