Depression is a Bad Word

              I’m old enough to remember that depression was a very bad word. I suppose I didn’t know much, except that it was bad, and not talked about. Perhaps it was the way that “crazy people” were portrayed in movies or book, I don’t know.

             It was “Mental Illness”.  And it was bad. I don’t recall knowing of anyone being mentally ill.  I heard a lot about “nervous breakdowns”.  They would go somewhere and rest and be taken care of. 

            If some explanation was given, it usually included working too hard, or maybe some tragic event that had upset them. I think the “nervous breakdown” was the easiest to understand and explain.

            There is definitely a stigma attached.  If you are labeled mental Ill, your thought of and looked differently.

By the late 4th century the Christian Church was using the term to refer to 'a weariness or distress of the heart' — a condition that was regarded as undesirable and requiring treatment. 

While initially associated with sadness it later became associated with the 'sin of sloth' and known as accidie. Accidie in the 1300s was listed by the church as a cardinal sin for it made, for example, monks lazy and sluggish. For St Thomas Aquinas, accidie was the result of shrinking from doing some good.

 But the concept of accidie is more complex than that, and interpretations vary. Some commentators related the origin of black bile to Adam's eating of the forbidden apple. With the weakening of the power of the Christian Church in the 15th and 16th centuries accidie became more and more associated with melancholia.