re: #158 JordanRules

Huh?

Depression is the easiest thing to diagnose, because it’s got the simplest indicators of the psychological conditions and most people don’t struggle to articulate those symptoms. Whereas people with more complex issues may not have the language, self-awareness to articulate more complex feelings of fear, anger, et cetera…or view them as “normal” because there’s a cultural model of what your internal life should be like.

Depression is also an outcome—a secondary infection, if you will—of other psychological issues. Anxious or stressed people get exhausted and experience depression; people constantly “lose” paths to things they want (goals) and experience loss, and sometimes that loss is big enough they ruminate on it. Why someone is depressed has no set script. People that tick higher on narcissism and sociopathy get depressed because they don’t understand why the world won’t let them have exactly what they fucking want when they want it. Serial killers want fucked up things and get sad when they can’t do their exact Fucked Up Thing that gratifies them.

If Paddock was depressed, it doesn’t tell us much unless we know the larger issue of why, and even then it’s not necessarily an explanation for what he did.