We Need New Ways of Treating Depression

We Need New Ways of Treating Depression

Johann Hari

The doctor said that depression is caused by the spontaneous lack of a chemical in the brain called serotonin, and I simply needed to take some drugs to get my serotonin levels up to a normal level. A few days before I wrote this piece, a young friend of one of my nephews, who was not much older than I was when I was first diagnosed, went to his doctor and asked for help with his depression. His doctor told him he had a problem with dopamine in his brain. In 20 years, all that has shifted is the name of the chemical.

I believed and preached versions of this story for more than a decade. But when I began to research the causes of depression and anxiety for my new book, Lost Connections, I was startled to find leading scientific organizations saying this approach was based on a misreading of the science. There are real biological factors that contribute to depression, but they are very far from being the whole story.

The World Health Organization, the leading medical body in the world, explained in 2011: “Mental health is produced socially: The presence or absence of mental health is above all a social indicator and therefore requires social, as well as individual, solutions.” The United Nations’ special rapporteur on the right to health, Dr. Dainius Pūras — one of the leading experts in the world on mental health — explained last April that “the dominant biomedical narrative of depression” is based on “biased and selective use of research outcomes.”

“Regrettably, recent decades have been marked with excessive medicalization of mental health and the overuse of biomedical interventions, including in the treatment of depression and suicide prevention,” he said. While there is a role for medications, he added, we need to stop using them “to address issues which are closely related to social problems.”

I was initially bemused by statements like this: They were contrary to everything I had been told...

The most straightforward solution is to make the world a less shitty, oppressive place where you have to work at things that you don't care about just to continue existing, and if you're lucky, do something you actually enjoy occasionally. What would also help immensely is for people to stop irrationally valuing survival over dignity and happiness. You're dead anyways, so there's no point caring about it. If people thought that way most of the oppression wouldn't work in the first place, thus dissolving it.

We Need New Ways of Treating Depression

Johann Hari

 I think this is an extremely complicated issue. I don't think that a one size fits all treatment exists.
We are taught to look outside of  ourselves, for our fulfillment and well being.
If there's an upside, in my opinion, the fact that psychiatry  and its alleged medicine, are being dragged into the light.

The most straightforward solution is to make the world a less shitty, oppressive place where you have to work at things that you don't care about just to continue existing, and if you're lucky, do something you actually enjoy occasionally. What would also help immensely is for people to stop irrationally valuing survival over dignity and happiness. You're dead anyways, so there's no point caring about it. If people thought that way most of the oppression wouldn't work in the first place, thus dissolving it.

I want to give you a "like" for the first part of this post.  The desire to survive is an instinct - we can't help it!