if you or someone you know...

...has read my blog entries on depression, please note: i have found some excellent new articles regarding the disease and have posted them in the sidebar (list of depression articles and resources.) one piece in particular, is an excellent source of information for men.

i was also reading today about joe pantoliano's depression organization, "no kidding, me too." joe was one of the stars of "the sopranos". his group's mission statement includes the following:

Our goal is to educate the public about the wonderful possibilities that exist when we break down the societal barriers which hold us all back because we treat those afflicted with mental illness differently – we label them and isolate them. What we passionately want to accomplish is to relieve the weight of millions of people who suffer this isolation.

There is an oft-quoted statistic that for every person who is diagnosed with mental illness, eleven loved ones are affected. The immediate short-term result is that the mentally ill person becomes isolated from the outside world because they are deemed unable to “handle” it. And isolation breeds isolation which creates the stigma and discrimination we need to eliminate. The brain is an organ – just like the heart, liver and kidneys – and we need to encourage everyone to treat it as such from both a medical and social perspective.

way to go, joe.