I Am Going to Say Something Controversial

One of the biggest and most controversial debates in the mental health world is the question of how much power people with depression have over the direction that their depression takes, in the long term. Does neuroplasticity mean that people born with depression can shift the chemical patterns in their brains over time, or are the patterns too big for such small shifts to truly change things for depressed people?

A lot of depressed people want the patterns of depression to be something they can change. They hate being depressed, and want to be able to do something about it. But a lot of other depressed people want the patterns to be unchangeable. They've spent years - maybe their whole lives - believing that their depression is something they can't change. It's helped them accept themselves and their depression, and find peace with their situation. That's one of the reasons why it's such a hotly debated topic - because it's so personal to so many people. No one wants to spend years fighting against their depression and then admit that all that effort was wasted. No one wants to spend years not fighting their depression, insisting that it can't be fought, and then admit that they wasted all those years when they could have been healing their heart and finding happiness in their lives.

Maybe the first group are right, maybe their depression sticking around for years isn't their fault - that it's beyond their power to change. Maybe people who spend years fighting against their depression and trying to change it are wasting their time, and being jerks when they tell you that you could change yours. Or maybe the second group is right, and the only reason people stay depressed for so long is that they haven't put in the effort to change the patterns in their brains. I don't know. I don't think anyone does. Even people who were born with depression and believe that they've changed it for themselves can't necessarily say that what worked for them would work for others.

The controversial part of my story is: have you ever questioned what you believe about your own depression? Do you believe what you believe because you've looked at the evidence and considered both sides of the issue, or did you start out believing it, and you've never questioned it?

People spend so much time fighting for one side or another of this or that issue, but more often than not, they're not fighting the real enemy. All too often, the real enemy isn't the other side of the issue - the real enemy is your own pride. Your need to be right, to knock down the beliefs of anyone who's viewpoint suggest that you might be wrong, and to hold onto your preexisting assumptions - assumptions that often enough you've never taken the time to question.

Very prideful people are hellish to deal with in a million ways, but they're not the ones I'm talking about here. I'm not talking about pride, taken to the extreme. I'm talking about the sort of pride that almost all of us have. The pride that makes us SO sure that this political party is right and that political party is wrong. The pride that makes us SO sure that this religion (or lack of religion) is right, and the others are wrong. The pride that makes us absolutely certain that the other side of the depression debate are utterly, utterly wrong. Or the other side of the racism/sexism/homophobia divide that's caused so many heated arguments lately. Whatever debates are closest to your heart, those are the places where pride will strike.

Whatever debate is close to your heart, whichever side you're on, if you haven't truly questioned your viewpoint and considered the other side - not just in a token way, but in a real, meaningful way - then you don't know anything. If your side is in the right, however that's measured, then it's the equivalent of getting a good roll of the dice. No matter how many arguments you win, or how many people come to agree with your side of the issue - you'll still have utterly lost, because you'll have completely missed the point.

"Until faith becomes rejection,
And rejection becomes belief,
there will be no true Muslim." - Abu-Said ibn Abi-Khair

ebabe

Depression has so many varying degrees of severity and types that it's pretty much pointless to debate. What works for some people won't work for everybody or will only work for a select few. Some depression is life long and caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. Other people may have depression as a side effect of another illness or it may be temporary depression brought on by a traumatic event or seasonal. Depression is almost a blanket term in that sense collecting all different kinds of people who have some of the same baseline feelings, apathy, lethargy, or numbness. I have depression; however, I don't believe it won't "get better" but I don't believe I'll ever be neurotypical either. I will always have depression no matter how good my life is. Some people may experience less depressive episodes when their life is sailing smoothly while people like me may experience worse symptoms because I feel like things are too good to be true. It's all about perspective and individuality. I can't believe this is actually a thing that is debated when there are thousands of different answers that are all correct.

BlueDiver · 36-40, M

A lot of what you're talking about boils down to another one of the most hotly debated issues, both in the mental health world, and the world at large - the value of labels and standardized lines for understanding people, psychological issues, and everything else, compared to the destructiveness of those same labels and lines when they try to take a person and make them fit a mold, even if that mold sometimes doesn't fit them very well.

On one hand, standardizing depression helps doctors/therapists/familyMembers have frameworks in which to understand you. By saying "xyz is how depression works, and zyx is how we can make it better," people are able to have an idea of what they can do to help you. You're able to have an idea of how to help yourself, or maybe how to accept yourself and your depression. Without some framework and standardized wisdom about depression, everyone who dealt with it would have to reinvent the wheel every time.

On the other hand, all the arguments you made are true - depression is different for everyone in a million different ways. What works for one person might not work for another person. What's possible for one person might not be possible for another. Trying to force someone's depression into any mold will always distort your view of that depression in a way that can sometimes be really hurtful for depressed person. And to make things worse - it seems like everyone and his uncle has a *different* mold that they want to fit your depression into, which kinda defeats the purpose of standardizing things to begin with.

Standards need to exist so that we we have some idea what we're doing, and so that we don't keep reinventing the wheel. But frameworks also need to be questioned and resisted, for all the reasons that we both talked about. And so, here we stand.

"Now I see it all with love and amusement" - David Richo