More thoughts

Before calling a depressed person “courageous”, ask yourself ; What have you done to truly educate yourself about depression?
What have you ever done and what are you currently doing to concretely help someone with Depression?

People (still) seem surprised at military men who come back from combat with mental illness (Post-traumatic stress disorder / Depression).
We simply can not fathom the thought of our frontline defenders/protectors having mental “deficiencies”.
At it’s worse (and this is all too common in the USA), we watch them become hopeless, homeless, and even PREFER seeing them commit suicide than offer help.
The same is true of professional athletes (Sunday “warriors”). We love (even expect) them to “play through pain”, even if that pain is head trauma (concussion). Muhammad Ali’s Parkinson’s which was provoked by numerous blows to the head is “heroic” and “courageous” . Nice way of saying “We can’t admit that such a tough man’s mind can get injured.”, or admitting that our “entertainment” has disabled this man.

As for the whole “Men don’t talk about it” (generalization). Let’s ask ourselves “WHY don’t men talk about it?”. Is it just ego/vanity? If do, ALL men are vain egoists (generalization), including your brother, father, husband…
What if men are actually deeper than that?
What if we as a society, even a SPECIES, simply can not accept that our providers/protectors/defenders (can get) ill minds?
Mental illness gets the bad rap that “a large proportion of people prescribed psychiatric medication are non-compliant.” Studies have shown that non-compliance for blood pressure and diabetic medications are about the same as for psychiatric meds.
For those who like conspiracy theories, it could be argued that we don’t want people to take psychiatric medication and that’s why we talk so much about non-compliance.