Depression Doesn't Have to Steal Your Life: Finding Help and Hope in the Darkness

First, let me briefly describe what depression is; for fuller description of the subject, please see the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition, 2013. American Psychiatric Press, Washington DC.

Depression is described as loss of interests in the activities of daily living. The depressed person loses interest in doing what most people do on a daily bases. He does not find meaning in doing what hitherto he enjoyed doing.

For example, if he is an adult he does not want to go to work, for work no longer makes sense to him; if he is of school age, he is not interested in schooling; he is not interested in playing with other people.

In general, the depressed person loses interest in grooming his self, in participating in social life; he simply wants to be left alone, for he sees no point in doing what other people enjoy doing on a daily basis.

At some stage in the depression process, the depressed person may conclude that life is not worth living and contemplate suicide. He thinks that death is the only way out of his depressed affect. He may begin making plans to kill his self.

Generally, at this stage, if such a person is brought to the attention of mental health professionals they are in most states in the USA authorized to involuntarily hospitalize that person against his will.

Mental health professionals (specific psychologists and psychiatrists authorized by their state and county…I performed that task) can place a mental health hold on that person, call the police and they transport him or her to the nearest psychiatric hospital. He is detained against his wishes for seventy two hours.

During that time, doctors may attempt to give him anti depression medications; he can refuse taking such medications. Before the 72 hours runs out the person would have to be brought before a county superior court judge, who has the legal authority to continue the involuntary hospitalization for up to six months, 180 days.

If a judge so rules, generally, the depressed person is transported to a state hospital for the mentally ill and placed there and given medications; he is given any of the anti-depressant medications. If he is suicidal the hospital staff may restrain him so that he does not harm himself.

There are many medications deemed anti depression. The primary ones are Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and Wellbutrin. There are also older forms of anti-depressant medications, such as imipramine.

These medications are said to act on the Serotonin receptors in the brain; they are serotonin reuptake blockers.

It is not necessary for me to explain the nature of neuron to neuron transmission of information in brain cells here; let me simply note that neurons transmit information from one neuron to the other at their synapses; these transmission are done through neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, neuropiniphrine, acetylcholine and others; transmission is also done through the exchanges of certain electrical ions, such as calcium ion, potassium ion, magnesium ion and others; these ions enable brain cells to open and close to permit information to flow from one neuron to the other.

Where there are problems in neurotransmitters and or their transmission from one neuron to another it is said that mental health issues may result.

In the case of depression, the current hypothesis (I say hypothesis because it has not yet been proved as a fact) is that somehow the brain is not retaining enough serotonin due to it been reabsorbed into its receptors when released.

Anti-depressant medications, apparently, enable the brain to accumulate serotonin by blocking its reuptake into serotonin receptors in the brain.

Upon taking these anti-depressant medications, apparently, the depressed person’s brain begins accumulating serotonin and within a month he appears to return to his normal self. These medications enable depressed folks to regain interests in participating in the activities of daily living.

The medications do not cure depression, for as soon as the person quits taking them, apparently, his brain returns to having less serotonin and depression returns. Thus, the depressed person would have to be on anti-depressant medications for years, perhaps for the rest of his life until a real cure is found for that mental disorder.

The same applies to other mental disorders; briefly, schizophrenia is theorized to be caused by too much of the neurotransmitter, dopamine in the brain; the various neuroleptic medications, such as Risperdal and Zyprexa, apparently reduce the quantity of dopamine in the brain and reduce the schizophrenic’s tendency to hallucinating and having bizarre delusions.

Anti- mania medications are said to reduce the excitatory neurotransmitters hypothesized to cause mania; Lithium and Depakote appear to reduce the level of neuropiniphrine in the brain of manic persons and make them less excited, euphoric and grandiose and deluded.

Anxious persons are said to have less of the inhibitory neurotransmitter, GABA hence tend to be anxious; the various anxiolytic medications (such as valium, Librium, Xanax etc.) apparently increase the quantity of GABA in the brain of anxious persons and thus help them to become less prone to fear, anxiety and anger (anger follows the same neurochemical pathways of fear and anxiety; anger is the fight half of the flight and fight response to fear arousing stimulus).

Depression is these days primarily treated with medications. Medications assume that the human mind is epiphenomenal; that is, is a throw up of matter; is the product of interaction of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron, copper, sodium, phosphor, zinc and the other 64 elements in the human body.

Depression and other mental disorders are said to result from chemical imbalance in the brain; medications are supposed to rebalance the unbalanced neurochemicals in the brain hence treat mental disorders.

After medications have reduced the individual’s depression, psychotherapists attempt talk based psychotherapy for him.

These days, Cognitive Behavior Therapy is said to be the most effective modality in treating depression and other mental disorders.

Cognitive Behavior therapy, as the name implies, entails getting the person to change his cognition, his thinking patterns; some thinking patterns, apparently, tend to depress folks and if they can change them they would become less depressed.

Depressed persons, for example, tend to be pessimistic and put themselves down; they tend to see themselves as no good. If they can be taught to appreciate their selves, see themselves as good and develop positive self-esteem and self-confidence, such change in mentation tends to alleviate their depression.

As the Roman Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, said, it is not what happens in the external world that depresses or angers or makes one fearful but how one looks at it. Events would continue transpiring in the world but one can change how one sees them.

For example, it is not that another person calls you a put down name that makes you sad, for you could as well have seen the name caller as an idiot and ignored him; it is your belief that you need to be approved by all people that makes you feel sad if some people do not like you.

If you do not care for other people’s liking or not of you, it makes no difference to you whether they like you or not.

Events that one hitherto saw as fear making can be re-conceptualized and seen as neutral and thus one no longer responds to them with fear and anxiety.

Events that hitherto made one angry can be re-thought and dismissed as innocuous; let us say that in the past someone calling you an insulting name made you angry at him, you can now see the name caller as having low self-esteem issues hence has need to degrade folks to exalt himself; you can tell yourself that if he is a rational adult he would realize that calling folks put down names could make those he so degraded to kill him and therefore he would not do what he did; this line of thinking may make you have pity for him instead of feeling angry at him.

There are people in this world who see name callers as five year old children, disregard them and not take them seriously.

Simply put, how one thinks about the world determines ones mental status. Cognitive behavior therapy, which Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck are the primary advocates of, attempts to get folks to think rationally so that they maintain undisturbed minds.

There are, of course, other forms of psychotherapies; it is not necessary for me to review all of them here; let us just say that a good therapist is usually eclectic; he takes from many therapies, such as Freudian, Adlerian, Jungian, behavior modification and others in helping his clients. He tries whatever works for his clients.

The above summary is pretty much how secular therapists approach depression. I worked under that parameter. However, over time I came to believe that there is spirituality to depression. Let me briefly summarize how I think that spirituality works in depression.