These “experts” who rail against medical treatment of depression really piss me off. Why don’t we just stop taking all medications if we’re so afraid of Big Pharma?

Because it’s not an either/or scenario. The advances in Medicine over history have been wonderful and saved millions of lives. This is fantastic, however it’s also been abused now by the profit motive. As much as there’s a Military Industrial Complex, there’s a Medical Industrial Complex that steamrolls over anything that might damage shareholder value.

I experienced this in a profound way when my wife and I decided to have kids. We had homebirths, and we got to the point of not telling people about this part of our plans during the pregnancies, because of all the insults and criticism we were getting. “Are you CRAZY!?!” “How could you put your baby’s life in jeopardy?!?”

It didn’t matter how calmly we tried to explain that homebirth with a certified midwife is much safer than birth in a hospital, not to mention the incredibly powerful benefits to the mother and child. I’m thrilled to have Medical intervention available if a problem arises that might have caused death 100 years ago, but the fact that 95% or more of births in the US are in hospitals is because of profits, not what’s best for mothers and babies.

I felt like Dr. Levine was simply trying to raise this same issue with drugs and depression. Seems to me he was saying drugs are over-prescribed and cited a lot data to support this, and not that no one can ever benefit from drugs. One of his comments said even if the positive effect of a particular drug is because a placebo effect, that’s cool too since it’s helping someone feel better.

People tend to get defensive when presented with things outside the “conventional” means, especially in regards to medicine which is somewhat understandable, but I think it’s important that all involved keep an open mind to new ways of thinking and treatment, which often are the old ways anyway, and we can all make better choices for ourselves in the future. Power to the people!

My good Buddhist friend says she “floats” through life, although she is clearly proactive in reality, but she doesn’t fight the downsides or strive for the high sides. She does get sad, but she does not get depressed, however, it isn’t any easier for her than anyone else. Just a blip of my experience.

I would think lots of people have had less intense moments of transition like that, need winning out over skepticism or caution.

Antidepressants worked well for me, too well sometimes, as one of them was the trigger for that mania. I found I didn’t need them after my forties. Lithium helps me enough by itself. I guess I also found enough hope and meaning in my life that I didn’t need them after that. Maybe my intimacy needs were finally being met well enough that I didn’t need them. Who can measure such a thing with precision?

There is so much uncertainty in these issues that I think it’s unfortunate that anyone becomes dogmatic about it. I heard Dr. Lewis Judd of UC San Diego present data a few years ago about how every younger age cohort is turning out to have more well-diagnosed clinical depression than their elders. The increase in depression is a fact, however much of it is due to increased awareness by health professionals or through “Big Pharma bullshit” without an actual increase in pathology or the population actually becoming more depressed. What it means is open for speculation, as far as I’ve read.

It’s not a surprise that suspicion about this turns to something general about our society. It’s hard to imagine we’re that different biologically, despite the subculture that says all health is nutritional. It’s hard to imagine that family problems and growing up is all that different. So that leaves how the culture is evolving as the obvious culprit, and people have been looking at the alienation produced by modern culture for some time.

But how bad is that alienation? Is it hurting people’s relationships or is it providing us with freedom to put various cultural delusions and social straightjackets behind us, enough to make up for the negatives? Is the increasing depression that has been measured, not whatever misdiagnosis there is, but apparently good diagnoses by good researchers, a sign that the culture is evolving in a way that’s good in the long run? I don’t know. I’m pretty sure no one else knows either. I don’t know data that can tell the difference.

I don’t bring that up as a reason to be complacent, but as another possibility. I wish people were more interested in possibilities than in declaring depression to be “anger turned inward”, a serotonin deficiency, or overwhelming pain, all of which seem inadequately simplistic to me. I myself would talk about depression in terms of how people respond to unmet needs, biologically and behaviorally, but maybe that’s too simplistic, too.

I know many people who would say I’m full of it if I tried to argue that everyone should find hope, meaning and intimacy the way I did, even not counting the mania. People react this way, whether it’s my bullshit, Big Pharma bullshit or your bullshit. These are not things where there’s a demonstrable right answer. Cultural evolution is a very difficult subject, even when it’s academics looking at how cultures grew in the past. I am not like my fellow liberals who react to that by saying everyone’s right. There’s usually only a little of someone else’s experience that teaches me anything. How do you live when life is like that, when there’s no book that can teach you everything you need? You do the best you can, but that doesn’t mean that faith always wins over caution. I think flexibility is very underappreciated.

I was born to parents in their 40’s and was an only child. Both of my parents were very career orientated and both very much in love with each other and both were very socially active. I never fit in. Never wanted to. My depression, after much talk therapy, and learning to deal with it, came from accepting myself the way I was.

Now my 3 children are very socially active, and once again I can barely stand my own children’s get togethers, as I am much more at home with the youngest of children reading stories and coloring. I am 62. All three of my kids are totally confused by my feelings, just as my parents were.

But I have accepted who I am, and tough bones for those who don’t accept who I am. :-) I still prefer riding a horse silently and alone through fields than being in a party of people.

Therapists were always puzzled, she would always give them some kind of “concrete reason” as to why she was so tormented…the family, the war, etc.

When she was in her middle 70’s (she lived to be 88), she began to forget that she was depressed…she forgot that she had arthritis…over the years, she forgot about her fears, and her angers. They were the best years of her life. She did have small brain infarctions, caused probably by medications (according to her physician, Dr. Mayeux NYC). So, probably the effects on her brain affected how she “thought”….that was what I was referring to. How she thought. That was the problem. Did her brain “control” how she thought and cause her depression? I don’t know, but I do know that “what she thought” caused the depression to become her “reality”.

I just wanted you to know what I meant, when I wrote, No thought/No depression. I’m sorry you have/are suffering. I do care.