It's unlikely to have been a temporary problem. Depression is pervasive, all encompasing, and, seemingly, far outside your expreiences to have made such an uninformed comment.
Yes, it is a serious emotional/chemical/psychiatric issue, but there are alternative solutions that are less drastic. (Even though one may not see them as valid or helpful at the time.)
using the word "but" was unnecessary because you didn't disagree with anything i said, and it just makes you come across as kind of an argumentative asshole
Are you out of your mind? He doesn't sound like an argumentative asshole, his sentence flowed perfectly normally with the word "but". Not to abuse the cliche, but have you looked in the mirror?
It's sure not outside my experiences, and I agree with him. It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I struggled with depression for most of my life, and I'm still glad I now manage it and have a successful life.
Some people can cope better than others. I've been suffering with bipolar disorder for about 7 years now (signs were there before that, but it didn't really start affecting my life until ~15 or so), and while I've managed to find ways of dealing with the swings and using both sides to my advantage, it's not always easy.
In a particularly bad depressive period, it's not uncommon that'll isolate myself and feed into it, eventually ending up with suicidal thoughts. Thanks to a solid support network and years of learning to cope, I can typically at least pull myself up to the point where I can tell myself "this isn't really what you want, you're just in the throws of depression". If my support network were to crumble at the same time as a major event occurred (like what seems to have happened to him, w.r.t. the very premature babies), getting through this would be very, very difficult.
I can't so much as imagine what he was going through, and my condolences go out to his family and friends.
Battling through the downs makes me feel better about myself. Lots of people actually never feel depressed to any significant degree, and that fact that you can push through it means you're made of pretty solid stock. Quite motivating for an introverted dweeb like me:)
I'd like to point out that your comment itself is telling. "I'm still glad I now manage it".. implies that it is still a problem that requires an active solution (your "management" as it were.) I do not want to belittle your struggle or minimize your accomplishment of successful management, but most people who go on anti-depressants will end up back on them again later in life.
Being on anti-depressants IS managing it. Deep depression--the kind that makes you commit suicide--is like being a hole so deep that you can't see any way out. You lose all motivation to do anything, even things that would help you out of it. You can't see through the darkness. Anti-depressants are just a tool to help you out.
Exactly. And the fact that most people will go on them again (and the re-use rates go up exponentially as the number of times an individual relapses) was meant to demonstrate the ongoing nature of the battle with depression. "Managing" implies an active relationship with the condition, proving my point that it is not temporary.
In many major depression cases though it really IS a permanent problem. You can sometimes manage it with therapy or drugs but for many people the depression will last their entire lives. There is often no 'cure' and therapy / drugs will not always help.
See my post above. The depression may well not be temporary, but the span during which suicide seems like a good option often is. It's not unfair to point this out.
I think that a person can decide they have had enough suffering in their life.
I agree that often people are able to gain hope.
It is unfair to categorize the problem of Depression as temporary because ephemerality is not an intrinsic quality of depression; the opposite is frequently the case.
The depression IS the problem though, and calling it 'temporary' is what you're doing when you say 'suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem'. These people contemplate suicide every day of their lives.
Trivializing the problem like that by calling it temporary is not helpful.
A large number of people who make failed suicide attempts don't try again, it's why making changes such as making it harder to kills yourself with a household gas supply has a significant impact on suicide rate. Depression isn't a temporary problem, but the final suicidal impulse often is.
That blog suggests that instead of 4% going on to commit suicide as the earlier research showed, that 13% do commit suicide later on. That still leaves 87% of aborted suicidees who don't commit suicide afterwards.
Go easy. For many people depression comes in cycles. While the threat is always there, I think the parent poster has a good point.
Yes, when someone is in the throes of depression, it's all-encompassing. However, when they're feeling okay, they might well have a hard time even remembering how or why they got so close to the brink. That's what I understand by the parent poster's use of "temporary problem".
One can't un-suicide, but one can potentially endure until a brighter day, although if one is truly suicidal, it doesn't seem that way.
I.e. The depression isn't temporary. It's the crisis point where suicide seems like the only good alternative that is temporary.
One can't unsuicide, but dead people don't feel the desire to unsuicide anyway. Even if they were about to win the lottery (i.e., see a brighter day), they don't regret being dead. No matter how good life can be, it's always worse than death.
I was not thinking about this particular situation but suicide as a general. At the end of the day either i am informed or not, i would conculude with the same thought
