The way I've seen it explained is that nobody is born with depression the way people are born with ADHD or autism. People can be "cured" of depression but not ADHD or autism which are more like different wirings of the brain than an unambigous sickness or defect. When explained that way it makes sense, but sometimes it makes me feel like shit ngl
"Hey we've got a new term and community for people whose brains don't work the typical way."
i mean.... people can be "cured" of adhd too. same as with depression, they give you a drug cocktail, you keep taking it for forever, and you do the talky talk therapy thing.
sooo, seems like a meaningless distinction to me.
question ought to be "do you suffer from a non-typical neurology" if yes, neurodivergent. that simple.
anything else just smacks of "my problem is worse than yours so your issues dont count!"
Honestly we don't know if people are born with depression or not. We don't know what biochemically causes depression in the first place. Very young children can have depression and attempt suicide (I was one of them). And asserting that depression is curable is suspicious too because, sure, it is for most people - most cases will resolve over time with or without effective treatment - but there's a whole population of treatment resistant chronic depressives that have terrible outcomes and single-digit rates of remission. I don't think we understand nearly enough about the condition to put all depressed people in the "curable temporary illness" category.
ADHD and autism have positives. Somebody with either (or both) of those can, in the right environment, live a happy and fulfilling life.
Depression is, by definition, not living a happy and fulfilling life. That's why even though "No, your brain is different in the broken way" may feel wrong, it's not.
And to be clear, I have both autism and chronic depression. I would love to be cured of the latter, but the former is a core part of who I am.
Does it? I feel like everyone's got a different answer so I never know if it's okay to identify as such
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The way I've seen it explained is that nobody is born with depression the way people are born with ADHD or autism. People can be "cured" of depression but not ADHD or autism which are more like different wirings of the brain than an unambigous sickness or defect. When explained that way it makes sense, but sometimes it makes me feel like shit ngl
"Hey we've got a new term and community for people whose brains don't work the typical way."
"Cool, do I count?"
"No, your brain is different in the broken way."
;_;
i mean.... people can be "cured" of adhd too. same as with depression, they give you a drug cocktail, you keep taking it for forever, and you do the talky talk therapy thing.
sooo, seems like a meaningless distinction to me.
question ought to be "do you suffer from a non-typical neurology" if yes, neurodivergent. that simple.
anything else just smacks of "my problem is worse than yours so your issues dont count!"
which is gross
Honestly we don't know if people are born with depression or not. We don't know what biochemically causes depression in the first place. Very young children can have depression and attempt suicide (I was one of them). And asserting that depression is curable is suspicious too because, sure, it is for most people - most cases will resolve over time with or without effective treatment - but there's a whole population of treatment resistant chronic depressives that have terrible outcomes and single-digit rates of remission. I don't think we understand nearly enough about the condition to put all depressed people in the "curable temporary illness" category.
ADHD and autism have positives. Somebody with either (or both) of those can, in the right environment, live a happy and fulfilling life.
Depression is, by definition, not living a happy and fulfilling life. That's why even though "No, your brain is different in the broken way" may feel wrong, it's not.
And to be clear, I have both autism and chronic depression. I would love to be cured of the latter, but the former is a core part of who I am.
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