Least Surprising Headline of the Day
Nov 18 2008 | Comments 3
Depressed People Spend More Time Watching TV
liz | 11:07 AM | Uncategorized
The Trouble with Spikol | Make Major Moves | PW Style | Cup o'Joel
Depressed People Spend More Time Watching TV
liz | 11:07 AM | Uncategorized
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
The whole study seems like a pointless academic exercise to me. The author says: “this habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise” – this strikes me as a rather trite attempt to establish a causal link between tv watching and depression. Aren’t there more useful things university sociologists could be studying?!
This is shocking! Who would have thunk it? This is one stupid study. All you have to do is ask one depressed person and they will tell you they can’t concentrate worth a darn to read, so you switch on the tube instead.
I was supposed to be watching the TV? I call it more catatonia in front of the TV.
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