Great article on depression

This observation by Prof. Kirch seems to be, as they say, the kicker:

"It turns out that between 65 and 80% of people on antidepressants are depressed again within a year. I had thought that I was freakish for remaining depressed while on these drugs. In fact, Kirsch explained to me in Massachusetts, I was totally typical. These drugs are having a positive effect for some people – but they clearly can’t be the main solution for the majority of us, because we’re still depressed even when we take them."

Sounds like the drug manufacturers are being characteristically optimistic about the efficacy of their products! Depression doesn't occur when there is some spontaneous change in your brain's neurochemistry that occurs without any outside reason. That outside reason is because modern society is not meeting basic human psychological needs for connectedness, attachment and belonging. This is very much in keeping with what Gabor Maté has been saying for a long, long time. Our overly mechanistic approaches to treating depression seem to miss the mark in so many ways because they're fundamentally mechanical and dehumanizing.
 
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The idea that depression is a condition that takes place in your brain as some kind of randomly occurring event, without any outside causes, it seems to me, is fundamentally preposterous. I know an AP Reporter in Pakistan who told me a story about her mother, who became depressed and aggressive toward her grandchildren following the death of her husband. She would prowl around the house and beat the kids with a stick. Okay, the psychologists put her on Prosaic. Now, she wanders around the house beating the kids with a stick, only now she has an insane grin on her face. Doesn't it sound like grandma is still mad as hell about the death of her husband? Maybe the drugs put a smile on her face, but they don't erase the grief deep inside that's driving her behavior. Prosaic is a band-aid.
 
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So interesting how we got away from common sense on this issue. I totally bought into the concept that my brain chemistry was just "off" when I first started on anti-depressants back in the '80s. Depression had run in my family, so I thought I was just susceptible to it. Of course it was due to my life stresses and my reaction to them. But it is so much easier to take a pill and change your brain chemistry, than to change your life and your thinking/feeling/behavioral patterns. Same issues here as for TMS.
 
Ellen said:
Depression had run in my family, so I thought I was just susceptible to it. Of course it was due to my life stresses and my reaction to them.
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conventional medicine would say that most of the diseases we got are due to our genes. We inherit our gene from our parents and whatever diseases they got we will very likely get. Now there are a few wise people theorized that gene had nothing to do with what diseases we got. It all about learned behavior. A few studies of adopted children, including studies of twins that got adopted by different families, found that adopted children also "inherit" their adopted parent's disease "somehow". For some reasons many of them grown up NOT having those diseases that their biological parents got.
 
The video:


Streamed live on Jan 18, 2018 One in four people in Britain is suffering from depression or anxiety in any given year – but have we been taught correctly about its causes? Bestselling author Johann Hari’s new book is radically changing what we have been told on the subject. Hari uses his social science training to investigate the causes of depression and anxiety – and discovers the cutting edge science that reveals the lack of evidence for the spontaneous chemical imbalance in our brains theory.
 
I love this article, thanks so much for sharing Ellen :) Depression as grieving for our physiological needs not being met, or numbing ourselves as a form of self-treatment or distraction, is such a meaningful way to understand this condition.
 
skhs said:
Streamed live on Jan 18, 2018 One in four people in Britain is suffering from depression or anxiety in any given year – but have we been taught correctly about its causes? Bestselling author Johann Hari’s new book is radically changing what we have been told on the subject. Hari uses his social science training to investigate the causes of depression and anxiety – and discovers the cutting edge science that reveals the lack of evidence for the spontaneous chemical imbalance in our brains theory.
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Thank you!

"My doctor told me a story..."

I'm so grateful for these people who are telling us much better, much truer stories. Humans are storytellers. Story is a primary healing balm. All of us here are telling our old stories and then courageously breathing life into new and authentic ones.

(A double-first from Cambridge! Fair play to that man).
 
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