I’m so grateful to have found this forum. It really helps to know that others fall down into that pit of despair like I do. I’m beginning to feel a bit better from having read these posts.

I feel the same way about the world situation. Global Warming, the threat of nuclear annihilation, dwindling natural resources, over-population, living in a plutocracy here in the U.S. The list goes on … I do believe that most Americans are in denial about these issues. I was encouraged last fall with the Occupy Movement started, but it’s fizzled out. I am 60 years old and I believe that our situation will get much worse before it gets better. The population at-large has not yet reached its breaking point.

My problem today is major discouragement that I’m still living on the poverty level in a rather violent neighborhood. I’ve applied for 60 jobs over the last two years and have only been called to interview 5 times. Thankfully, the weather is nice. I don’t know about you, but cold, rainy weather really depresses me.

This quote from Surviving America's Depression Epidemic by Bruce E. Levine came to mind. I think Levine makes a good case of the hostile environment that we live in and how it negatively affects our mental health.

Psychology and philosophy professor David Livingstone Smith reported in Scientific American Mind in 2005, "Several classic studies indicate that moderately depressed people actually deceive themselves less than so-called normal folks." These studies show that depressed people are more accurate than non-depressed people both in their assessment of their control over events and in judging people's attitudes toward them.