Do you get depressed?

'Did you know that in the dark days before the abolition of slavery, a black slave who wished for freedom was considered to have a mental illness? It's true. The social order of the day considered black people to require submission in order to be "happy". (It's amazing the lengths that people will go to to justify an abhorrent social practice.) A black slave who desired freedom, and especially one who ran away, was considered to be insane. I can't remember the name of the illness given to such individuals, but I can look it up when I get home if anyone is interested. And it is unfortunately true that the psychiatric insitution has a long and storied history of turning abhorrent social practices and conditions (and resistance to them) into mental illnesses, thus neatly changing a social problem to an individual one.' Very interesting essay on depression here.