Lowering the Red Flag on Depression
Posted on | September 3, 2009 | 3 Comments
Friends of our parents, friends of ours — we have all known people who were not the consistently upbeat, optimistic, and perky people that society claims we should be if we are well adjusted. You may even recognize yourself in that opening statement. But how nonsensical it is to stigmatize the personality inclinations of a large portion of the population in an attempt to create a bland band of sameness amongst us all. The uptick in prescription drugs for depression is an indicator of how the hand-in-hand team of mainstream medicine, Big Pharma, and governmental agencies worldwide have attempted to convince us all to ‘take a pill’ as the solution to what is, in many cases, simply a short term case of the blues.
Remember when it used to be called that — the blues? Or down in the dumps? Can you recall hearing your parents talking about one of their friends who was in that kind of mental space and they’d describe it as going through a rough patch? It certainly wasn’t a cause for raising the red flag of alarm, but was a time when either being supportive or knowing when to just back off and let the person work through their issues was appropriate.
Yes, there have always been people who were in a more serious classification of depression and who may have done themselves or others some kind of harm, but to stigmatize all depressive personalities as veering towards those tendencies is a reductionist approach that omits the individual and their unique approach to life.
Every week I continue to read news reports from around the world that trumpet the ‘fact’ that depression is on the rise and that we need to cut it off at the very beginning by medicating the toddlers and children who exhibit any signs of ‘the blues’ lest they turn into adults with full blown depression. What utter nonsense!
The current issue of Scientific American has an article titled Depression’s Evolutionary Roots which posits a clear re-think on the attitude towards people who have recurring episodes. There is new research which bucks the ‘accepted thinking’ and states, “in most instances, depression should not be thought of as a disorder at all. In an article recently published in Psychological Review, we argue that depression is in fact an adaptation, a state of mind which brings real costs, but also brings real benefits.”
This fresh method of examination explores the biological reasons for some members of our species being distinctly different in their approaches to stress factors — but it removes much of the stigma that has been attached to depression for the last several decades.
The article concludes that “depression is nature’s way of telling you that you’ve got complex social problems that the mind is intent on solving. Therapies should try to encourage depressive rumination rather than try to stop it, and they should focus on trying to help people solve the problems that trigger their bouts of depression. (There are several effective therapies that focus on just this.) It is also essential, in instances where there is resistance to discussing ruminations, that the therapist try to identify and dismantle those barriers.
When one considers all the evidence, depression seems less like a disorder where the brain is operating in a haphazard way, or malfunctioning. Instead, depression seems more like the vertebrate eye—an intricate, highly organized piece of machinery that performs a specific function.”
One final note — how many books or poems would have remained unwritten — how many works of art or science would have remained uncreated had we been so uniform and happy-perky-same over the centuries. The very fact that in the past people WERE allowed to plunge deeply into their moods and explore the full range of emotions within the darkness has produced many of the artistic masterpieces, scholarly works, and scientific inventions that we so cherish today.
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3 Responses to “Lowering the Red Flag on Depression”
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Deborah Harmes, Ph.D.
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September 5th, 2009 @ 8:19 AM
Excellent article, Deborah! Thanks for posting this. Well written and thoughtful. I still bristle when thinking of my oldest son being prescribed anti-depressants when going through a break-up with a girlfriend.
Argh!
Anna
September 5th, 2009 @ 8:38 AM
The easy (and rapid!) way out for many physicians who either fail to or simply don’t WANT to look at underlying issues with their patients is to just write those prescriptions instead. A simple round or two of a method called Solution Focused Brief Therapy is wonderfully effective in many cases. And I suspect that what the medical industry calls chronic low-level depression is simply a label applied to people who have what used to be known as ‘the blues’ a bit more often than most. So what! If they have developed adaptive strategies on their own or with some talk-therapy, there is no need to keep those people whacked out on anti-depressants just so they’ll fit comfortably into ‘normal’ society without any wobbles.
September 9th, 2009 @ 12:10 PM
Love these thoughts and totally agree. How are you meant to build up resiliance without any knockdowns?