Discounting Morrissey? He's probably saved more people with depression than anyone else has put together!
I know he basically saved my life anyway, I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't discovered Morrissey.

Music. Planting a garden. Caring for a friend, lover, child, parent, pet. Anything that releases you from the prison of self-absorption will do. But medicine can help. Temporary 'rubber-ring' till Amazon deliver the latest tranche of books/CD's.

A snide concluding remark about Morrissey: He offers therapeutic 'catharsis' to many people. He didn't intend to, but he's a real hoochie-coochie man. A shamanistic healer, though he'd have no idea what that means!

I can hear Leadbelly and Kurt singing 'Mama, Where In The Pines Did You Sleep Last Night?'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3hBPvRoux4&feature =related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qkcsiaxVnQ

yeah, he's really 'finished', 'washed-up'. Dream on, haters. LOL! But, barring a miracle: He'll never be a 'Major Star' again. Hope he can cope with that.

It's sad he's never found personal relief through a successful romantic relationship or parenting. But he has loved his pets from what I've read. Given the adoration i feel for Alfie Moon as he sits beside me gazing up at me: I can see why that's enough for some folk.

Depression Is A Sign Of Mental Health.
Just switch on the news channel. Right now.
See?

Regards.

Can't believe this...Morrissey / Morrissey/Marr songs are the ONLY things that lift me.
Really, never had a anti - d in my life even though I should have... and MM works every time.

The article contains some timely good thoughts, if not totally ground-breaking, just reinforcing our own experiences.

A psychiatrist-author Oliver Sacks (the film Awakenings is based on one of his books) has managed to fill a tome about the benefits of music, claiming that -

“Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does--humans are a musical species.” - http://www.oliversacks.com/musicophilia.htm

Where Morrissey is concerned, the advantage is often discernable on a more relational basis, and Antti Nylén approximates why this is in her excellent essay ´Me and Morrissey: notes on the essence and effect of a voice´ e.g.

- ´The psychological structures of Morrissey and his fans are similar. In some sense the fan is a metastasis of the idol, formed of the same substance and eternally defined by the originator, not a copy or an imitation, but a stem.

Being affected by Morrissey is a traumatic experience. It is an event that is simultaneously distressing and comforting. To begin with, exposure occurs in the teens or early adulthood, when all "experience" is by decree distressing, because it includes expectations: Now you have to amass experience. Now you have to test your limits. Now you have to get drunk and copulate for the first time. He who does not obey these commandments will be punished severely. That is, if he hasn't protected and armed himself - with Morrissey, for instance.

The comforting is densely ingrained in the distressing. When you say yes to Morrissey in a radical way, you say no to the world and its requirements. The experience is poignant, but above all sublime and relieving. It gives the retreat value and principle.

The Morrisseyite goes inwards. He doesn't come out, at least not as the same person, because "Morrissey" is a closed institution. The notion of "coming out" present in youth fiction and especially in gay literature is transformed into a "going inward", where the identity of the individual is no longer legated by the acceptance of the exterior world, but by an inward, impeccably organised sphere of symbols. Morrissey once wrote a slogan on the run out groove of one of the Smiths' 7? singles: HOME IS WHERE THE ART IS.

It has been noted that where the pop of the 1960s was concerned with the notion of leaving home, Morrissey - both as a singer and as a cultural icon - always tells us of pining for home. Simpson's story of how he came about writing "Saint Morrissey" is a typical "going inward-tale", an account of starting a home with Morrissey.´ -
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2004-08-24-nylen- en.html

Mark Taylor tells of his life-changing relief when on discovering the songs of The Smiths, he could for the first time accept his own feelings - http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,17456 19,00.html

There’s a recent articulate defence of Morrissey here - http://unitedstatesofmorrissey.blogspot.com/

A famous story that features nervous breakdown, squalour, and musical levitation is recounted by J.D. Salinger, first published in 1950 in the New Yorker - http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/squalor.html

"The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted."
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
: )

The Polyphonic Spree?! Remember the band Tripping Daisy? What about their stupid song, "I Got A Girl"? Yeah, the lead singer of Tripping Daisy is the main guy in the Polyphonic Spree. Both bands and their music have nearly caused me to slit my wrists with a cat. (Hey, the cat was the sharpest object closest to me at the time...)

Morrissey's songs are the most optimistic songs I have ever listed to.

without the Smiths and Morrissey I wouldnt survived the 80's and 90's

Morrisseys lyrics got me trough the day, like
theres someone out there who understands me

yeah I know this is posted, or this kinda 234.654
times, but I don't care cause I'm not being through a bit of depression but had 100 times
tougher things to handle from the gutter