"If I write a weblog and no one reads it, do I exist?"—Can anybody hear me?, Shelley Powers
Well, I guess I heard her. Shelley's post was written in response to Anil Dash's courageous piece about his struggles with mental illness. He urges everyone to open up, and discusses the value of Weblogging as therapy.
For some, the connection between health problems and writing may be there, and I realise that those for whom clinical depression is a daily occurance can't just say "hey I'll lighten up today": it's a very serious thing. But for me, personally, there's not much of a connection, and, moreover, I feel that there's an inherent danger which I'll get to in a couple of paragraph's time.
I should quickly note that I've suffered from agoraphobia and anxiety for some years now, but I have not been shy to tell people about it (which is very unusual, since most people with the same condition—and it affects roughly 1% of the population—suffer in silence). It's nothing I'm ashamed of, and it's nothing that I have to hide; in some ways, I have more pronounced skills because of it, although it's a long term battle.
Whilst agoraphobia leads in depression in the majority of cases, however, I've not found it to be a problem. So, from my experience in coping, and noting most sincerely that I do not mean to belittle those that really do have a problem (such as Anil), I think that too much introspective nonsense from Webloggers is in poor taste to say the least. With hot meals, cable, and a fairly good Internet connection, surely wallowing in self-pity is insulting to the truly poor and desperate? My problems, and the problems of most people that I know, pale into comparison with third world hunger, sufferers of mental and physical abuse, and so forth. I think that anyone mired in decadent first-world luxury needs to put things into perspective.
As for getting an audience for therapy through mental health writing, once again I'm glad that people with serious problems have an outlet, but it's a frustrating that the signal to noise ratio is so poor. When I write here, I give my words to Google at least, and so I try to approach specific things: linguistics, programming, and anything else that might benefit equally those people coming across it now, or finding it through Google or some link in the future. This post, of course, is a major exception; I hope that Aaron won't mind the wasted bytes on his server.
Therefore, I support Anil's idea, but I can't endorse needless cries for attention, or vacuous and insipid narcisism that people might take it as an excuse for. The line between is hardly thin, but it would have been easy even for me to stray into it.
Anyway, that's my summary of feelings at the moment. I sincerely hope I haven't offended anyone—I haven't set out to do so—and I must stress again that this is all just my perspective at the moment, and that's I'm subject to errors and to a change in opinion. I should note also that I'm not directing this against any specific person (except perhaps myself), especially Anil, whose post took a lot of courage, as I've already noted.
Feedback is welcome; sbp@miscoranda.com.