Kelsey’s AP Language and Composition Blog!

Obviously, this picture is disturbing. At this day and age, using a symbol of American patriotism as a device to inflict injury upon another (assumably) American citizen “based solely on the color of his skin” seems barbaric. This is something most Americans are embarrassed to adopt as part of their culture. In this essay the writer explores the relation to other photos and I think it is a very effective picture to write an essay about.

In American society today, it seems as though all forms of the word “depression” are thrown around about as often as words like “Rehab” and “Britney Spears.” When a student receives a low grade, a businessman fails to close a large deal, or an oblivious boyfriend fails to notice his girlfriend’s haircut, the person at fault will likely refer to themselves as “depressed,” to express extreme disappointment and/or sadness. It is the usage of “depression” in unimportant daily events like these that redefine the word so that to general society it lacks the value of its true meaning. Depression, in the personal sense, is a serious biological disorder, not a “bad day”.
There are different types of clinical depression. Major Depression is the most severe, and like all types, can stem from psychological trauma or be a direct result of medical treament. It usually comes in waves or only happens once. Dysthymic Depression is a moderate, but more sustaining type that will often follow a person through at least two years of their life. This type of depression is more resistant to medication and cognitive therapy. Adjustment Disorder is a branch of depression that happens in response to a major life stressor or crisis. Finally, there is Bipolar disorder, a serious disorder where intense mood swings occur. There are drugs like Prozac, Cymbalta and Zoloft for treating these disorders that all deal with unbalanced seratonin levels, but oftentimes it takes cognitive Freudian therapy to deal with day-to-day issues as well. There is a newly diagnosed disorder that can stem from depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder that deals with mood changes in correspondence with the weather.
The alternate meanings of depression are simple and straight-forward. Depression in the economic sense is a recession or result of a recession. Most Americans will immediately think of the “Great Depression,” which of course refers to the financial and industrial slump of 1929. Generally, a depression can also be a “dip” or sunken place on a surface. Astronomically and geographically, depression is the angular distance of an object below the horizon or a horizontal plane.
When combining all aspects of depression, I have concluded that all definitions have one thing in common – a slump. Whether it’s psychological or physical, there is always a declination of something that usually rises again.
There are criticisms of the diagnosis standards for depression. Author Geoffrey Norman was quoted saying, “A lot of what passes for depression these days is nothing more than a body saying that it needs work.” Though depression is both a psychological and biological disease, there has been talk of some psychiatrists diagnosing depression and prescribing drugs too loosely. Perhaps this can attribute to the looseness of the term depression in society today.
There has been a new derogatory term “Emo” coined in the mid 2000s for a teenager who fakes a case of depression for attention. This has created a stigma for people with depression, especially teenagers. This causes even more distress for people with depression and separates them even further from the “outside world.”
Whether depression is used in the context of mild sadness, psychological melancholia, an economic slump, or a dip in a flat surface, the extent of each of these definitions vary greatly. Depression can lead to suicide and/or lost jobs and no source of income (as in the case of the Great Depression in 1929) or could simply be a pothole in the road. Most of us will encounter some form of a depression in our lives – the important thing is to do whatever we can to rise from it.

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