Ah, university. I’ve missed the intellectual stimulation, the anxiety-inducing deadlines, and the fact that there’s always a coffee shop within spitting distance. Something I haven’t missed? How absolutely infuriating some of that “intellectual stimulation” can be.

I could probably type until I drop about any number of examples. Like the fact that even after three literature classes, I was never assigned anything written by a non-white author. Or how my first film studies class was essentially just me and the three other female students in the class being told why all our opinions about film were wrong. These are examples from the institution and entrenched biases in academia. This problem goes beyond that though.

In this case, I want to give a different example. I’m going to talk about mental illness, and how, even among those supposed experts, it is still stigmatized, misunderstood, and misconstrued, to the detriment of those suffering from these diseases.

I’ve read a lot of things that have upset me in my college courses, but none so much as a chapter I read recently on mental illness. Overall, it was an excellent read, but one thing stuck out to me. Schizophrenia, PTSD, and anxiety disorders, among others, were written about in an informative and sympathetic way. However, I noticed that the section on depression was much shorter than any of the others, as well as being treated entirely different. People with mental disorders that have caused them to harm others were treated with respect, and even sympathy for their conditions. A woman who had murdered a person was treated with respect, whereas the person used in the depression example was reduced to a nagging wife who made others depressed for being around her.

Depression is not a “nagging” housewife. Depression is a woman who feels like a burden to her family. Depression is a mother whose children realize she has no hope and wonder why they should have any, either. Depression is a friend who has landed in a psychiatric ward because, despite the fact that she is wealthy, beautiful, and talented, she doesn’t feel any of those things.

I have enough experience, both personally and from interacting with close friends, to know that, no, depression is not just a nagging wife who brings other people down. It’s a person whose brain is chemically challenged in a way that makes them see themselves through a distorted, hateful lens. It is an unclear path, a lack of motivation, and a loss of hope that leaves you lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and trying to come up with any reason at all to get up.

I hope that any of you reading this understand that depression isn’t something that should be reduced to a personality flaw, something that makes some people undesirable to be around. Because, believe me, a person with depression probably already thinks they aren’t worth anyone else’s time. And it infuriates me that a textbook being used to teach students, written by a supposed expert in the field, could reduce a person with a serious mental illness to a short paragraph, complaining about how negative they are all the time.

Trust me, we know we’re negative, and we really don’t need a textbook to tell us how depressing we are to listen to, how nagging we sound, how other people don’t want to be around us. Our brains tell us that plenty already, thanks.