Did Enid ever get depressed?

[Tony Summerfield]

As a proofreader of logic problems (the day job!) I have to watch the wording very carefully. Two examples :-

'Neither Nigel nor the bald kid is the little rascal' - Nigel is not the bald kid.

'The Little rascal is not Nigel or the bald kid' - worded like this means that Nigel could be the bald kid!

As the books say, these characters are fictional and they are not based on any living person!

[Moonraker]

That did my head in trying to work it out -- but I got there in the end!

[sixret]

[sixret]

It certainly is possible to hide it and no one knows for sure whether someone has depression other than the person themselves.

That is very true.
Sometimes people who are suffering terribly and perhaps for a long period of time can hide it very well, often behind a facade of jollity, keeping busy, working hard and being the life and soul of the party. Yet when they are alone or stop working/being busy, the depression hits again.

I must say I agree with Deej and Carlotta King on this particular statement!

[sixret]

I would also argue that it is pure speculation to say that she didn't have it.

May I politely make further speculations that Enid Blyton didn't suffer from leprosy, tuberculosis, transient arteriosclerosis, psittacosis, and Dutch elm disease? Or would it be productive to introduce new threads so these subjects can be discussed in full? After all, although there is no actual definitive evidence to suggest that Enid had myxomatosis, I haven't yet seen any evidence that she hadn't. I think we should be told.

Very good one dsr! Enid had depression was 100% pure speculation without having any backups or evidence from medical point of view!

[MJE]

     Not sure whether, at this stage, to butt into this rather confused thread or not - but I may risk a dunk into the murky waters, and withdraw quickly if the water gets too hot.

I would also argue that it is pure speculation to say that she didn't have it.

Surely you can't be serious. As a wouldbe journalist you must realise that this just doesn't work the other way round, what you are saying is totally illogical!

No one can know for sure, I may be totally wrong of course.

     I believe Tony, rather than trying to add to the speculation (quite groundless, as far as I can see) on whether or not Enid Blyton had depression, was instead making a point about Occam's Razor, where, until you get evidence that narrows down the truth, you will usually do best to first focus on the hypothesis that makes the fewest arbitrary assumptions. Where the question at issue is a simple one of whether a fact is true or not, that fewest-assumptions hypothesis will usually be the negative, not the positive. This is the way science has worked for many, many years, and it works better at uncovering truth than anything else so far devised.
     Just because someone asserts, on unknown grounds, that "Fact X is true", it doesn't mean that the truth or falsehood of the proposition is 50 percent probable either way. It would be a logical fallacy to assert that, because we don't know either way, then each alternative must have an equal probability of being true; therefore we must expend equal amounts of effort in investigating both alternatives. Science would never have got anywhere if this were the best it could do, since the vast majority of energy would be expended on utterly unproductive research into dubious propositions.
     Part of the ramifications of Occam's Razor is that the burden of proof is usually considered to be on the person making a positive assertion of some sort - not on everyone else to find proof that it is false.

     I think this thread is in sore need of a bit of Occam's Razor (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor for probably more about this principle of logic than you want).
     I could say that is pure speculation to say that Queen Elizabeth or Barack Obama or Lady Gaga (or any famous person you choose to speculate on) don't have bad dreams or insomnia or haemorrhoids or kidney stones (or any illness or condition you care to speculate about); but that doesn't mean that everyone else who wants to explore the health of the famous person now needs to expend enormous effort in trying to prove that the person *didn't* have the condition. In short, until some kind of evidence surfaces that the person did have the condition, you will assume they don't, without actually asserting that they don't. And of course you should be willing to change your assumption once new evidence suggests otherwise - but not until then.

Regards, Michael.

[MJE]

     In all the confusion on this thread, I've forgotten why the topic arose in the first place. Is there some evidence somewhere that pointed to the possibility of Enid Blyton having had depression, that gave rise to it? All I recall is Pete (ages ago) wondering whether she did - and everything else flowed on from that!
     But I have more than a passing acquaintance with depression, so I guess I have views on the subject, although I can't claim any proof of their general truth for all people.

I'm sorry but dementia is not caused by grief or negative thoughts :roll:

And you have proof of that post?

[...] After all negative thoughts and grief are sometimes linked to mental illnesses such as depression, and dementia is a mental illness.

     I see a few assumptions built into this. For a start, what is negative thinking anyway? I find people sometimes seem to use this phrase (a) when they strongly disagree with your opinion; and (b) you are honestly pointing out an unfortunate or distasteful fact which they either don't believe to be true, or don't *want* to believe to be true.
     "Positive thinking", on the other hand, is often used to signify the reverse: they agree with you, or they want to believe something is true. (If there is sound evidence for the fact, it may simply be called a fact, and not "positive thinking".)
     But even if there is objectively such a thing as negative thinking, I would think it could just as easily (perhaps more easily) be the *result* of depression than a cause of it.

Yes it does have some impact and I can feel the dark cloud in my head constantly but I just try to get on with I the best I can. I know I have depression symptoms, I know I'm slightly ill, but that won't stop me from doing what I want to do. It never will!

     If this is your situation, Deej, then you are very lucky. I would never be so rash as to assert that, while I have problems, I will never let them stop me doing what I want to do, because it would be an outright lie. The problems do stop me from doing all manner of things, and have done for most of my life. I won't ever assert anything I know or suspect to be incorrect just because people think it's "positive thinking" to do so. And I have often been called "negative" for that stance, but I can't help that. No amount of loud assertion, majority opinion, positive thinking, politically-correct views about illness or disability, or wishful thinking ever stopped an unwelcome fact from being true, ever changed the tiniest fact into something else.

Regards, Michael.

[Deej]

May I politely make further speculations that Enid Blyton didn't suffer from leprosy, tuberculosis, transient arteriosclerosis, psittacosis, and Dutch elm disease? Or would it be productive to introduce new threads so these subjects can be discussed in full? After all, although there is no actual definitive evidence to suggest that Enid had myxomatosis, I haven't yet seen any evidence that she hadn't. I think we should be told.

Thanks for your informative, thought-provoking post.

I would imagine depression is a much less clear-cut thing than the conditions you mention. It's not always obvious whether someone has depression.

I am not attempting to cause a what condition did Blyton suffer from stir. I am simply trying to have an intelligent discussion about something that is important to me. The complete ruling out by people such as yourself on issues such as whether Blyton had depression is just narrow minded. I am not actually saying Blyton had depression, I'm saying there was a chance.

[Carlotta King]

And if she did, it would be quite possible for her to hide it and for it not to be seen - she was an incredibly busy lady with the volume of work she produced so if her work was her 'therapy' then her depression could have been hidden, and possibly even eased at times, by her writing.

[Deej]

Exactly my thoughts

[Carlotta King]

[deepeabee]

Sorry to hijack a thread but I didn't want to start a new thread with something that will be answered in a yes or no comment. Here goes, did Enid smoke? Just wondering.

[Fiona1986]

I think there have been a few photos of her with a cigarette? So I think she may have, but socially or seriously I don't know.

[deepeabee]

Thanks.