VA: Most People Are Depressed For a Very Good Reason
Apr 27th, 2007
(10 votes, average: 4.6 out of 5)
Loading ...My Great Grandmother was born in 1904 and immigrated to America with her family shortly thereafter. When she turned 12, her Mother forced her to drop out of school and […]
Original post: Most People Are Depressed For a Very Good Reason
“Maybe there is just something wrong with the world right now? Instead of popping some pills in the hopes that they will put us on a perpetual even keel, maybe instead we should figure out what is wrong with our society…and fix it.”
I generally agree with most of what you said except this bit. There has always been something fucked with just about every society to have ever lived. Each generation has had its share of shit to deal with. If you’re sad, it’s not just a problem with the world, it’s also a problem with how you think about it and deal with it.
your grandma sounds so cool. I want to meet her. Actually, I want to adopt her as my own and go to her whenever I have problems. She sounds like she has so much common sense.
itistoday:
i think they’re both correct, because the everyday workings of society ‘educate’ you on how you think about yourself, and ‘teach’ you the coping mechanisms that allow you (or not) to deal with society, and the people within it.
i think since personal responsibility for one’s actions is at an all time low - one would tend to take from society that belief and then apply it to themselves, thus propagating the cycle of whatever it is that is wrong, and is need to fixing…
if society deems it utterly appropriate to pop pills based on sadness, then one who’s within that society tends to take that popular view - so if you fix up society, you’d inevitably fix a huge portion of people who are forced fed their beliefs by that society (the ones with little ability to think for themselves…)
so while every generation has dealt with shit in the past, we’re the first to totally medicate that dealing and believe it’s okay - thus eliminating one’s chances to learn to deal differently.
both are correct, but v’s fix would fix more in a shorter period of time.. :)
ps.
i second that your grandma kicks ass.
:)
while i agree with most of the article, i don’t think its entirely fair to say that people are popping pills based on sadness because they don’t want to take responsibility. most people who are taking anti-depressants are also seeing a psychiatrist (how else would they get the anti-depressants?). The psychiatrist should be helping the person figure out the source of sadness and how to deal with it, and only prescribe the pills if there is true clinical depression or the person has suffered some sort of tragedy, like the loss of a loved one, and can’t function in their present state. therapy can be a difficult thing in itself, and i believe people who seek it aren’t shirking responsibility. as long as there is being attempts made to get to the root of the problem, which a good psychiatrist will do, i don’t see the problem of using anti-depressants to get through the roughest spots. this of course is not talking about those with true mental illnesses, as their receiving anti-depressants more regularly is perfectly acceptable.
A dear friend of mine once told me, “Happiness is where you are: you just have to look for it.”
It took me a long time to understand that she was telling me to “turn the coin over” - stop looking at the sadness that surrounds you and look at the happiness that surrounds you.
Like the weather: there’s fucking nothing anyone can do about the weather - yet it seems that nearly everyone complains about the rain. It’s far better (in my mind) to dress appropriately and enjoy the rain than it is to complain about it. And it’s fun to laugh at the sodden idiots who can’t turn on a radio or TV or bookmark the local weather to find out that it’s going to rain that day.
Life is a lot better when you look for the good and the rosy - rather than seeing the negative and the bleak.
Just a thought by AH…
The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise and noise of desire — we hold history’s record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence. That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babel of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas. And where, as in most countries, the broadcasting stations support themselves by selling time to advertisers, the noise is carried from the ear, through the realms of phantasy, knowledge and feeling to the ego’s core of wish and desire. Spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all advertising copy has but one purpose — to prevent the will from ever achieving silence. Desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illumination. The condition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. Advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and its Divine Ground. — from Silence, Liberty, and Peace (1946)
So what is the 21st century?
21st century:
the Age of cut and paste, sound bytes and “truthiness”
Get used to it.
Thank you for writing this article. As I read it, something occurred to me like a flash.
From the age of 8 to 17, I lived with my father and step-mother. My trophy-wife step-mother was very unhappy with this situation. She kept in constant 24 hour terror of her rage, which was unpredictable and violent. Because of this unrelenting fear, I ate constantly and had trouble in following even basic instructions, such as chores and school. This, of course, only made things worse.. Instead of acknowleding the real cause of my problems, i.e. the she-bitch, I was taken to psychiatrists, put on all types of anti-depressants, the works. There was something wrong with me, to make me act this way.
I’ve always retained that feeling, and I’m 21 now. Something’s wrong with my brain. My uncle had schizophrenia, maybe I’m crazy too. That sort of thing.
But nothing’s wrong with me. It was perfectly normal for me to have been so unhappy in that situation, and to have reacted the way I did. I was just a child. Nothing was wrong with me. Why has it taken so long for me to figure this out? Maybe it takes time, once you’re out of a bad situation as a child, to really see how bad it was.
Anyway… Sorry for the random emo-spewing.. Just wanted to say that V, you’re an excellent writer.. And I’ve glad I’ve found your blog.
I just found your blog, V, and I’m really fucking impressed with all the stuff I’ve read, especially this essay and the one about the boy in high school you screwed over (wow, someone admitting their mistakes! radical!).
Thank you for pointing out the real reasons for sadness: it goes something like this. I’m 16, Christian, male, in love with another boy who comes from a conservative Christian background, and closeted. As if this wasn’t sucky enough, I found out last year that he’s moving across the country this August. So now I feel like I’m on a fucking time-limit, trying to determine whether or not he feels the same way as I often think he does, or whether it would ruin our best-friendship if I told him how I felt. This is why I cry myself to sleep once a week, not because of some psychological complex or because I don’t share my feelings or because I have some chemical imbalance. It’s more like because there’s this person who I could spend the rest of my life with and who I love so much, and I’m not allowed to be with them. In the meantime, I’m trying to follow Christ but the polar ice caps are melting and people are dying of AIDS and all our national administration cares about is cash and power.
I maintain the belief that everything will turn out alright, but I can’t help the sadness. Thanks for writing something that actually speaks this truth.
Granny ROCKS!
i once read something to the effect of “why cure a disease when you can get paid for treating the symptoms”. every time i see a comercial for one of those happy pills i always think the same thing, find the cause of the depression and dont just treat the symptoms. but then i laugh and say “natural selection, survival of the fittest”. also in that spirt, the world needs far less warning labels.
IMHO, prescribing antidepressants to people without looking for (and actually addressing) underlying causes is sloppy, irresponsible medicine that borders on malpractice. Yet all too often, this is precisely what happens.
The GP reaches for the prescription pad, armed with little more than information from pharmaceutical sales reps and foggy remembrances from the few hours he or she spent studying brain chemistry and psychopharmacology while in medical school.
It is disturbing to know that SSRI-type antidepressants are handed out so casually without any unequivocal understanding (or proof of) how they work.
To say that depression is always caused by ‘low serotonin levels’ (which antidepressants supposedly address) is intellectually dishonest. Simply because no test exists to measure serotonin levels, nor is there a ‘gold standard’ test which identifies what a ‘normal’ serotonin level is.
Cruise around in the alt.suicide.holiday or alt.support.depression newsgroups and you will find two common denominators - virtually everyone posting there reports being depressed and having a life that sucks.
The desire suicidal, depressed people have to end their lives is driven by emotional pain that outstrips coping skills, plus having no practicable solutions to their problems beyond pills or talk ‘therapy’.
Clearly, the depression came second, not the other way around.
I would wager that if you could deliver practical solutions to solve the problems these people report, they might not be so quick to take their own lives.