Doctors and nurses are all a part of our faulty society and though they are charged with caring for those in need,  because they have been steeped in a world which places unequal value to people based on race, this means any interaction between medical staff and disabled people of colour must be examined through a lens of both disability and race.

One of the major goals of identifying biomarkers for depression is once you can measure it in a similar way as you would diabetes, you are at least partially removing the stigma, because it’s very difficult to say something like, ‘Get yourself together and control your liver function,” Redei said.  “It’s something you can objectively detect and follow and bring into the realm of medicine.”

“In the future, we could be able to define depression much more profoundly and clearly with a blood test,” Redei said.  “It could explain why some drugs work for some patients and not for others.  It’s also could help develop new types of antidepressants.  Right now, we are guessing.  Even the best psychiatrists can’t do anything but prescribe one to three different types of drugs or treatments based on prior experience and trial-and-error.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/04/17/scientists-develop-first-blood-test-to-diagnose-depression/?intcmp=features#ixzz1sLjCORh9

Still I believe that mental illness and recovery from mental illness is a psycho-spiritual process, one that requires that you stand up for yourself.  If you don't stand up for yourself, for your basic goodness, there's a good chance that you could be swallowed whole by the negative aspects of the illness. […]  Instead of internalizing the core of the sickness, hurting myself and possibly others, I learned to detach and defend the part of me I loved.