Just wanted to touch on the subject while it's making the rounds in the popular imagination.

A little history: I was diagnosed with clinical depression when I was eleven years old. I've been locked up under suicide watch, I've seen numerous mental health professionals, I've been to rehab for substance abuse issues, I've been on so many different anti-depressants that I've lost count.

Depression can be every bit as crippling as a broken spine. It can and frequently does permeate every aspect of life, sabotaging one's work, dreams and relationships, while instilling a mode of apathy so pernicious that getting out of bed seems like too much trouble, let alone trying to catch the pieces as one's world falls apart.

Yet, for many people who don't have to live with this horror, there's an attitude like, "Shake it off, tough it out, quit being lazy." Hearing that kind of garbage just makes the problem worse by throwing additional guilt into the mix.

And God help you if you self-medicate! Even many people who would ordinarily be sympathetic will treat you like the scum of the earth if you develop a drug habit, despite this being another manifestation of the underlying problem, and quite a common one at that (and if you think it's normal to want to be shitfaced all the time, which would be the implication by not recognizing the correlation with mental illness, that says more about you than it does about addicts).

Well, this has turned into a bit of a rant. TL;DR: Depression is a serious problem, don't belittle those who have it.