Pairs of socks knitted in 2014

  • Roxanne's socks
  • Brian's Cascade socks
  • Shirley's lacy socks
  • striped Meredith socks
  • striped stranded #1

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

"Are you on meds?" and other questions

Can I just say that I'm sick of answering stupid questions about my mental health? I hate the stigma that surrounds mental health problems, but I harbor an even greater hatred for the well-meaning but completely asinine questions people ask about mental health.

"Are you taking any meds for depression? I saw a commercial for...."
Yes, I have major depression. Yes, I am taking prescription medication. (No, I will not share.) The rest is none of your business.

"Is it contagious?"
Depression? Under normal, abnormal and even highly impractical circumstances, no. Not even if you watch a lot of cable news, and then the depression just gets worse instead of better. (Although I suppose if you watched cable news with other people and they got depressed, you could theoretically claim that major depression is contagious, but then you'd have to count the cable news as a vector so it still wouldn't be directly communicable person-to-person.)

"If you're a psychiatric nurse, why aren't your children better-behaved?"
They're CHILDREN. Given that they behave better than half my co-workers and three-quarters of my relatives, I'm not sure what my choice of profession has to do with this discussion. If I wanted robot slaves for offspring, I would have created robot slaves instead of reproducing in the conventional manner.

2 comments:

Kelly said...

People seriously ask if depression is contagious? Wow.

I hate how everyone who has just heard about an issue tends to think that they have far more knowledge about it than someone who's been living with it for years.

People like to tell us how we should handle my mother-in-law, who has been institutionalized for mental illness since early July. Really? You met her three times, when she was on her best behavior, and now you're going to tell us how to run our family?

Cat said...

Now the first one, I would have totally expected. The second, I wonder what screw is loose that they would even think that. Wait, we are talking about people here, never mind. However, I like the television news as vector idea. Good as reason as any!

And I think people generally just like to gripe about kids, sadly.

Take care, hope you went through the snow okay...
Cat