8 responses so far ↓

• sarah // Jul 7, 2008 at 11:28 pm

  some of thse people didn’t make me feel better that i have ahd depression issues…i mean…assassins?? and murderers? why not more positive people!

  make me feel less nuts please!

• passerby // Jul 8, 2008 at 3:48 am

  Abraham Lincoln

• Melanie // Jul 8, 2008 at 5:01 am

  Sarah, as someone who has also suffered from depression, I recognize myself in your comment: focusing on the bad! There are many more successful entertainers, poets, musicians, humanitarians and world leaders on this list than murderers.

  And sometimes depression gets the better of people, and I’m glad they included some of those people on this list. I think it’s important to have a stark reminder that depression is a SERIOUS illness that can’t be ignored. Depression isn’t all about celebrities spending a week at a luxurious “spa” whining about their lives; it affects real people in very real ways.

• Godwhacker // Jul 8, 2008 at 6:37 am

  Serial killers and mass murderers might be infamous, but they are not “famous”.

• DontRewardSelfishness // Jul 9, 2008 at 1:15 am

  Seung-Hui Cho, Mark David Chapman, etc do NOT belong on that list.

  You are listing the greats from history, they should not be compared to those who are only in our consciousness because they selfishly inflicted their problems onto innocent people.

• Joe // Jul 9, 2008 at 6:53 pm

  You know…the top paragraph really got me thinking…maybe these people didn’t have everything they could have wanted and that played a part in the depression.

  I believe in chemical imbalances and I think that is truly a player in depression. But I also think a big player in depression are our soul and spiritual needs. Everyone is on a different path concerning these things but I believe they at least just as important as the material things these people were able to attain. Just a thought…

• Marisa // Jul 19, 2008 at 7:57 am

  If you haven’t been depressed even once in your life, you’re not human.

• Justine // Jul 30, 2008 at 11:08 pm

  I couldn’t agree more that depression has a biological element to it — as well as an external one — and I don’t think it’s either/or, but each can feed into the other into the other into the other…I think many times the feeling comes first, and then we search for a reason to justify it, rather than vice-versa. And whatever kind of reason the mind wants to find, it will find.

  Re: the “wealthy and famous” part. I know it was just a toss-off kind of line but I have to say: Studies show that once people pass a certain financial point in which their needs for stability are met, money actually plays no difference in whether or not they are ‘happy’. As for fame — often a person’s intense drive to become famous in the first place is a sign that something is missing inside them, and fame itself brings along so many dangers (people sell you out, use you, bitch about you, invade your space, if you’re working your days are overscheduled down to the last second esp. if you’re promoting something, & of course the constant drugs & partying & temptation until you’re in rehab for the seventh time, etc. etc. and next thing you know you’re just another crazy lonely has-been) that if anything it makes happiness more complicated, since it makes it way too easy to get what you want right that moment instead of what you actually need to be happy….some people to love who love you (love is hard) and something meaningful to do with your days (finding purposeful work takes a lot of trial & error, which is hard, and then the work itself, even when you enjoy it, is hard)…and then you have to be disciplined and self-aware enough not to fuck it all up for the pleasures of the moment (wrong party/wrong drug/wrong person/wrong sex/wrong thing or time to quit) or because deep down you don’t think you’re worth it or too scared to really try, so you keep sabotaging yourself. And this is assuming your brain chemicals either aren’t wonky, or have been properly tweaked.

  If happiness was easy, everybody would have it….

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