Some Thoughts On Depression
And How Best To Respond To It

By Joseph B. Mitchell, MD

Becoming depressed has emerged now as a major problem in the economically advanced countries of the world, especially the United States, and we would do well to try to understand exactly why this is so, and what can be done about it.

Depression, we are told, is essentially a clinical condition requiring specific medical treatment, and is said to be caused by a decrease in the amount of a vitally important chemical substance found in the brain, a substance known as Serotonin. According to the experts, when this substance falls bellow a certain level, then the worse we begin to feel, our mood grows darker and more bleak, and we sense ourselves overwhelmed by a depression that seems to get deeper and more menacing with each passing hour.

And the lower the Serotonin falls, the more profound the depression becomes. Or so we are asked to believe.

The solution to the problem of depression offered us by medical science seems as logical and compelling as it is simple. Merely take a pill, a particular kind of pill capable of increasing the amount of Serotonin available to the brain. And thus using medication such as Prozac and other SSRI therapeutic agents is represented as the most rational and appropriate way of responding to depression in the expectation of being able to cure it. As Serotonin levels increase, our mood, we are assured, will brighten, life once again will seem worth living, and finally our depression will be vanquished.

What could possibly be easier? A modern problem solved in a very modern manner. Yet another triumph of science and medical research. Yet another proof that waging war on disease can indeed yield a victorious outcome. The exploration of the brain offering more and more dramatic results.

But is this all that we can really say about depression, or is there something else we seem to have ignored and left out?

I certainly think so, because there is much more we need to consider.

For example, just what is a depression, and where does it come from? Is it simply a matter of brain chemistry, and genes, and mood swings and stress? And why are so many people depressed in our society and increasingly around the world in those societies similar to our own? What has gone wrong that makes depression of such real concern?

The experts tell us that a depression can best be defined as a mood disorder. But unfortunately, these same experts are unable to explain what a mood actually is, except to say that somehow a mood has something to do with the way we feel, while how we feel has something to do with the mood we might be experiencing at any given time.

As for why so many people are depressed, this, we are informed, is quite probably related to the activity of certain specific genes, mood genes, that render many of us susceptible to becoming depressed by interfering with those physiological processes responsible for the production of Serotonin, thereby leaving us vulnerable to the effects of stress.

In other words, despite their elaborate theories, scientists and researchers have no clear idea about what a depression really is or where it really comes from.

What then are we to say about depression, and what can we do?

Based on my own observations as a physician over the past twenty years, I have come to the conclusion that depression has little or nothing to do with brain chemistry, genes, moods or mental disease, but instead is easily understood as a recognizable human experience of a particularly meaningful kind. A depression is nothing other than the experience we have of our own inner emptiness, our own emotional emptiness which we create for ourselves as the direct result of the effort we make to deny and suppress our sadness.

It is as simple and basic as that. We become depressed only because we refuse to allow ourselves to become sad, and express that sadness honestly and openly either to ourselves or to others.

Were we to cry and make our sadness known to those around us, trust that they really cared, and reach out to them for their comfort and support, then no depression would emerge in our lives. Rather, we would experience the truth of our own sadness. An experience that ultimately could only help us.

A depression comes into our lives for just one reason. When we turn away from and turn against our feelings and emotions, in the mistaken belief that somehow were we to express our feelings and emotions openly, and reveal to others the truth of what we were really experiencing, this could only damage and weaken us and cause us great harm.

It is important to realize that depression is not an emotion. Depression is an artifact. An unnatural, abnormal and unnecessary event in our lives we create ourselves, because we have lost faith in ourselves, as well as lost faith that those around us care enough to be willing to share our burden of pain and do all that they can to assist us.

Rather than being an emotion, a depression can best be defined as the complete and abject absence of any emotion, an experience of emotional emptiness and personal impoverishment. And thus, we sense ourselves isolated and alone, abandoned in the world, lost, unloved and unknown, and doomed to endure a bleak and joyless existence, the victim of a fate few would ever have imagined could possibly be theirs.

And finally, it should be noted, depression does not have anything to do with mental illness. For when we are depressed, it is not our mind which is responsible, it is our determined attempts to deny and suppress our sadness, so convinced have we become that no other option but this is available to us. An indication of just how desperate our lives are now, living in a society which urges us to believe that we can survive without our feelings and emotions, relying solely on consciousness, mind, reason and intelligence to the exclusion of everything else, as we struggle to sustain ourselves in a society that increasingly seems intent on completely dehumanizing us.

Each and every day within our society, the message we are exposed to, regardless of its varied forms, is always the same. Be strong, be independent and self reliant, avoid asking help from others, solve problems on your own, stay closed, trust no one, and reveal nothing about what you really think and what you really feel that might offer someone an advantage. And remember you live in a hostile world where enemies around, and to let down your guard, even for a moment, is far too dangerous and must never be done.

And above all else, control and conceal your emotions, we are told, for they more than anything you might encounter in your life could easily destroy you.

