The Reason Depression can be impossible to treat

[obliguhl]

There are many methods to help with depression and you could split them into two main approaches: Therapy and Drugs.

Therapy...well, there are a few different schools of thoughts. Some believe, depression stems from cognitive malfunctions. We may catastrophize, have delusional thought patterns etc. The Idea now is to catch yourself making these cognitive "mistakes" and to unlearn damaging thought patterns.

Then, there are other methods, more aiming at getting the patient more active because well...its him not being socially adept enough to get positive feedback from others. He is more likely to create situations which are sustaining his depression.

Chemicals ...well, we all know the idea of chemical imbalances and how they can supposedly be fixed with a pill.

Now read this: http://article.psychiatrist.com/dao_1-login.asp?ID=10007663&RSID=62750620115018

This trial of urban MDD patients failed to confirm that either active treatment was better than placebo.

Short: It does not matter how you are treating patients (Placebo, Therapy or Drugs) all helps a bit but not beyond placebo.

Now, I'm not saying that Placebo is to be discarded. It is very important to acknowledge the fact that it plays an important role in healing. But did you know, that the rising effectiveness of SSRIs correlates with a higher trust in their efficacy ?

Several anthropologists especially moe rmann have asserted, that culture plays a big role on how effective treatment is - not only on the mind, but on the body as well! What i'm trying to say here is this:

If you are not deeply enculturated in a healing system, you can't be healed by treatment which is largely based on culture-dependent healing effects (placebo). You should also know, that depression itself is an illness which makes you feel as if nothing matters, nothing works...nothing will ever work. It feels like 1000KG weight on your soul you simply can't lift and the longer you live with it, the more impossible it seems to be.

You start believing that you can't be treated and THAT's what makes you untreatable!
But if you'd believe to be treatable, you probably wouldn't be depressed for longer than a few months.

Major Depression is a death sentence basically. You either die by suicide, or you live out the remainder of your days as a zombie, mentally, emotionally and socially imprisones and the only emotion you might be able to feel is eternal desperation.

 

[nen888]

..it's been on the rise for the past 50-100 years (especially in 'western' modernised society, which is increasingly global)

this suggests that there are aspects of the culture we inhabit which lead to more people being depressed..

more effective 'treatments' therefore may come from 'outside' this culture..e.g. tribal 'belonging', extended families, shamanism, meditation, spiritual beliefs, simple organic diets, herbalism..

it does not surprise me that SSRIs are as effective as placebos...
and it doesn't help that many stigmatise depression..

modern drug treatment is mechanistic, not compassionate

and modern drugs are often developed to be patentable (rather than based on older wisdom)
..another symptom of the culture that spawns the rise of depression..
.

 

[Aegle]

..it's been on the rise for the past 50-100 years (especially in 'western' modernised society, which is increasingly global)

this suggests that there are aspects of the culture we inhabit which lead to more people being depressed..

more effective 'treatments' therefore may come from 'outside' this culture..e.g. tribal 'belonging', extended families, shamanism, meditation, spiritual beliefs, simple organic diets, herbalism..

it does not surprise me that SSRIs are as effective as placebos...
and it doesn't help that many stigmatise depression..

modern drug treatment is mechanistic, not compassionate

and modern drugs are often developed to be patentable (rather than based on older wisdom)
..another symptom of the culture that spawns the rise of depression..
.

Nen888


Beautifully said... Its about reconnecting with what we have lost, shedding the disenchantment and becoming re-enchanted with the world around us. ♥


Much Peace and Kindness

 

[obliguhl]

Yes,i do believe that the #1 reason ist, that there are less and less communities (read: tribes). Even the nuclear family isn't a safe space anymore in many cases. For me it's more a breeding ground of mental illness and my parents aren't even divorced. The only way to get ahead is to be lucky. Every "support" one can get is not real support but just "damage control". If the state could put people down, they definatly WOULD because it saves cost. The only worth of the depressive is to stimulate the pharmacological industry.

Our culture is severely damaging. The need for community manifests ina form of desperate infantilism which is the belief that the world "owns you somthing". This in return hinders real emancipation - which would possibly break depression. It's a self perpetuating cycle and a crisis of meaning. There is no meaning but the meaning you can produce yourself. If you are depressed, that means you can't produce meaning...and that MAKES you depressed.

It may seem controversial, but i believe society should accept suicide. I mean, failure IS becoming the norm in the world we live in and if this is an elitist and narcicistic culture, why not allow suicide? Make it a celebration, a ritual in which friends and family say their goodbyes. Someone who is majorly depressed can't even go with dignity because everyone would be "upset" and "sad" afterwards.

