Information sheet: Depression
Depression
Depression is a worldwide problem
Depression has been diagnosed for one in ten persons in the "developed world". A recent World Health Organisation report forecast that depression is likely to be the main cause of psychological disability by the year 2020. It is a major cause of absence from work and a contributory factor in many organic diseases. Research by the American Heart Association found that twice the number of people diagnosed as depressed suffered from heart attacks; and Finnish men with depression showed a 20% increase in hardening of the arteries.
How does depression feel?
Depression does not feel like fear, grief or anger. These are positive states because they are vital emotional responses to specific causes.
When we are depressed, however, we feel drained of any capacity for response and we are often unable to identify any reason for our lack of verve. We can feel lethargic and apathetic, unequal to the world around us and unable to take any part in it. We feel little or no bonding with others, so we get no positive feedback. This only deepens our sense of inadequacy and low self-worth.
We may experience different kinds and degrees of depression. If we are what gets labelled "manic depressive", feelings of intense enthusiasm will alternate with bouts of misery. "Agitated depression" involves breakthroughs of anxiety into our despair. In both instances some vitality is felt, but depression has gained the upper hand.
"Depressed" means "pressed down", which is exactly how we feel.
What is done to relieve depression?
Medical research has not examined the processes of held sadness but has looked instead at the brain's production of chemicals. This approach forces us to believe that invisible chemical processes are responsible for our emotional states rather than the past and present circumstances of our lives. Feeling helpless in the face of an internal chemical problem, we resign ourselves to a chemical solution in the form of medications prescribed by our GPs.
When a mood-lifting biochemical called serotonin was found to be in short supply in the brains of depressed people, the drug industry provided a serotonin booster called Prozac. This masked some of the symptoms but brought unwanted side-effects such as nausea, diarrhoea, insomnia, hot and cold flushes, mood changes and diminished sexual drive.
The real causes of depression can best be understood through the development of self-understanding, exploring the nature of the early experiences through which we were taught to "press down"our needs and hold in the sadness we felt about not getting those needs met – and how we continue to do so.
How did we first learn to be depressed?
Painful experiences, especially of failure to get our early needs met, will have made us unhappy. But in addition, we may have been shown that expressions of our unhappiness were not welcome and we may have come to fear the consequences of showing our feelings.
The best way we could then find to take care of ourselves was to meet our need for safety by holding our disappointments inside. We pressed down on our sadness. But all our emotions are interconnected, so inhibiting a "bad" feeling like sadness involved repressing "good" feelings like affection and enthusiasm also.
In this way we began to develop patterned responses that gradually diminished our vital responses to reality.
How does depression become established?
The physical foundation of this deadening of responses is the held or reduced breathing that is required if we are to hold back our feelings.
By reducing our breathing we deprive our bodies of oxygen and so we lack the energy to interact with other people and our environ-ment. The brain is insufficiently stimulated by oxygen, so we lack mental and perceptual clarity. The world then takes on a lifeless and meaningless appearance and we get an increasingly depressing feedback from it.
To reduce our breathing we must tense our respiratory muscles, and this effects other muscles throughout the body. The resulting pain is masked by endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. These are morphias which anaesthetise us, making us feel lethargic.
Can current circumstances create depression?
If we are open to our feelings we naturally experience fear, sadness, anger and joy as appropriate responses to events that excite these emotions. But if we have been forced over time to develop a pattern of holding-in our sadness, then current events may seem to effect us disproportionately. A lost job, a rejection, an ended relationship, may trigger a lifetime’s backlog of held grief and can bring about a sense of all-pervading misery.
Can Counselling and Therapy help with depression?
It is difficult to admit to feeling depressed in a society that, for all its relative "openness", still upholds the stiff upper lip.
An experienced Centre worker can help us help ourselves with our held sadness, initially by providing an opportunity to get things off our chests in confidence. The patterns that underlie our depression can then be explored sensitively at our own pace. A skilled worker can give gentle encouragement to our inner self-healing powers so that disappointments trapped in our bodies and minds can be naturally and effectively released.