In a post from a long time ago I wrote about the news and my thoughts on it. Today, I want to revisit that topic again and talk about its effects on depression and mental health.
To recap my previous post, I am not a big fan of the news. It tends to be incredibly negative, and while it may help me keep up on world events, most of the time I try to get the essentials and leave the rest. Sometimes that makes me ignorant to some important things that are happening in the world, but I would rather risk that than feel angry and sad all of the time because of what I see or hear in relation to the news.
Related to depression and mental health, I think the news has a negative effect too. In fact, looking in retrospect, my dad used to watch the news most of the time he had the TV on, and I can’t help but wonder how that might have led to his depression. While I am not outright blaming the news for his illness, I suspect it was yet another factor that led to it.
If you are depressed or someone touched by a depression, the news is not a friend. While there are some good reasons to know what is happening in the world sometimes, I would say it is best to avoid as much of the news as possible. And, there are sources of positive news out there, and I applaud the effort to have it, but it pales in comparison to the negativity we currently see. One of my dreams is to see a world where the news talks about positive stories at least as much as they talk about negative ones. It would be even better if the positive stories outweighed the negative ones. In the meantime, I stay away from the negativity as much as I can.