But if you can't live with dignity, can't die with dignity - what is left but existing in a hell-like state which is so tormentous because it knows no escape?

 

[nen888]

^..by what do we measure Failure (& Success) ? these are the value traps of the problem society..herein lies part of the modern conditioning which can reinforce depression..and the trappings of 'success' can also lead to depression..
to value that we can be alive in the first place should be a pleasure..but the system does not value life itself..here the minds of many become pained..but there is 'outside' such a thought prison if people can look..


i take your point on 'meaning' obliguhi
within the system it seems meaningless because it is incompatible with the joy of life itself..
.

Its about reconnecting with what we have lost, shedding the disenchantment and becoming re-enchanted with the world around us. ♥

beautiful, Aegle..well said, thank you..

 

[jamie]

I agree with everything said here..

However at some point you have to stop being a victim..or just continue to be miserable for the rest of your days...what else are you going to do? You can decide to make your journey here something else if that is what you wish.

It takes work, and it will take work on your part. You hve to go vision a dream and then live it, somehow. If you dont do that, who will do it for you? Noone.

When you feel like everything in your life is hopeless and everthing you love goes away, you can still dream. You can still go out and create a new life. You can still go out and meet new people(even if you have to force it). You really can do anything, or you can believe you can do nothing.

Even when you ARE a victim, it's not productive to be one.

You can search for outside validation in our culture all you want. Thats a dangerous game at times. We live in a pretty ruthless world. Learn to fall in love with yourself first, and understand what that means. Only then can you even be in your true expression, and it will draw people to you who you need to be around. I dont think many depressed people are in love with themselves.

"The only way to get ahead is to be lucky."

Well then sounds like your out of luck. What are you going to do about it? We all have problems in life and we all have to go through really horrible crap. I certainly dont feel "lucky" at times..but then I got to live a life on earth. I won some kind of cosmic lottery. I have a light burning inside of me that animates this soul I was gifted. I get to live and love on gaia. I get to dream. I get to vision. I get to live. Go live and love within the dream that you vision. It should not be our hardship that defines us. It is how we respond to it.

 

[iAwakenU]

not adding anything of substance, but wanted to state that I pretty much second exactly what jamie said.

 

[indydude19]

I agree with everything said here..

However at some point you have to stop being a victim..or just continue to be miserable for the rest of your days...what else are you going to do? You can decide to make your journey here something else if that is what you wish.

I agree, I think many, especially in the US are just to lazy to change. Many forget mind over matter, even when they are consumed by it. Outlook is everything and when people feel empty its usually because they didn't take the time or chances to fill themselves and their lives with things and people that would make them content.

 

[jamie]

I dont think it is about being lazy..I think often people put an incredible ammount of energy into all these obstacles and problems they believe in. They focus on it and it's very draining.

To be happy is probly the easiest thing we can do because it is that light which flows effortlessly from our heart that guides us into that space. We often follow the obstacles becasue we believe we need to overcome them or be defeated by them..instead of just forgetting they are even there, and listening to our hearts. If you only followed your heart those obstacles would not exist.

We get caught up obsessing about what happened yesterday, or what might happen tommorow..and we forget to dream today.

Then we really are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and we become victims of circumstance.

 

[corpus callosum]

I think that the current approach to treating depression reflects the incomplete understanding of its pathogenesis and how neurotransmission as a target for drug therapy is only addressing one aspect. It seems to me that the epidemic of depression is partly related to the technological age we find ourselves in, as if the human brain has been 'forced' to deal with stimuli its not had the centuries to adapt to and this has distorted its ability to respond via neuroplasticity in a way that's advantageous or appropriate for the organism.

Pulling your socks up and getting on with life despite the challenges it presents is part of the answer but far from the whole story. For some depressives the ability to do this is nigh on impossible but for those for whom its within reach the real struggle it presents can help to lay (or strengthen) pathways in the brain which can afford a degree of recovery.

 

[obliguhl]

^..by what do we measure Failure (& Success)

I can only speak for myself, but i measure it along maslows hierarchy of needs:

I have not fully mastered the bottom of the pyramid yet, leave alone the next stage(s), and that makes me feel like a complete failure. I find this depressing in return, because i feel as if i'm not really human yet, something nature made me to be.

Even when you ARE a victim, it's not productive to be one.

I agree Jamie, but that's the whole point. Depression is "just" in your head. You can "decide" to do otherwise....in theory. In practice one might himself entrapped in...

obstacles and problems they believe in.

