The radiostation at work has been talking about depressions the whole week (some silly social engagement) and it is appaling to me how often the conversation drives to platitudes, even when they interview the so called experts. When to me it seems so apparant; I'm not pretending to have eaten wisdom by the spoonful, but you will be hard pressed to find an instance of depression that can not be resumed to the following logic:
The cause for depressions stems from expectations (to others, yourself or the world in general) that go unsatisfied, and somebody who suffers depression knows, or has persuaded oneself that that expectation will forever remain unmet.
This is not just inaccurate but dangerously so. Depression is an actual chemical disorder (albeit one that, like most brain problems, is hard to provide an etiology for with certainty); it's not something you can philosophize yourself into or out of, but a physiological problem with the brain. Part of the reason we try to raise awareness of it as a disorder is because
it is one, and one that's often responsive to pharmaceutical intervention in concert with therapy. Yes, coping strategies are important. Yes, depressive people in particular should be encouraged to take an active role in managing their problems. But to try to blandly lump it all together as "you believe your expectations will go unmet so suck it up" is to ignore the actual medical problems at play, which is dangerous -- and to dismiss the blanket statements of experts as "platitudes" is to mistake medical caution for ignorance.
In short, there is a legitimate medical problem with a roster of legitimate medical solutions at play here, and we should be encouraging those with depression to explore them rather than dismissing the "so called experts." Resilience is all well and good. Resilience combined with a respect for the magnitude and nature of the problem is unequivocally better.
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Topic: depressed (Read 3718 times)