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Sat 01 Jan 2010Time to end double standards on mental and physical agony
High-profile cases of depression can foster a more mature stance to this common condition, writes BREDA O'BRIEN
AGONY IS a strong word. My father, who would make the Stoics look like weepy wimps, once said he was in agony when I inquired by phone how he was. I was on the bus to Waterford to see him before I was quite aware I had left my house. It turned out he had several crushed vertebrae, and that the word agony was yet again an example of his gift for understatement. Although well into his 80s at the time, he recovered.
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