...but if you are ...you ARE. Thats what depression is about. It means that you are not enlightened. One may tend to agree with what you said without having it internalized emotionally and physically. So how does one change exactly? By believing in change...

That is probably the only thing that can cure depression and also the hardest thing to follow if you are depressed. Therefore, there is no cure for many i would assume. If ones life is out of whack to a certain degree, it becomes impossible to realign it.

Many forget mind over matter, even when they are consumed by it.

That is debatable...what is true is the fact that Depression is both a mental and a physical problem. It is really really damaging to ones body longterm and leads to suicide in 15% of majorly depressed people.

 

[Elpo]

I think this TED talk is really worth watching.

http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share.html

Depression is something that is very difficult to understand for an outsider and therefor I think it's easy to say: Get up and do something about it!

 

[dreamer042]

Some wisdom from the experts :d

 

[jamie]

hey it's your choice.

I know what it's like to be depressed. It can destroy you physically and emotionally.

Still, noone is going to rush in and save you so you might as well do something different, and do it now.

Are you sure you want to base your life and what your missing etc on that pyramid? It just sounds like another thing to think way too much about while you could be doing more things to activly change your life and your routines.

I said it takes work, and work on your part. I never said it was going to feel easy.

Depression is like a self referencing feedback loop. It degrades you over time on multiple levels. Do something now, or accept the deepening of those pathways.

We could talk all day about how debilitating this is or how depressed people should all just be accepted as suicidal and celebrated, or how hopeless it can be..on and on..and while this might feel like adressing the people who suffer, and rightly so..it also just reinforces the cycle when you tell this to yourself, over and over.

If you think people have answers, they often dont..but you start anyway, with one thing at a time. Nothing I have said here should be seen as dissmissive of people who suffer from depression..it's horrible. I know how horrible it can be..but you need to grab onto something and follow it man. it's one of those situations where it seems like there is a dual truth.

Yes it is a sad reality, that of our culture. A culture of death, of isolation..a culture that claims to be "pro life", whos only real innitiation into adulthood is one of trauma essentially. It's a culture that is lacking..and it's sad. We dont have the tribal support systems or rites of passage and celebration, recognition we need to thrive. We are spiritually and psychologically malnourished..but again, what are you going to do about it right now, today?

But then I have so much love and faith in the fact that there are people like this out there..more of them than you might think..

..people who really do understand our world, our problems..this is where our diseases of civilization find roots..and why whould I would post this here?..becasue I think it's probly the most relevant thing we could be discussing.

here is some relevant videos on depression and stress/anxiety etc that I have enjoyed..

Here is a great documentary on stress, which I find hard to really seperate fully from depression. The two are like siblings.

Laugh and be well.

 

[jbark]

I agree Jamie, but that's the whole point. Depression is "just" in your head. You can "decide" to do otherwise....in theory. In practice one might himself entrapped in...

Hmm... That study i interesting, but my personal experience does not bear out its results. And the quote above, with all due respect obliguhl, sounds naive. Severe depression, like severe anxiety, is a radical alteration of brain chemistry that results in a radical alteration of brain function, as I understand it. To say it is "all in your head" and that you can "decide" not to be I suspect only applies to mild and persistent forms of depression, which are, nevertheless, serious and debilitating.

Almost 2 yrs ago now I had a bout of EXTREME anxiety coupled with EXTREME depression and exacerbated by a longstanding insomnia that was further fed by the onset of anxiety to the point where for almost 2 months I was sleeping fitfully for no more than a half hour to an hour a night. I was hallucinating and paced for 18-23 hours a day, either in my apartment or in the streets (it was summer), and I could not sit still in a seat or concentrate on an activity or a task for more than 10 seconds, including preparing myself something to eat.

I went to several clinics and was put on clonazepam which aided, but was not sufficient. My doctor was on holiday and when she returned she put me on mirtazapine (Remeron) which is a miracle drug used to treat anxiety, depression and insomnia. The first night I slept 6 hours and for 3 days following I slept 2 hours on and 2 hours off in the day and 6-7 hours at night. Slowly the anxiety dissipated and the cloud of depression dispersed. In two weeks I could not believe the state I had been in. I slowly put myself and my life back together over the next few months, and 8 months later I weaned off the mirtazapine over 2 months, and have been fine ever since.

Mirtazapine is not an SSRI and I have never been on an SSRI, but I can tell you, without it I would not be here today. This is only my personal experience and not a clinical trial, but I do get rather upset when people assert that drugs are not useful in the treatment of severe mental and psychological disorders like depression and anxiety. One needs to be careful with them (they are addictive), but they save lives, and are certainly, in my opinion and experience, WAY more effective than the 5% attributed to placebo. There is no way, in my opinion, that the radical shift in my brain chemistry could be attributed to placebo - but I am not a psychiatrist either.

