Depression is undervalued and over-diagnosed. Humans are capable of a wide range of emotions, and each one is intended to provide a benefit, whether it be reinforcing habits, ore shocking them out of bad situations.
In modern society there seems to be a troubling tendency to believe that sadness is something best avoided altogether. Clinical depression, is now something diagnosed in people of all ages, startlingly often.
There are no studies suggesting that depression is any more common now than ever before, but depression diagnoses have been on a sharp rise. Along with the recent boom in attention deficit disorder and seasonal affective disorder diagnoses, depression is having a spotlight turned on it as a new enemy of mankind. The treatments can be worse than the problem, and usually more long-term.
The War on Feeling
The war on natural human experience has been going on for some time. It’s possible that it started just before feminism became a movement. Life was extreme, and people were expected to handle their own problems without outside help. With increasing affluence in society, and a sudden shift of population from the city to the suburbs, the problems that so dominated the the world of mafia-run unions and abusive factory-owners began to dissolve.
Depression strikes the abjectly poor and the comfortably affluent both. Its causes are myriad, and often perfectly healthy. What varies between “normal” depression and “clinical” depression is a hard thing to point out. Medical definition simply pins down a degree of severity and duration. Perhaps if we were to look at the uses of depression, we may have to ask ourselves just what does constitute a disease.
Fifty Ways to Leave a Lover
One major cause of depression is the classic case of “being in a miserable situation.” Whether a loveless marriage, a thankless job, or a dominating relationship, depression follows naturally in the footsteps of things to be depressed about. What purpose could God or nature have in making humans capable of such abject misery? Well, pain exists to warn us about physical harm, whether you can do anything about it is a different story. Grief, doubt, regret, and sadness, all condition us to act in certain ways, either punishing us for our mistakes or prodding us in another direction.
Depression can lead a person to leave an abusive relationship, or turn over a new leaf in a life of crime. It represents our only natural weapon against the allure of the familiar, because when something just isn’t working for you anymore, ultimately you have to stop.
Depression is about motivation, and it is one of our defense mechanisms that drives us to live full lives. Denying the value of depression is denying the value of all those who made something of themselves as a result.
How to Sing the Blues
Depression has other, less measurable effects on humanity as a whole. A lot of our great literature springs from depression and coping with it. Edgar Allan Poe’s more famous works are examinations of depression and despair. T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” dreams of a special place in Hell for those whose lives were filled with depressed emptiness. The opium-addled prose and poetry of Coleridge, Poe, and others, shaped much of our cultural heritage. Depression’s effect on the visual arts is harder to measure. Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” comes to mind, though. The image of the pain-fueled starving artist has become a staple in world culture and a symbol of direct experience.
Depression’s effects on music are huge. The Portuguese Fado movement explores that unique type of despair that contains just enough hope to be impossible to leave behind. American Blues is openly founded on the expression of sorrow, and all too many country songs fail to end without someone losing their wife, truck, and dog.
The Film Noir movement of the 40s and 50s takes place in a world of vice and despair where the world crushes the individualist spirit and those trapped in lives of crime are punished for their attempts to escape.
Extreme emotions are the forge of creativity, and denying any of them is treason against humanity and culture.
Out, Brief Candle
Obviously, depression is not fun and games. It isn’t hip, it isn’t cool, it’s not the new rock and roll. The risk of suicide is a major arguing point in the crusade against depression, and there is certainly merit to it. Almost all suicides are accompanied by visible depression, and no one is suggesting that the two are not related. The cultural traditions of suicide are strong, and the suicide rate, according to some biased sources, is higher than the murder rate in the US. Regardless of bias, it is certainly very high.
Fear of suicidal tendencies is a good reason to suggest the importance of medication, but the medical definition of depression does not require any indication of suicidal thoughts or actions.
Mother’s Little Helper
Through the 60s, Amphetamines were prescribed to give the little boost necessary to depression sufferers. Needless to say, that method of solving things fell out of fashion when it was deemed to be, well, dangerous. Today, most antidepressants are SSRIS (Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors) and recent studies suggest that they just aren’t all that effective. According to this recent study in the Public Library of Science (cited in The Economist), the already-modest effects of SSRIS to treat depression are even crummier when you stop to look at all of the unpublished studies. The drugs effectiveness is just slightly higher than that of placebos in all but the most severe cases of depression.
In a sense, the prescription of antidepressants is itself an epidemic considering its questionable benefits over placebo treatments.
Among those in imminent danger of suicide, SSRIS do have a marked and considerable effect in reducing death rates. Those with the most severe depression respond to SSRIS with the same moderate improvement, but at this degree of seriousness, placebos have almost no effect at all.
Being Real
Why do we think that strong emotions are a diseases to be treated? There is a meaningful difference between someone who is miserable, and someone who is suicidal. Misery has a place in our lives. It has been hedged out by sensationalist religion and pop psychology, and it is no coincidence that suicide rates are higher amongst the affluent and dominant classes and races, with white males carrying the highest rate.
What our society is missing is the black garments of mourning, grief periods, and emotional outbursts. By giving a little dignity to sorrow, its more terrible effects are avoided. Depression and grief have something to teach us about ourselves, and they are a powerful asset for change that should not be executed in a drowning pool of pills.
Information by The Economist, Wikipedia, film, literature, music, culture, and the Public Library of Science.
Photo By WTL photos
April 11, 2008 at 10:24 am
I too, have often wondered why we regard strong emotions as ‘afflictions’ needing treatment. I suspect it is party due to the way we are raised, and party due to science: the belief that everything (and I do mean everything) has a rational, reasonable explanation and can eventually – through enough investigation and scrutiny of observation – be identified and possibly controlled. In other words maybe we can figure out what – physically – is making you sad, and destroy it. So I blame society for providing the belief and science for providing the tools. Personally, I cant understand people who don’t have more control over their emotions. Not total control, but enough to not helplessly require medical aid. When I’m feeling extremely sad or depressed, if I really – really think about it it’s all too easy to direct the emotions into another channel. Like anger, or apathy, maybe humor? Not saying you can think away you physical problems, but you can damn sure choose how you feel about them, or at least I can.