I wish that somehow all the stereotypical thinking about endogenous depression and suicidal ideation could be swept away.

Far too many die of ignorance, when they and those around them believe that clinical depression is somehow a sign of being "weak" or "evil" or something we can just snap ourselves out of if we really want to.

Some of the strongest and morally best men I've ever known have taken their own lives.

Everyone needs to be made to understand that we did not bring this on ourselves; we can no more "clap our hands, believe in faeries,and make depression go away with happy thoughts, unicorns and rainbows" than we could do so with a stroke or a heart attack or an agressive form of cancer, because clinical depression is every bit as physical as those maladies and just as potentially deadly.

It is so prevalent among AS sufferers because of a simple fact: chronic moderate to severe pain alters our brain chemistry, sometimes permanently, whether we want it to or not. And we cannot wish away or pray away or will away that change. Medical science is more likely to be able to get us to regrow amputated limbs than to be able to arrest that chemical change.

Antidepressants DO reverse that change. There is no shame in taking them. Anyone who tries to persuade you otherwise is an (probably well-intended) idiot. If the first one doesn't work keep trying. There are hundreds of possibilities available to you and your doctor. One of them will work for you.

I send hugs to all of you who volunteer to talk to those contemplating suicide. You do a world of good. Let's work together to remove the shame.

Shalom,

John



Author: Mayan Solstice: A Novel of 2012 (http://www.createspace.com/3420054)

If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat.-
from "The Door into Summer" (1957), chapter 1 (Robert Anson Heinlein)

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. (again, RAH)