individual, Monday, 10 June 2013 2:30:01 PM

Is that satire?

Classic. I had know idea to the levels of your homophobia.

pelican,

' I certainly would not know how to tackle it other than just to provide practical information.'

I don't think you understand the profundity (is that a word) of that statement. Who would think that a section of society that value pragmatism and rationality would respond to a straight forward, non-dressed up, not emotive or manipulative - 'practical information'

Exhibit A from pelican: Common sense.

Certainly beats 'Man Thearpy'; The attempt to stereotype, stigmatize, belittle, and infantalize adult men. Depression is a serious topic, treat it seriously, provide information. Not cliche.

It raises no 'awareness' whatsoever. We need, as a society, to start raising information rather than screaming loudest for attention. The marketeers have infiltrated every minute of our waking lives with cocaine-fueled hubris.

Poirot
"Before we know it the whole gamut of the population will have a program in place to deal with the incompatibility of healthy mental outcomes and living a 21st century industrial life where "community" is something confected or delivered via an institution."

Well put. It is impossible to replace 'community' with a superficial bandaid version run by some government agency.

Dear Pelly,

Here's a link that I've just come across
that may be of interest. It suggests
amongst others - reasons for gender disparity.

http://www.psychology.org.au/inpsych/2012/august/beaton/

Houlley

"cocaine-filled hubris" - the worst kind of hubris. :)

Wise words as usual. People who might need assistance are not interested in window dressing or attempts at manipulation they just want facts.

In my GPs waiting room there are many posters on the wall providing phone numbers or addresses or screening times for various illnesses and conditions. There is even a poster with pictures of different types of skin lesions that might be cancer. There is one with a number to call if you are depressed and there are two posters about checking for breast and prostate cancer.

I can't help but think these simple posters that do not attempt to play 'mind games' are where campaign planners should get their lead.

Here's something Ivan Illich wrote on traditional society.

I'm not suggesting that we should make an informed choice to revisit such a model, although the things we've lost were part and parcel of cooperating within such a model.

Perhaps there's something we can learn from it.

Here's the way he put it:

"...Traditional society was more like a set of concentric circles of meaningful structures, while modern man must learn how to find meaning in many structures to which he is only marginally related. In the village, language and architecture and work and religion and family customs were consistent with one another, mutually explanatory and reinforcing. To grow into one implied a growth into the others..."

Seems our greatest challenge is to find "meaning" in our lives and a sense of ourselves being "needed" in the scheme of things.

Without that.....