What, exactly, is a 'Nervous Breakdown'?

Factual Questions
21

damn straight.
MarkF, the first thing you gotta do is decide to do something about how you are feeling. that’s pretty hard.

the second is to actually do something. that’s an almost insurmountable obstacle sometimes (it certainly has been for me).

for me, the worst thing about depression is this feeling that getting ‘undepressed’ doesn’t really matter. but i’m rather functional right now, and lemme tell you, it does. it feels soooo good to not wade around in that psychic shithole.

if you don’t think or don’t know if you can do something, this website can be a big help. you can talk to real people without actually having to go and talk with real people. it’s good to talk.

i hope this passes.

jb

22

It seems to me that years ago, when alcoholism and drug addiction were thought of as personality defects rather than diseases, people were euphemistically said to have “suffered a nervous breakdown” when they were hospitalized for drying out or detox. Of course now, at least since Betty Ford, people are less self-conscious about going into rehab.