Recently, I happened to come across a YouTube video called The Truth About Depression. I clicked on it because the thumbnail caught my attention. It read: "It's Not a Chemical Imbalance."
Why This Caught My Attention
Why did that catch my attention?
Because that's how I've always thought about it myself.
Dr. Joanna Moncrieff argues that there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by a deficiency of a particular chemical in the brain. It naturally follows that she questions the treatment of depression with medication, particularly certain antidepressants.
She also questions whether we should think of depression as an illness at all. According to her, depression is more often the result of life events and life circumstances.
And that's the part I agree with.
Is Depression Something You Have, or Something That Develops?
In other words: is depression something you 'have', or is it something that develops when your life reaches a point where, psychologically, you can no longer see a way forward?
I tend to think it's the latter.
At least, let me qualify that a little. I'll stick to my own life experiences and try to explain why I see it that way.
My Own Experience With Depression
I've experienced depression several times throughout my life, sometimes quite severely. Fortunately, those episodes have become much less frequent as I've gotten older. These days I recognize the signs when I'm on the verge of becoming depressed, and I can usually prevent it from taking hold. Little by little, life has taught me valuable lessons, and as a result certain events no longer affect me as deeply as they once did.
But there have been periods when I felt profoundly sad, when I had no joy in living, when I couldn't see the point of getting out of bed anymore—and barely had the strength to do so anyway.
What was never true, however, was that I didn't know why I felt that way.
There was always something that had caused it: a life event, a realization that had dawned on me, or a situation I found myself in.
When Life Takes a Turn You Cannot Accept
Usually, something had happened that had taken my life in a direction I simply couldn't live with—something I didn't want, something I couldn't accept.
For me, the hardest period centered around the birth of my child.
At the time, I was in an on-again, off-again relationship. Looking back now, more than thirty years later, it's obvious to me that it wasn't the kind of relationship in which you should have a child. But back then, I had absolutely no idea.
I had no idea—none whatsoever—what a healthy relationship looked like, or even what a normal relationship was.
Having grown up in the middle of my parents' bitter divorce, I had always longed for a normal family.
Becoming a Mother and Facing the Past
Of course, a stable family is rarely the outcome of an on-again, off-again relationship. Quite the opposite. So in my case, things fell apart too. At the same time, becoming a parent—becoming a mother—can set in motion a process of becoming aware of your own childhood in an entirely new way.
The feeling that I had failed as a partner, failed in my dream of having a normal family, combined with the growing awareness of everything that had happened during my own childhood—things I only truly recognized as deeply wrong once I became a mother myself—is what finally did me in.
I sank into a depression so severe that there were times when I thought I would never come out of it. Every time it seemed as though I was beginning to recover, I relapsed.
The Comfort of a Medical Explanation
My own history with depression is obviously not enough to conclude that clinical depression, as a mental illness, doesn't exist or can't be treated with medication. You won't hear me argue that. At one point, antidepressants genuinely helped me.
What I will say is that I sometimes found myself saying, "I don't know what's causing this. Maybe I'm just missing some chemical in my brain."
Even though I actually knew perfectly well what was causing it.
The reason I said that was because people around you often don't understand the real reason for your depression. And when you're already completely drained by depression, the last thing you want is to spend your energy convincing people, asking them for understanding you weren't going to get anyway, and having to deal with their judgments on top of everything else.
In that situation, it's much easier to say you don't know either—that you're just missing some chemical in your brain, that it's a medical condition you can't help.
People generally accept that.
Take my situation, for example. I had a very young child, and I was a young mother. People generally expect you to be happy in that situation—even if the father of your child has left you. After all, you have a beautiful baby. You have every reason to be happy, don't you?
And of course, people think you should stay cheerful for your child's sake. So they offer all kinds of well-meaning advice about the fun things you can do together.
It's incredibly difficult to make someone who has never experienced depression understand that it simply doesn't work that way. That you're no longer capable of those things. That finding the energy to get out of bed, to take care of your child's basic needs, is already almost more than you can manage—let alone planning fun activities together.
To avoid carrying that extra burden, and to gain at least some understanding, framing it as a medical condition can sometimes help.
When Grief Is Not Allowed to Exist
Sometimes I wonder whether this is true for other people as well. Whether they actually do know why they felt so profoundly depressed, but have reasons for keeping those reasons to themselves.
I even wonder whether depression can sometimes arise because a certain grief—often a very deep grief—isn't allowed to exist. Whether it's other people who don't allow it, or whether you don't allow it yourself, I don't think makes much difference.
Some people, for example, judge themselves for feeling unhappy because, objectively speaking, they have every reason to be happy.
In fact, I sometimes think the greatest pain isn't caused by the grief itself, but by the fact that the grief isn't allowed to exist—whether that's because of other people's expectations or your own.
As a result, that grief can never simply be lived through. It has to be pushed down, over and over again. And because of that, it never really gets the chance to be processed.
These Are My Thoughts
I don't know if depression always develops this way. But for me, it was never something that came out of nowhere. Looking back, it was always a response to something I simply couldn't see a way through at the time.
Those are my thoughts on it.
What do you think?
Photo: Toa Heftiba
No comments:
Leave a comment – it helps build community and shows you appreciate my work.