I think there is tremendous value in "thinking positively" and searching for non-medicinal solutions to certain forms of depression. But that does not mean one should eschew the pharmaceutical route when it proves necessary, and I think before one accepts suicide as an option, one owes it to one's loved ones, and to oneself, to try all routes possible to heal before taking the easy way out, and to avoid using one's ideals (a mistrust of medicine) to justify taking one's own life. If one is going to off oneself anyway, what does one have to lose by waiting a few months and trying some prescription medication? Only the stubbornly principled would find an answer to that question...

JBArk

 

[Elpo]

I agree with you jbark and what are psychedelics if not drugs who seem to have a good effect on the state of depression.

I think that whatever method is used, as long as it helps go for it. Probably every single person will have his own combination of methods, but each and every one of them will be a good one if it helps.

The fact that you say you slowly got to get back together is also a willingness of doing something about it. It's not enough to trust in the drug only, but like jamie says you also need the WANT to do it. It's not easy, I don't think there is one simple way out of it. Therefor the combination of methods and willingness is needed and this is exactly what makes it so difficult.

 

[Amygdala]

I don't think that depression is impossible to treat - save for perhaps severe chemical imbalances (the types which have to cheer up to kill themselves - I see them in the hospital sometimes)… for what it's worth to anyone, this approach has changed my life dramatically...

As stated in other ways in this thread, I have seen the immense power that perspective and thoughts have on emotions. I would go so far as to say that most emotional states are directly reactive to our perspectives - how we choose to view things, and I emphasize this - choice.

Circumstances in your life do not cause emotions directly - they are stimuli. How you react to these stimuli, I think is largely based on how you choose to view it. I still get knee jerk reaction thoughts to things, but I have learned that there is more than one way to conceptualize something and have been practicing taking a step back when I feel overwhelmed and considering different ways to view them. By practicing this sort of meditation (it only takes a few seconds) I have found that I am not as 'stuck' with the initial emotion that presents in a situation.

It may sound silly or ineffectual - but I have seen numerous people practice just taking a simple breath before reacting to things, and asking themselves mentally "Okay, this is one way to view what just happened. Are there others?"

Say for an example - my dog is hit by a car. Of course my initial emotions may be out of my control, a flash of anger/sadness, etc. In the upcoming days, I can choose to focus on how this is unfair and writhe in resentment and frustration and sadness - or I can choose to instead focus on how much I loved that dog, what a nice life I was able to give him, etc.

I am not saying be a robot (I know it may sound like that) - I am simply saying that people have immense power over how they feel by choosing where to put their focus.

 

[jamie]

the problem is that something like chronic stress or anxiety can actually change your brain chemistry and create neurological habits etc..so it's not just a choice of perspective tha fixes the problem..the nervous system should not been viewed as a seperate system isolated from the environment..they are part of the same thing in many ways and influence each other on a profound level.

You have to work on fixing the imbalances going on within the nervous system at the same time as you start working on how you choose to percieve your life and where you are going. You can do that with food, herbal medicines, synthetic medicines..whatever is going to work to make that happen..and then you figure out what it is in your life that might have triggered that anyway..and then figure out where you want to go NOW. Not yesterday..not tommorow..but now.

At some point it is about choice. Choices can compond upon themselves though digging us into deeper and deeper holes that we feel we cant just choose to dig ourselves out of. I think, personally that often it just ends up taking a lot more effort and struggle to end up making the choice that we didint make in the first place..other times we had others make choices for us that harmed us..

It's all about trauma really. Trauma is like poison. It can stain the nervous system and leave us in a wreck. The damage manifests on multiple levels..this is why chemical intervention via herbs, foods, pills etc do help some people get out of the ditch that trauma digs for us.

In the end though, you still have to make the choice to do something..anything..and you have to want to make that choice..at least enough to try through all your misery.

 

[Amygdala]

Jamie, I agree that the problem can become systemic - though I still maintain that everyone (save for the seriously mentally ill - less common than is often portrayed ) has choices of where to place their focus. This shift of focus would beneficially include the whole system, as you mentioned - choosing to make more positive and healthier choices where they can.

