Fight The Depression Online

Two PARTICULAR PROBLEMS with language occur throughout this site. One is the difficulty of what to call someone with depression. In different contexts, this person may be called a patient, a client, a victim, a sufferer, or a consumer. Each term says more about the assumptions of the person applying the label than the recipient. The only descriptive term I know of, which is to call someone with depression a “depressive,” will suggest to some the concept of a “depressive character,” which is a loaded concept suggesting that there is something in the personality that causes depression. I disagree with the implication that there is a depressive character, yet I argue that depression does affect one s character and personality, so I opt for the term depressive as descriptive of what can become a way of life. Since I count myself among this number, I can plead the right to use the term without its implicit value judgment.
The second problem is the use of “he” or “she” to refer to a person when gender really doesn’t matter. In this book in particular, since depression is much more commonly diagnosed among women, and since that phenomenon is a subject of some heated debate in gender politics, the issue becomes ticklish. For a male writer to refer to depressed individuals as “she” may
appear to perpetuate what, to some, is an artifact of male-dominated science and culture. For me to refer to depressed individuals as “he” exclusively, however, may appear to gloss over the apparent greater suffering of women. For me to write “he or she” and “himself/herself” every time just becomes too awkward. I have, therefore, decided to try to intersperse male and female pronouns in instances when gender really doesn’t matter, but there are times when this becomes labored, and I revert to using “he” to refer to an individual of either sex.