Tag Archives: depression

Christmas Survey

I don’t celebrate Christmas because I don’t have anyone to celebrate it with. Instead I meditate a lot and do my annual spring clean. If you’re also alone this Christmas, I recommend this as a coping strategy. It’s still pretty bleak, but waking up on 27th having had no Christmas with a clean flat is definitely better than waking up on the 27th with a not-so-clean flat.

This year I’ve decided to really go to town and literally clean EVERYTHING. Although I’m starting to wonder whether moving the fridge and physically washing the walls down with soapy water is maybe a bit excessive. Even though I’ve been in my flat three years, the walls behind the fridge don’t look dirty to me, so my present dilemma this Christmas Eve is should I wash them or not?

I think I will, because I have committed to washing everything, but I got to wondering, is this excessive, how often do people wash the walls behind their fridges?

Anyway, I created this survey to find out, so please if you’ve found this site, humor me and complete it, thanks and for what it’s worth, Merry Christmas.

 
NB: The survey refers to whether you wash the walls behind your fridges at any time of year, not just at Christmas time. 

 

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

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This is also my first embedded survey, something of a practice run… So apologies if you can’t see the results, I will update later as I’m sure they’ll be a lot of interest in this….

Also if the survey just doesn’t work for some reason, do let me know, as I say, this is a trial.

Actually just in case the embed doesn’t work – here – Click here to take survey

Dodgy depression statistics

Blues_MondayBlue Monday is apparantly the most depressing day of the year – there’s some debate over whether it was last Monday or today, the 24th of January – but because of a combination of poor weather and broken new year’s resolutions, one of these days is the most depressing day of the year!

According to Ben Goldacre, however, Blue Monday is a load of nonsense

“I reviewed the evidence from more than 30 studies over 130 years on the subject last year. Some find more suicide in spring and early summer, some in spring and autumn, some in summer only, some find no pattern at all…. Antidepressant prescriptions peak in spring, or in February, May and October. GP consultations for depression peak in May-June, and November-January). Admissions for depression peak in autumn, or spring and summer, while eight studies found no variation. So Blue Monday only really shows us how easy it is to take an idea that people think they already know, and then sell it back to them. Even if it’s false.”

I think Goldacre’s right to be cynical. I would treat ‘depression’ statistsics with extreme caution. Depression is such a subjective thing .

I inevitably come across a few cases of ‘depressed’ kids at college every year – some of which are obviously genuine – linked to real problems at home – others, however, are clearly not.

Colleagues have to run scared of the kid who thinks s/he’s depressed – in our child centred educational culture it is, after all, much safer for your career to accept their own self diagnosis and send the ‘depressed’ child off to counselling  – possibly enforcing the idea that s/he is depressed and leading to a self fulfilling prophecy. This alone is enough reason to treat the depression stats with caution.

However, I am not about to dismiss the idea of depression altogether – I fully understand that a cause of depression today might be due to a lack of fulfillment brought about by comparing one’s own life – or lack of it – to the media norm – which makes ‘normal life’ appear as if it is one non stop roller coaster ride of fun.

 If this is the source of depression – one needs urgently to take a reality check – life simply isn’t as interesting as the media suggests it is, and people aren’t that happy most of the time.

Finally, on the subject of depression – have a listen to this song by flogging molly – about the experience of Irish Immigrants working on the railroad in America – now this is depressing.