The naming of things affects our understanding of them. Names are the labels that things come with.
For example, Depression.
This name of the illness confines our understanding of it to a certain stereotype. Even today, many people still believe that those who have depression are a "fragile and melodramatic" group of people. The name "depression" implies that this illness is simply an abnormality in emotions or psychological state, that someone is feeling down because they can't get over something.
In 1891, German psychiatrist Emil Kreapelin first used the term "depression" in a medical textbook to describe a type of mood disorder. Naming it based on the expression of "depressed mood" is not unreasonable, but it planted the seed of misunderstanding. Our first reaction is always, why can't they just get over it? Why would someone like Li Wen, who is so wealthy, be depressed?
Humans are machines. We cannot create machines as precise as humans, but humans are still machines. Whether Li Wen is rich or not, whether her husband cheats on her or not, whether she can get over things or not, it all comes down to a deviation in her physical hardware. Recognizing that the body is just a machine is extremely important.
Unfortunately, people still cannot accurately understand the mechanisms behind depression. It may be due to certain genetic differences from the general population (depression has a hereditary component), it may be due to immune dysregulation leading to brain inflammation (a decrease in neurotransmitter levels may be a consequence of brain inflammation), it may be due to imbalances in the gut microbiota affecting brain health (the gut-brain axis), or it may be...
There will be more and more research on the relationship between human hardware and depression, and using psychological counseling to treat depression will gradually become a source of emotional comfort.
In the future, when people encounter individuals with depression, perhaps they will no longer say, "Just get over it."
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