A very powerful message indeed, and a very destructive one as well. Because it is a message which unfortunately forces us more and more to live in opposition to our human nature, and deny the truth of all that defines us as human and sustains us as human, thereby making our lives far more distorted and difficult than they would otherwise be.

Not only do we live in a society which is deeply suspicious of feelings and emotions, and constantly seeks to portray them as being primitive and dangerous, merely remnants of a distant past, and of little use in our modem world, trying by whatever means possible to induce us to eliminate them from our lives entirely; but we also live in a society which is fundamentally opposed to anything having to do with community, or with cooperation, sharing, or a sustaining vision of a common good, as well as issues of caring or being open to and solicitous of the needs of others. Instead we are preoccupied with themes of strife, struggle, competition and exploitation, and with power, control and success as the greatest and most important concerns of life.

It is no wonder then that depression has become so widespread in our society and in those other societies of the world like our own where being human, fully and completely human, is so difficult for so many people now. As we lose contact with more and more aspects of ourselves, more and more parts of ourselves that assure life is worth living, and give meaning and purpose to our personal existence. And if we continue along this same path, then being depressed in our lives is almost inevitable, and no amount of medication, as powerful or effective as it might be, can possibly save us.

The only solution to the problem of depression that makes any sense is one based on the realization that something has gone wrong, seriously wrong with the way we are living our lives and must be corrected. Quite simply, to adequately respond to the rapidly growing crisis of depression, we will have to learn to live in accordance with our human nature again rather than in opposition to it as we so often try to do, and this is best done by reintroducing feelings and emotions back into our lives, and beginning to use them to our advantage as the great human resource they really are.

There are only four primary emotions, just these four, and not the vast numbers of them that most people think, the emotions of anger, sadness, fear and love.

All of our emotions, in their diverse manifestations, have as their main purpose to help us sustain and protect our sense of self, by allowing us to successfully respond to whatever might threaten our personal identity, our personal integrity and our personal existence, as well as our capacity to remain open to life.

In order to be an emotion, any experience that we might have must satisfy several important criteria. That experience must be a response to a serious threat either to our identity, integrity, existence or capacity to stay open; that experience must take the form of a communication with a specific message sent to those around us for the purpose of obtaining a response likely to be of benefit; and that experience must have true survival value.

If these requirements are not met, then what we are experiencing is in fact not an emotion at all, but something else often confused with an emotion, even though it is not. Most frequently, a non-emotional experience of this kind is simply a physical sensation linked to some idea we might have, thus forming an idea-sensation complex, such as resentment, indignation, hostility and enmity, or jealousy and envy, or perhaps irritability, frustration and desperation, or even violence, none of which however are emotions, as strong and as intrusive into our lives these experiences can be.

Anger, which is a true emotion, and can be defined as our response to a threatened identity, is quite probably the most confused and misunderstood of our emotions, because it is widely believed to be associated with violence and for this reason is considered dangerous. But anger never leads to violence, as difficulty as this may be to believe, since anger is concerned with identity and not issues having to do with the creation of enemies, and the need to destroy those enemies as proof that nothing can harm us. And thus, in a very real way, anger represents a solution to the problem of violence, and has enormous survival value.

Fear, which can be defined as our response to a threatened existence is also misunderstood and seriously distorted, because it is generally viewed as being a source of weakness and therefore must be concealed and suppressed, lest we lose our composure and run the risk of being denounced as unworthy, cowardly or worse.

Love, best defined as the most intense experience we can have of being open, is viewed as being dangerous as well, because it too is believed to weaken us, especially men who prefer to be thought of as resolute, powerful, unfeeling and closed.

And finally, sadness, like all the other emotions, is viewed with great suspicion in our society today. For sadness, we are informed can only weaken us were we to open ourselves to the truth of our experience of being sad and begin to cry. Something most people unfortunately would consider a shameful display of self pity, and a grave failure of our ability to control ourselves, as well as a failure to understand the absolute necessity to deny and suppress our emotions at all cost. So distorted has our thinking become now, living as we do in such a flawed and dysfunctional society where feelings and emotions are held in extremely low esteem.

There is no mystery here either about what a depression is or where it comes from. A depression is an entirely unnatural and unnecessary experience which, although quite real and very distressing, emerges in our lives but for one reason. And that is because of the decision we made to fight against our sadness so that we might be able to deny and suppress it.

Sadness, however, since it is an emotion, is always healthy and can only protect and strengthen us, whereas trying to fight our sadness serves no useful purpose and can only weaken and damage us, by denying us access to the truth about ourselves, and at the same time prevent us from responding to the demands of life in any mature or realistic way that could possibly be of benefit.

And thus the lesson is extremely clear. The more that we can accept our sadness and learn to be sad again, then the less likely it is we will ever become seriously depressed. A lesson we would do well to reflect upon and take to heart, for there is a solution to the problem of depression, and it is by no means as difficult as we might have imagined.