Like the other guys have said, thank you for this. I've noticed that mental disease and depression are being minimized in their severity and importance compared to other types of illness, and it makes me sad seeing that here. I know that the brain is a powerful organ, but the mind is one we cannot quite touch- however, the tangibility (or lack thereof) of illness does not change its nature from deadly to harmless. It takes a significant amount of pain to push your average person over the edge, because we as human beings really do want to live deep down inside. Depression and other disorders that can cause that amount of pain are not to be taken lightly. You don't "get over it", as some have stated before. A boy in my middle school failed a math test, and you know what? For him, that was a finishing blow to his sense of self. He threw himself down the stairs that night, broke his neck and that was it. What killed him? A neck fracture, directly, but so did everything else that had pushed him to it, the math test being that one last thing. Yes, to outsiders that might seem silly. But on the inside, once you are there and understand, you can know. Unless you have watched a person go through it, or found yourself caught in that downward spiral, it's just that much harder to do it.
Transsexualism can kill. It doesn't shoot a person, but can be that one last thing that puts the gun to their head and makes them pull the trigger, because they feel there's nothing to live for. Disorders of the mind can worsen that, make a person more fragile. Some go through ->-bleeped-<- and transsexualism without many hiccups- perhaps they're strong in mind and heart, or have found an outlet or a coping mechanism. Maybe their family is progressive, or loves them enough to change their minds. Maybe they haven't faced ridicule or therapist upon therapist mistreating them and neglecting their needs. Maybe they were lucky enough to have the funds to start HRT quickly, had goals in sight the whole way. Maybe some disease of mind or body didn't put even more hoops into the routine for them to jump through.
Some don't. If this world were a better place, one willing to understand the hell we go through and that some people never wanted to fight this war, maybe the suicide rate wouldn't quadruple in the LGBT community. Maybe we'd see more transfolk out there, leading productive and successful lives. Maybe that would inspire others who see no way out to hang in there until some light appeared at the end of the tunnel. But it has to start somewhere- if our own community cannot as a whole recognize and acknowledge the harmful nature of being TG/TS on a person's mind, the fact that it can be an indirect killer and that suicide isn't taking an easy way out, then how can we ever expect society as a whole to acknowledge and accept our condition as something real, something that should be treated for those who require treatment, something that should be accepted for those who just want to start living instead of only being alive?
I've lived when no one thought I would, walked and talked against a lot of odds. I've slipped up here and there, almost lost my life to things like anaphylactic shock a few times. I've gotten hurt plenty more- and yet some doctors actually have the nerve to negate any injuries I've sustained and any handicap I have when it's right there in their face. That's a bit like what's going on here, in my honest opinion. No offense to anyone who has faced something like cancer and feels their battle was a much tougher one, but everyone's tolerance threshold is different and anything pushing them over it is a threat to their life, whether physical, mental, or otherwise.