A personal story - I went through years of heroin addiction when I was very young. I was constantly depressed, on the verge of suicide and the last time that I injected ( 9yrs ago ), overdosed again and put myself in a medical ICU for 4 days. Intubated, restrained, detoxing, going completely nuts. I remember only pieces of this - specifically a dream after I OD'd where I was walking down a spiral staircase that kept getting tighter and tighter, harder to breathe. Still gives me the chills.

I'm not sure at which point the change happened - I think somewhere about a year after my last shot. It dawned on me that I am going to die anyway, and what's the rush? Maybe there is something more interesting in life than focusing all of my attention on my problems - petty problems when compared to the rest of the world. I am not saying this to undermine people's problems… I just decided one day that maybe they aren't that interesting, and that there is so much wonderful and interesting stuff in this world that I can choose to focus on.

It made an incredible difference. I started getting interested in life again, it was like a cascade. Suddenly there was so much wonderful and interesting stuff going on all around me that I (kind-of ) got over myself. It became a systematic change as you said, jamie… my focus shifted to the things outside of my small world and in the last decade I have never felt better.

When I feel sadness/anxiety these days, I accept it. It is an interesting part of life. Then I choose to focus on something else, and the edge goes awy.

I hope this can be of some help to someone

 

[Akasha224]

I recently finished reading Industrial Society And Its Future (also known as the Unabomber Manifesto) by Ted Kaczynski and was amazed at some of the points he brought concerning psychological ailments in modern industrialized society:

46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier conditions...

68. It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure than modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy; hence modern man suffers from less, not more than the amount of insecurity that is normal for human beings. But psychological security does not closely correspond with physical security. What makes us FEEL secure is not so much objective security as a sense of confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves. Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in self-defense or travel in search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts, but he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The modern individual on the other hand is threatened by many things against which he is helpless: nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food, environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by large organizations, nationwide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt his way of life.

119. The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system...The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.

156 ...In fact, something like this seems to have happened already with one of our society’s most important psychological tools for enabling people to reduce (or at least temporarily escape from) stress, namely, mass entertainment (see paragraph 147). Our use of mass entertainment is “optional”: No law requires us to watch television, listen to the radio, read magazines. Yet mass entertainment is a means of escape and stress-reduction on which most of us have become dependent. Everyone complains about the trashiness of television, but almost everyone watches it. A few have kicked the TV habit, but it would be a rare person who could get along today without using ANY form of mass entertainment. (Yet until quite recently in human history most people got along very nicely with no other entertainment than that which each local community created for itself.) Without the entertainment industry the system probably would not have been able to get away with putting as much stress-producing pressure on us as it does.

Basically his point, (as someone else said in a post earlier than me), is that the human race is more or less forced into conditions which, for tens of thousands of years, it has never had to live under. The ones who have "meaningful goals" (as portrayed by mass media: having a "nice" car, a "good" job, a bunch of meaningless crap that you don't actually need) are seen as successful, happy, and healthy; they have no problem finding their place within the system. The ones that can see the system objectively as an outsider, on the other hand, are horrified. I spent the majority of my childhood and teenage years wondering why everyone was so content to sit in front of a TV while their brains melted and they had the values of modern society permanently engraved on their consciousness instead of just sitting and listening to the sounds of Nature outside - the wind blowing and the birds chirping is the only entertainment I ever needed.

My parents used to tell me when I was younger that I wasn't special, I wasn't an exception to the rule, and that I had to do what everyone else around me did (without thinking about it) if I wanted to be happy - an interesting method of raising a child, I suppose. The prime example of this occurred when I was 16. My family is Catholic - not really religious, because being zealously religious isn't "normal" and makes you seem "crazy." So they went to Church on Christmas and Easter, have crucifixes around the house and on their necks, have never picked up a Bible in their lives, and know maybe 1/3 of the Our Father. When it was time for my Confirmation at the age of 16, I explained to them that I didn't feel comfortable professing my undying face to a religion I wasn't sure I believed in - not in a rebellious, hateful way, but in a thought-out, intellectual fashion. Well this was a big mistake. "All your friends are going to do it and you're going to be left out." "You'll have a party and you'll get lots of money." "Your grandfather will be very disappointed in you," so and so forth.

OP, I understand the despair and misery that you feel, as I have been there too. Ironically enough, my suicidal thoughts have always been along the same lines as yours - not a hysterical, emotional desire to end everything right this second, as much as a calm, calculated conclusion that "things just won't get better" and that suicide is the best option. But it isn't. Why wouldn't you want to live? Depression is an acute awareness of the psychological prison that we, as enlightened (whether by birth, whether by drugs, whether by whatever) members of modern day society are trapped within.

Fuck the system - smoke DMT, break the chains.