"Maybe they'd like to have a rational conversation instead, one where their right of choice would be respected. Inability to have such a conversation leads to alienation, which makes them more likely to kill themselves."<p>This is the part that is important. The only time you get to have this conversation is if you fail and are assigned a psychiatrist. Even then no one else will talk to you about it as they assume that it was just something you were going through and should have got over it by now.<p>If you raise the topic people panic and assume the worst. So despite the fact that I can now, after nearly 40 years of this, monitor my own state of mind and actually see that I am getting depressed I still can't talk to anyone when I feel it coming on.<p>I have had depression since I was a teenager, it comes and goes, but each time it is a little harder to cope with, or maybe I'm just getting older. If it was some other physical ailment then I could talk about it, if I was bereaved I could talk about it. But as it's a mental health issue and I appear to be otherwise fine, I have no one I can talk to. But I'm damn good at covering it up! Simply because people don't even want to talk about the weather with someone who is depressed, so to have any conversation at all you have to lock it away.<p>It sucks not to be able to talk.