Making Sense of Depression
|
Making Sense of Depression
|
|
|
|
Painting by Sharon Burgmayer |
Depression ... what is it? A neurochemical imbalance? An illness? A sad feeling? A loss of will? A creative state of being? Something else? Is it reducible to any one of these? Perhaps it is irreducibly all of these and and more? We bring together materials here that we hope will contribute to finding new and more useful ways to think about depression, with the assumption that it is indeed something that fundamentally requires a number of different perspectives to be better understood, and that new stories about it are essential to getting it less wrong.
|
"It is a weakness rather than a lowness of spirits which troubles me... a coldness and desertion of the spirit"
|
David Hume: A Letter to a Physician |
| "People approach issues of mental health from a variety of different perspectives and using a variety of different terminologies... Our ambition here is to contribute to the development and continuing evolution of such critical syntheses." | Models of Mental Heatlh: A Critique and Prospectus |
| "How much of a difference should it make to health care - and health insurance - if a condition is physical or mental?... The problem, of course, is that many of us still tend to think, as the Times puts it, that 'The mind and the body, while linked, are separate. They exist independently, perhaps mingling but not merging'..." | The mind-body problem: In theory, in life, in politics |
| "Such a story of depression as an unconscious/conscious dissocation provides a straightforward explanation of why both pharmacotherapy and talk therapy can be therapeutically effective..." | Exploring depression: drugs, psychotherapy, stories, conflicts, a conscious/unconscious dissociation? |
A conversation about experiencing depression - "If depression is genuinely 'psychodynamic' important aspects of it may be invisible except to those actually experiencing it. With this possibility in mind, we here provide excerpts from a conversation about depression among three people..."
Re Exploring depression: "My personal experience" - "Being sad was not something I needed to rid myself of, it was something I needed to embrace and deal with..."
Re Exploring depression: "Notes on Stigma and a combo of therapy and meds for me" - "I lived, not only in a dark cloud of my mother’s deep depressions, but I developed what I call 'the illness of stigma'..."
More on Serendip
NBS Seminar Spring 08: Psychotherapy and the Brain
NBS Seminar Spring 08: Psychosomatics
Women Living Well Seminar: Mind and Body Connection
Depression... Or (better?) Thinking About Mood
Review of Peter Kramer's "Against Depression" from Serendip's Bookshelves
depression
depression
Dear Cynthia, you are speaking about the 10 years '85-'95 after 12-13 years, if you have this question in your mind today, you have been trying to know for all these years. The sum of it all is that you are right about the relationship between depression and brain functioning - they are related. Something is wrong somehwere when one thinks in such conditions - its disharmony and unconnectedness of some thoughts and values in your mind make you ask this question this time.
I think you need to go on taking each thought sliver and subject it to above mentioned two factors - you yourself can find out the answer.Nothing escapes from your mind but it needs to be connected - commit all your thoughts and memories if required write them in a small notebook , but do it yourself, you know it does not call for any medication nor exercise so no risk - one has to do this oneself one owes it to self. Is it not?
The support of close family
The support of close family members and friends is very important. Taking anti depressants is not an insurance policy against future relapses.
Post new comment