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what is depression?

For sure, people have bee trying to discover what exactly melancholia is for all of known human history. I’m pretty sure we still don’t have a good grasp on what is happening there from a modern perspective. Our current understanding is just our current may of trying to grasp what is, essentially, ungraspable.

Consider the following issues that arise when we think about depression:

Is depression only a series of observable and overt behaviors?

Does the communicative expressions of the person actually link to an inner state of the person?

Does the behavior equate to the communication, at any level? what level?

Is a neuro-chemical imbalance the cause of depression, is the state of neurochemistry the result, or is the brain chemistry merely coincident to the depression, happening at the same time?

Is depression a bad thing, meaning a maladaptive thing, or is it actually a very good thing in that it is the person indeed actively adapting to the present and valid situations of their life?

Why is depression bad?

What assumptions are we bringing into the experience of depression. What assumptions are we bringing into our assessment of someone who is behaving in a way that we are calling ‘depression’?

Undoubtedly. every one of these (and more) questions have been addressed by someone somewhere, from laypeople, to professionals, to philosophers. And none of their answers have stuck to be “Eureka! we found it!”

experience and depression

What brings anyone to say that they or someone else is depressed? What do we mean when this comes up?

Say a person does not want to eat, sleeps all the time, or does not shower for days and days. What is a valid reason which would pose something is wrong with the person?

I would say that every reason anyone would come up with would be a social reason. Yet, we cannot simply leave it there, as though ‘society’ is a thing that affects people, or that the person has a ‘bad attitude’ and just ‘needs to do’ whatever, this and that, and so on…

When we get into what is actually happening, that is when we look at all the available factors involved in the deeming of something wrong with a person, it is because one of the following, which I would say stem from a common sort:

“I cannot, and basically do not want to be responsible for you.”

“You must be responsible for your own well being.”

“Society does not permit you to slack off; you must pull your weight.”

There is no accounting of depression as a problem without one or more of those proclamations occurring implicit the experience. Indeed, if we include “internal states” as valid things that other people have access to by expressions, then we might see that at least some of the problem going on for a person experiencing depression is that they are saying the same things to themselves and believing that they are expressing something important, which, I might say, equates to them as well “that I am depressed”.

When that happens, have we really discovered anything?

When viewed in this way, it seems like we are in a sort of stalemate of comprehension. For, it is only from that implicit standpoint that we have “internal states”. It is only from one or more of those a priori situations (implied in the expression) that we are able to think that there is an internal state that is separate from other things such that a person should be able to make a correction on their behavior.

The question, though, is not whether this is a true accounting of the situation.

Rather, it is:

why would a person put themselves in such a position?

the possibility of depression

Depression is a paradoxical situation because it is a state of having an affective experience behind expressing that one does not want what one wants.

To be more clear.

If I say “I am depressed”, giving the benefit of doubt that indeed I am experiencing depression, what am I really saying?

The “causes” are not as important here because the causes come out of the following:

I am really saying that the experience I am having (of depression) is an experience that I do not want. Or, that I am not supposed to or am not permitted to express that I do want.

In other words, If I am depressed, then I am having an experience that I must express to you I am not liking.

And

I am having an experience that I am not allowed to enjoy, because if I say to you (or myself even) that I like being depressed, then I incur the wrath of “social personal responsibility” such as noted above.

In short, I am having an experience of being stuck in an experiential situation where I am wanting to have an experience that I do not want.

I can solve it all sorts of ways.

• I can do things to make myself feel different. For example, drink alcohol (if indeed I like that) or I could go for a hike, or a swim, or do something fun.
  • but if I am doing that and it works, was I depressed? Why would I say I am depressed if simply by doing something different the depression goes away? It seems to me that what is actually occurring here is regular life, but the person is requiring some other form a validation that they are experiencing what everyone else experiences but don’t call it ‘depression’.
• I can be take medication.
  • People might pose that medication is doing something to my neuro-chemistry, but if it works, it seems, then it is not dependent upon what it is effecting of may brain chemistry because, as every practitioner knows, and many, many other people know first-hand, we don’t know if it will work for weeks maybe even months, and then we don’t really know if it works until it works.
    • It seems that the explanation of why it takes weeks or months is a kind of social placater rather than a reason for the medication to be working
    • Its as though the ‘reasons’ for the medication working or not working is more about the scientists and their experimental activities than it is about the person suffering from depression.
  • In short, it is highly likely that neurochemistry is not really what is happening as a solution, even as it can be a symbolic catalyst for a solution.
• I can stop worrying about whether I am depressed.
  • This, ironically, is taking responsibility for one’s state of being, which then creates a further problem because that was the original problem, i.e., I want to not want to take responsibility for my state of being.
  • This is the way that every form of therapy intervention takes, albeit, each in their own discursive-semantic framework.
• There might other ways, but I don’t have to know of them, because they just end up happening despite any necessary attribution to some expressed inner state. Whatever the inner state is, it de facto ends up being solved in every case of having the depression removed, and in whatever way we make sense of it.
• If I am asking ‘how do I fix this’, and we go about trying to handle it, how we go about actually fixing it says more about what is actually the case of the person itself than it does about any depression.

what do you think?

Let us all know how you come across this situation, that perhaps we can help each other expand knowledge.

agency matters mental health:

you are mattering.

agencymatters.org