It drives me up the wall when I hear people who have never experienced clinical depression say things such as, "Oh, I'm really depressed today, my washing machine packed up last night", or, "I feel so depressed, the cash machine swallowed my bloody card this morning." The term "depressed" is misused all the time. \nDepression is an illness. Hearing someone use the term flippantly is deeply offensive. Just because it's an illness of the mind associated with "low" moods doesn't give you the excuse to use it as a shorthand when someone asks you how you are. Would you dream of saying, "God I'm so broken leg today, my train was delayed," "I feel really glaucoma this evening, I need an early night", or, "I feel so cervical cancer, my credit card is maxed out." Thought not. \nIt would seem that at the root of this commonplace annoyance there is a great deal of confusion about exactly what clinical depression is. Let's see how the experts define it. The UK's Royal College of Psychiatrists lists typical symptoms of a clinical depression as follows: "Feel unhappy most of the time (may feel a little better in the evenings), lose interest in life and can't enjoy anything, find it harder to make decisions, can't cope with things that you used to, feel utterly tired, feel restless and agitated, lose appetite and weight (some people find they do the reverse and put on weight), take one-to-two hours to get off to sleep and then wake up earlier than usual, lose interest in sex, lose your self-confidence, feel useless, inadequate and hopeless, avoid other people, feel irritable, feel worse at a particular time each day usually in the morning, think of suicide." \nAccording to Netdoctor, the symptoms to watch out for are: "Low mood, lack of interest and pleasure from usual activities and interests, poor attention and concentration, disturbed appetite usually associated with weight loss but it can also cause an increased appetite, disturbed sleep often causing waking in the early hours of the morning and a feeling of being unrefreshed by sleep, tiredness, decreased sexual energy (libido), feelings of worthlessness or hopelessness, feelings of guilt or shame, suicidal ideas and thoughts of self-harm." \nThe person usually doesn't realize they're slipping into a clinical depression. It might start with a stressful period in your life -- losing a job, family problems, the death of a loved one, physical illness, money problems, a relationship break-up -- or it might have no causal trigger whatsoever. Symptoms typically announce themselves slowly, the process is insidious, incremental. \nFor me, the first sign is often a feeling that I'm going too fast, that I can't slow down. I work excessively during these times, exercise excessively, feel like I have the energy of a power station. \nThen I enter the "distracted" phase where I can't hold a thought, when concentration becomes difficult. My wife always knows this is happening when I start a new book every night, only to bail out after a few pages, declaring it "impossible to get into." \nSleep and appetite go next. I usually go through a period of intense insomnia, then become permanently exhausted and start taking afternoon naps. I suddenly find myself skipping lunch. I'm simply not hungry. I go from breakfast to dinner without eating a thing. Then I get muddled, start forgetting things, find simple tasks draining. By this time, the anxiety's sizzling and I find myself obsessing about tiny, irrelevant things -- something someone said, an unaccounted for amount on a bank statement. \nNext, the lethargy sets in. My exercise regimen starts falling away and I turn down all social invitations. This is when my wife calls "fire!" and sends me to the doctor. I'm reluctant to go because no matter how many times it happens, I always think it'll eventually pass if I keep my head down long enough. Sometimes it fools both of us and I wind up suicidal. Then I need to get help immediately. \nThe short answer to the \nquestion "How do I know if I'm depressed?" is you just know. You don't feel like yourself anymore. \nThe seams of your life come unravelling deviously. Your IQ turns to candyfloss. To those who love you, you're unrecognizable, a stranger. \nYou're like a ventriloquist's puppet, depression's plaything. It's not a very nice feeling. So if you've never experienced it, think twice next time you find the term "depressed" on the tip of your tongue -- you may just be offending the person you're talking to.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in her inaugural address on May 20 firmly said: “We will not accept the Beijing authorities’ use of ‘one country, two systems’ to downgrade Taiwan and undermine the cross-strait status quo.” The Chinese government was not too happy, and later that day, an opinion piece on the Web site of China’s state broadcaster China Central Television said: “While Tsai’s first inaugural address four years ago was read by Beijing as an ‘unfinished answer sheet,’ the one she presented this time was even more below-par.” Speaking to the China Review News Agency, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies vice president
EDITORIAL CARTOON
Affected by the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have implemented disease prevention measures such as city lockdowns, factory closures, travel restrictions and border controls. These resulted in slowing economic activitiy and dwindling global trade, which have negatively affected Taiwan’s export-reliant economy. Consequently, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) last week revised downward its economic growth forecast for Taiwan for the second time this year. The DGBAS on Thursday predicted the nation’s GDP would expand 1.67 percent this year. The agency’s new forecast is lower than the 2.37 percent it estimated in February, and weaker than Taiwan’s economic
French firm DCI-DESCO in April won a bid to upgrade Taiwan’s Lafayette frigates, which has strained ties between China and France. In 1991, France sold Taiwan six Lafayette frigates and in 1992 sold it 60 Mirage 2000 fighter jets. To prevent arms sales between the nations, China negotiated an agreement with France and in 1994 in a joint statement, France promised that there would be no future arms sales to Taiwan. From China’s point of view, the DCI-DESCO deal constitutes a breach of the agreement, but the French stance is that it is not selling Taiwan new weapons, but instead providing a
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