Science has thrown us depressive a curve ball.
The latest research indicates that those supposed wonder drugs, the SSRIs, don't do much for us unless we're severe depressives. And on a less analytical level, psychologist Darian Leader tells us in his new book "The New Black" that the clinical condition called "depression" may be where a capitalist society defaults because it isn't allowed to admit and process loss. For example, say we are laid off. Not encouraged to deal with this blow, the laid off bypass any kind of healing and succumb to the medical condition of depression.
Like much else that has been pushed at us vulnerable group of The Depressives this latest is too generic and trying too hard to sound certain. From my 53 years either being depressed, pulling out of a depression, or preventing a new episode, I know that whatever that entity is it has many forms and probably operates idiosyncratically in each individual. Perhaps the most effective treatment for us is to observe our own conditions, make hypotheses about triggers and what lessened the symptoms, and test our both possible preventions and remedies.
Since 2003, I have been doing just that. There have been bad days but not depressed ones. The triggers are all about, I discovered, opening myself up, professionally or personally to abuse. The exit strategy from that is to push-back, along with avoiding that kind of situation in the future. Eckhart Tolle and Mark Matousek have useful comments on how some of us tend to invite abuse and how to stop it.
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