I'm eagerly beginning my read of Bruce E. Levine's book on depression, Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy. This blog will have a few summaries of his insights over the next few days, dedicated to a few young relatives and friends who are struggling. Levine says the average age of diagnosis is now 14-15.
Introduction Highlight
Words are key. What word you use to describe your condition can lead you down a certain path.
Maybe the most a simple word to use is hurting. Demoralized is another. Both are more accurate than "depressed" to describe the root of depression. Depression means you are depressing your hurt and your being to avoid feeling worse.
Are you depressed or demoralized?
Demoralized means lacking morale. The word "heightens my awareness to that which is energizing and inspiring. Morale is the emotional experience of cheerfulness, confidence, and zeal in the face of hardship. Without morale, difficult tasks seem impossible to accomplish; with morale, those same tasks can feel challenging and fun...an individual can inspire a community, a community can energize an individual, and we can all remoralize one another."
Much is missing in the education of mental health professionals due to our psychiatric-pharmaceutical-academic corporatocracy. Levine lists 6 areas necessary for revitalizing people with depression/demoralization. Mental health professionals need to be much better trained in these.
1. Regaining morale. Teaching the demoralized to transform immobilization into energy, the craft of self-energizing.
2. Understanding depression. It's a strategy for reducing pain by depressing your being which becomes a vicious cycle.
3. Healing the source of depression. Teaching the craft of self-healing.
4. Distinguishing self-acceptance from self-absorption. Extreme Consumerist society in America involves self-absorption. Teach self-acceptance.
5. Teaching relationship essentials. Depressed people don't need just simplistic communication skills. They need "deeper wisdom about friendship, intimacy, family, and community."
6. Reforming society. Participating in making a less depressing world can give you energy even if you are not successful in the near future.
"A major reason for writing this book is my conclusion that standard psychiatric treatments for depression are, for most people, unsustainable. The latest research shows that antidepressants often work no better than placebos or no treatment at all, can cause short- term and long-term adverse effects that may be as or more problematic than the original problem, can result in drug tolerance...and can promote dependency on pharmaceutical and insurance corporations. Moreover, antidepressants and other mental health industry treatments divert us all from examining the unsustainable aspects of society that create the social conditions for depression."
