Exactly.

It was all in good fun from what I can tell.

Yeah. Mental illness really doesn’t care about how healthy your bank-balance is. If you’re not healthy in the mind, you’re suffering inherently and that’s the bottom and top of it. If anything there’s even something of a link between coming from a higher socioeconomic class and having bipolar disorder (or manic depression, let’s say, since we’re using the word depression quite explicitly here, innit).

One of the reasons I’m not a big fan of SSRI antidepressants (with few exceptions, like fluvoxamine and even paroxetine) is because they’re most-often associated with mild depression, the kind that GPs throw out like candy whenever someone so much as says they’re feeling a bit low for a purely natural, reactive reason (like a tough break-up). Tricyclics and MAOIs and stuff like venlafaxine may have more severe potential side-effects but they actually are A LOT more effective in doing whatever it is they do to alleviate depression, especially the more severe it is (alongside all the other conditions they’re used to treat, and most antidepressants are quite multi-purpose in that sense). Sertraline’s a very generic drug that lazy GPs like to prescribe without really thinking it through because they don’t know you and don’t truly care about you like that or anything besides their money as far as the job’s concerned but true, nuclear antidepressants are more equivalent to rocket-fuel if sertraline’s essentially glorified paracetamol for the mind. Mild antidepressants on their own barely make any difference if you’re beyond a certain point.

Likewise, if there are any antidepressants out there that can really get to the core of OCD, it’s stuff like clomipramine and fluvoxamine. It won’t be sertraline or citalopram, but those are the scrips that average GPs tend to rush for more than anything (besides Prozac). Again, another reason why I don’t really rate GPs and primary healthcare when it comes to things related to mental health at least. They might refer a person but it might take months or even years before a shrink can see them. Until then, you’re kind of at their mercy unless it’s obvious that you’re a knowledgeable patient who knows what they’re doing and knows more about their condition and drugs/specific therapies used to treat it than them (which isn’t hard up-against GPs, who don’t know much about anything in particular but only a little about a lot).

Sometimes people really have to stick up for themselves and be their own best advocate, because 7 times out of 10 your GP is not going to fight for you when it comes to things like this. They don’t know anything.

Listen, thank you. I genuinely appreciate that.

“Depression is an excuse and the common cold of psychological problems.” Anyone who thinks that needs schooling on the spectrum of depression and what it really means at the deeper end. The type that seasoned psychiatrists deal with.

“I guess depression isn’t always mild.”

I guess it isn’t always severe but when it is, it’s almost worse than cancer, like I say. And in any case a natural next step is suicide and that alone is heartbreaking. But people who really know the different types and severities of depression tend to be talking about serious depression by default and not the mild “depression and anxiety” that the lay person thinks of whenever they hear the word. That’s the type of depression that shrinks and poets alike have been more concerned with since literally the dawn of time. It’s just that we live in a society that over-plays the badness of schizophrenia and trivialises depression and to a lesser extent bipolar disorder (at least in comparison, but bipolar’s generally taken as serious). So that clouds a lot of people’s scope of understanding when it comes to depression. All these illnesses are more interconnected than a lot of people (including many doctors, especially GPs who only deal with mildly depressed people) think. Staying in bed all day is not a choice beyond a certain stage.

Overly vague details. Has Kate Ford (Tracey Barlow) left Corrie for good or is she just on a short break? Yes, no to which? Why aren’t we getting a tangible answer to that?

Dr Ramani’s narrow, big-5 take on introversion and extraversion. It’s valid as far as it goes but … like, girl, you have a whole PhD in psychology and you’re a whole world-buff on narcissism. You should be beyond using candy-crush anecdotes (“it’s okay to put your feet up and just do that in a hotel-room rather than socialise; locking in with candy crush and pizza on a Saturday night is just such an introvert thing to do”) to refer to complex preferential cognitive trends. You’re too smart for that. Would you not just have a cup of tea and label yourself a light-caffeine-o-vert going by the extent of that logic?

And why did the little you do know have to be mostly inspired by Irene Hernandez? Girl, please.

I love her but dislike the narrowness of her take on introversion/extraversion psychology. That and the fact that she puts out interviews when she’s ill knowing she’s looking very haggard and unkempt with an inflamed nose and sick-friz in her hair. She needs to know her limitations and scrub up on them. The limiting view of some thing that her adherence to big 5 gives and … ya. Just stay in bed and drink plenty of fluid when you’ve got a bad cold or Covid. The world doesn’t need another narcissism video from you when you’re neglecting your health that day at that expense. Go to bed and come back when you’re replenished.

People who don’t think they can learn anything from someone younger than them. Yes, there are certain things you might have more direct awareness of because of more general life-experience, but everyone has their niche and a lot of things that could surprise you. Their niches might be quite a fundamental part of their existence but you’re just not aware of it because you don’t know them as well as you think you do, or maybe you do but you just don’t know this about them. And that’s okay. Life’s full of uncovering and discovering. Just remember to be a little humble and remember that age only makes you more experienced, not smarter (if anything it’s more the other way around). Everyone has something they’re at least a little smarter about than the average person and we can learn lessons from them off that bat alone. Especially when there are unique experiences connected with them. And a unique experience is a unique experience, whether you’re 18 or 180. You might’ve gone through something really tough that the average person couldn’t relate to.

‘Why doesn’t Liverpool-Liverpool have a Waitrose? Why’s (wo)mandem got to go to Formby or Chester just to shop at Waitrose (without getting an online delivery)?’

‘I think Waitrose is a little expensive for the average Scouser.’

‘Liverpool’s home to people from all corners of the world (world in one city, low-key) and the indigenous city itself has a lot of affluent areas. Don’t use Kenny or Tuebrook as the defining marker of the wealth that is in the city. Go to Childwall, Gateacre (where many, many rich Jews especially live, alongside the general affluence), Woolton, Allerton, Grassendale, Mossley Hill, Aigburth, Hunts Cross and the at least nice-housed parts of Halewood, West Derby and Croxteth (etc.). Liverpool is full of affluence and well-to-do areas, as well as the poorer. It’s not inherently a poor city through-and-through, and even some of those areas have decent spots/nice enclaves. If your cue about the whole city is coming from The Sun … what are you even doing reading that rag in the first place?’

… ya. Liverpool needs a Waitrose.

These recent ITVX warnings about strong language and upsetting scenes. What do people expect from half of these shows these days? When did people become that quick to take offence?

The constant notifications from Facebook from pages you’ve liked over the years. Enough is enough. It didn’t even used to be a thing until very recently.

Also. The fact that I’m the only one who seems to want to update this thread on a semi-regular. Pull through, mandem. It can’t just be me.

the use of the made up word mandem

I think it was made up by faded pop star Jessie James

Right !!

Coat hangers drive me mad !!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Wires getting tangled up with each ofher !!


How does that even happen ?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Walking through a doorway and my jacket getting caught on the handle !!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Little things that irritate you
 

Supermarkets when they change practically all the isles around !!!


Many of us are creatures of habit

FFS


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Every word has to start or come from somewhere.

ATMs charging you to withdraw your own money. I’ve never understood that.

The fact that flammable and inflammable mean EXACTLY the same thing !!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Little things that irritate you
 

Schools and colleges in England changing books and paperwork to change the spelling of Sulphur to SULFUR !!!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

That’s it for now

I feel somewhat cleansed


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Hope to get some contributions from you more often, Zizu. Like I said it can’t just be moi.

Wtf

You’re the last person in the world I’d expect to get wound up about spelling and grammar.

That's nice dear

At least you’re apostrophising this time.