It is great to read your stories of recovery, and I agree that positive thoughts and moments of realization and determination are really important and healing, but I also think it's easy for people who have never had clinical depression to think "just pull yourself up by the bootstraps; what you are going through is only in your mind" and stories like this can give them more ammunition not to believe sufferers who are still very ill and who say that they just can't "snap out of it" and are derided and not believed.
After months and years of depression when you are finally coming out of it, it might feel as if you just had the thought "okay, I'm tired of being sick, so now I'm going to be better" and then you do get better, but a lot of people in depression do want to be better and they decide with their whole heart to get better, yet it just doesn't happen with them. Clinical depression is a complicated illness that does involve changes in the actual physical structure of the brain, as well as the levels of neurochemicals, and if it occurred in another part of the body and/or was visible to the eye, people who have not had it and who think that it's just a matter of mere positive thinking to "get over it" would be more willing to respect it as a real illness.
Please don't think that I am knocking your inspirational stories. I just want to present an additional side of the issue.
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