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DEPRESSION

An Emotion - Not a Disease
Taking Responsibility for How We Feel

By Jack Allis
April 2003

The prevailing belief in established medicine and health care today is that depression is a disease. We are bombarded by this message everyday by the media, the pharmaceutical industry, the research establishment, the government, and tragically, most doctors, including psychiatrists.

But what does this mean? Its proponents never tell us, but there are some very powerful implications here. We often hear that depression is a biochemical condition, or that it is genetic, and again we are never told what this means. The implications are we are born with it, and we can't do anything about it. All we can do is make the best of a bad thing. Ironically, many people with depression are reassured by this sad fact because this relieves them of the burden of taking responsibility for it. As long as they helpless victims of biological forces, then the only treatment is pharmaceutical medication, which is the easy way out. They don't have to do anything to change.

In this article, I will be refuting this position, and presenting the alternative point of view that depression is an emotion. Like all emotions, the way that people think plays a primary role in the quality of the emotion. Learning and past experience, particularly childhood development, also play a primary role in the development of the emotion. Our emotions are also something we can learn how to control. This does mean we must take a good hard look at ourselves, and we do have to work at it. However, in the long run, we reap the benefit of an improved overall quality of life, which makes it well worth the effort.

First, it is necessary to define what we mean by an emotion. Very simply put, an emotion is a physiological response to a stimulus. Let's illustrate this with the emotion of anger. With anger the stimulus is an injustice. In other words, something happens that is wrong, and that usually causes harm. The physiological response to this injustice involves such things as tightened muscles, an accelerated heartbeat, and elevated body temperature.

With depression, the stimulus is a loss. It is the loss of something of significant value, and something in which the person has a strong emotional investment. It is the loss of something exceedingly important. According to established medicine, the physiology of depression involves an imbalance of chemical substances in the brain called neurotransmitters. This is what anti-depressant medication treats. However, the physiology of depression is far more pervasive than this, and affects virtually every part of the body. Symptoms include a lack of energy, fatigue, problems with sleep, problems with appetite, and diminished pleasure in all areas of life.

There are two types of depression. The first type is reactive. In reactive depression, the depression is a reaction to a loss that is clearly identifiable. Common examples of this are divorce, the death of a loved one, the loss of one's health due to a physical injury, or the loss of a job or career. In reactive depression, the depression is normal. Feelings of sadness and despair in these cases are to be expected. The cure for reactive depression is time. If the person is otherwise emotionally stable, and if they have a good support system, it will run its course, and they will get their life back on track.

The second type is endogenous. In endogenous depression, the loss is no longer identifiable. The depression has become the norm. It is the way the person lives their life. In endogenous depression, what the person has lost is hope. Invariably, the way that the person thinks plays a primary role here, and people who experience endogenous depression all exhibit common modes of negative or destructive thinking. They tend to think they're inadequate, and they believe there's nothing they can do about it. They've given up on themselves, and on life. They tend to blame themselves for everything, and they are very self-condemning. Doesn't it make sense that somebody who thinks this way will feel badly? These modes of thinking are also misconceptions. In other words, the person isn't inadequate. They just think they are. In the work I do, I help people to overcome depression by becoming aware of the part these modes of thinking play, and replacing them with healthy, life-affirming thinking.

Many of these misconceptions about depression, as well as many others in established medicine, are due to a mistaken philosophical premise. This is the premise of mind/body dichotomy. The mind/body dichotomy is one of the cornerstones of thinking in the Western world. It maintains that the mind and body operate entirely separately. They are mutually exclusive, and have nothing to do with each other. The mind/body dichotomy is incorrect, and it must be replaced with the premise of mind/body unity. Mind/body unity means the mind and body work in harmony, and they can never be separated. For every physiological process, there is a corresponding psychological process, and visa versa. Physiology and psychology cannot be separated. When they are, neither one makes sense anymore. Muscles, nerves, cells and hormones cannot be separated from thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behavior. In other words, the mind, our thoughts and our beliefs play an essential role in our physical health and sickness.

With all of this in mind, let's take a fresh look at some of the misconceptions about depression mentioned earlier. Is depression biochemical? Of course, it is, but that's not all it is. There is also a clear mental component to depression, which is characterized by the negative modes of thinking we just discussed. When examined from the perspective of mind/body unity, the question itself becomes rather silly because everything is biochemical. Eating, sleeping, work, sex, laughter and everything else we experience in life all have clear biochemical components, and involve biochemical changes.

There is also a very important methodological error at work here. This is confusing correlation with causation. As we just discussed, there is a clear correlation between depression and biochemical imbalances. Does this mean that the depression is caused by these imbalances? Established medicine says it is. But there is absolutely no evidence for this. It is just as reasonable to conclude that the negative thinking caused the depression, and that this causes the biochemical imbalances. Correlation does not mean causation. What came first: the chicken or the egg? All we can say for sure is that the mind and the body both play a part.
Is depression genetic? This notion is based on the belief that it tends to run in families. When we look at the actual studies, there is a correlation between depression and family history, but it's slight. It is usually around 60%, and sometimes higher. When you factor in a margin of error of at least 20%, due to the percentage of the total population who are depressed, these numbers become even less conclusive. A 20% margin of error is also very conservative, when you consider the abnormally high percentage of the total population who are currently taking anti-depressant medication.

Aside from this, in spite of all those messages we receive everyday from the media and the extraordinarily powerful pharmaceutical industry, there is absolutely no other evidence that depression is genetic. There has been no discovery of a depression gene. It is also stunning how these studies that deal with how traits run in families also neglect to consider the most important variable. This is learning. Children acquire their personality traits by watching their parents, and imitating them, and they develop their modes of thinking as a function of their experience and their learning with their parents. There are innumerable ways a child can learn how to be depressed from their parents.

Why take so much time with all this? Why is it so crucially important? Because our dignity and efficacy as human beings is at stake. If this disease-model and the premises beneath it are true, then we become robots, helpless victims of forces beyond our control, and we play no part in our own health and happiness. It is just a short step from there to the negation of our primary virtues as human beings: free will and our capability to think rationally and creatively. Pretty soon, we have no control over anything in life, and we become easy pawns to be manipulated for somebody else's benefit.

Our mind and body work in harmony, and our mind is the primary source of our power as human beings. It is our primary means to effect meaningful change in our lives, and to create the life we desire. We must never give that up. It is our most sacred treasure.

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