Quick to define Harry as "clinically depressed"?

[Kate Harding]

No: HPFGUIDX 110930

Dreadnought:
> While you may be correct, I find it just slightly disturbing to see 
> some of the attitudes towards clinical depression that are being 
> expressed on this list.
<snip>
> Too many people here, seem to me to have a very narrow view of what 
> clinical depression is, of what depression is. And unless Harry 
> fits their own narrow definition, it's obvious to them he's not 
> depressed.

Very well said!

Like you, I identify so much with Harry's experience. I was stunned 
the extent to which his feelings mirrored my own. I hope nobody would 
suggest that I didn't have 'real' depression, simply because mine 
lasted months rather than years, or because it was qualitatively 
different from what people think of as depression. (if so, I'm happy 
to refer them to my doctor!)

Depression is so much broader than people think, so much more varied, 
and so much more common. My experiences were so different from what I 
had previously thought of as depression that to begin with I didn't 
use the label. And after the first week or two, I was so functional 
in public that noone would even have known I was ill unless I told 
them. It was only as I read more and more that I realised that that 
was what it had was depression and it was ok to call a spade a spade. 

The world needs all the understanding we can get about depression, 
because there is such a tendency for people to think sufferers are 
malingering or should just snap themselves out of it, and this is a 
large part of the reason that so many people never get the help they 
need - not even they can accept that they are genuinely ill.

We don't know whether Jo intended Harry to have depression, and 
ultimately only she can say. But I'm personally sure her writing of 
him in OotP must have been informed by her own depression - it is 
*so* clear, so detailed, so insightful, so compassionate. Of course, 
noone has to agree with me. But that's how it feels to me.

psyche