Another great article out today from the NY Times, who seem to be consistently releasing some of the most compelling and thoughtful essays on the mind anywhere these days. This article from Daphne Merkin explores the dark side of depression.

The real question was why no one ever seemed to figure this grim scenario out on her own, just by looking at you. This was enraging in and of itself — the fact that severe depression, much as it might be treated as an illness, didn’t send out clear signals for others to pick up on; it did its deadly dismantling work under cover of normalcy. The psychological pain was agonizing, but there was no way of proving it, no bleeding wounds to point to. How much simpler it would be all around if you could put your mind in a cast, like a broken ankle, and elicit murmurings of sympathy from other people instead of skepticism (“You can’t really be feeling as bad as all that”) and in some cases outright hostility (“Maybe if you stopped thinking about yourself so much...”).