The Depression Epidemic, and Some Green Notes
by Gaea Yudron
Depression ranked 4th on the World Health Organization’s Global Burden of Disease list in 2000. By the year 2020, it is projected to reach 2nd place. Most of us are aware of the symptoms of depression, and chances are that many of us have directly experienced something of the profound hopelessness, disturbed sleep or appetite, listlessness, low self-worth, and poor concentration associated with it. Novelist William Styron described his serious bout of depression as "an insidious meltdown, a "tempest in my brain”… The pain is unrelenting. One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.”
It’s a bed of nails that seems to be proliferating. A New York Times article titled A Rising Cost of Modernity: Depression reported: “In nations as diverse as Taiwan, Lebanon and New Zealand, each successive generation is growing more vulnerable to the malady…” In some countries the likelihood of suffering major depression is “more than three times greater than for their grandparents’ generation.”
Depression can arise from genetic predisposition; for many people it begins with a catastrophic or traumatic event. Subsequent episodes are more easily triggered; with every new experience, neural pathways in the brain make stronger connections between the emotions, thoughts, physical responses and behavior associated with depression, supporting the depressive experience. (The good news is that neural pathways can also make strong connections for healing by engaging emotions, thoughts, physical responses and behavior in fresh, positive ways.)
Depression was called melancholia in ancient times. The Greek physician Hippocrates wrote, “Grief and fear, when lingering, provoke melancholia.'' Today, our version of melancholia is a leading cause of disability in industrialized countries. Depression rates seem to increase as countries Westernize and industrialize. Reader, this appears to be a significant clue, if not a flat-out description of what’s at the root of the growing epidemic. Something about industrial culture is just plain depressing.
Dr Robert Lefever, GP and director of Promise Recovery Centre in Kent, England sees an increasing number of people coming into treatment addicted to antidepressants. He claims that a third of the adult population in the UK is taking a prescribed mood-altering drug such as an antidepressant or tranquillizer when they may not need to be.
‘It is better to avoid using a drug if possible can because it can interfere with brain biochemistry, and our knowledge of how drugs affect the brain is in its infancy,’ says Dr Lefever. ‘It’s really like prescribing heroin for toothache. It gets rid of the symptom but doesn’t address the root of the problem,’ he says.
In the same New York Times article quoted earlier, author Daniel Goleman interviewed a team of researchers about possible reasons for the rising incidence of depression. They cited biological vulnerability including exposure to environmental toxins, and psychological stress including loss of family stability, lack of extended family and access to community, hectic work schedules, parental indifference and a sense of rootlessness. Women are held to unattainable ideals of feminine beauty, said one researcher. People no longer have the support of spiritual beliefs, suggested another. Not mentioned but certainly relevant are wars and violence, our profound disconnection from the living world of nature and the effect of global climate and weather change on our psyches.
In The Age of Melancholy: “Major Depression” and Its Social Origins Dan G. Blaser describes how depression was recently renamed “major depression” and its treatment shifted into the world of biological medicine, where it is now described as something that happens to you because of a chemical imbalance. You can take pills for that, and many people do. Antidepressants like Prozac or Paxil, given the cheery moniker mood elevators, provide many people relief and allow them to continue with life as usual. But antidepressants are not a green solution for the despair that depression brings. In fact, taking antidepressants is closely linked to increasing stresses on the environment.
Antidepressants (and most chemical pharmaceuticals) are designed to resist breakdown, so they pass through our bodies unchanged and are excreted back into the water and soil. In his excellent book The Lost Language of Plants, whose main theme is the ecological importance of plant medicines, Stephen Harrod Buhner devotes a chapter to The Environmental Impacts of Technological Medicine. In it, Buhner chronicles the effects of the prodigious toxic wastes created in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, hospital wastes, and medications excreted by individuals. He reports that Prozac, Paxil and other similar drugs released back into the environment affect the reproduction, heartbeat, feeding, biting, egg hatching and swimming patterns of aquatic organisms, including shellfish and crustaceans. I recommend this chapter to you. As Peter Montague notes in Headline:Paydirt from the Human Genome, “What will it mean to raise our babies on water contaminated with low levels of birth control drugs and athlete’s foot remedies plus Viagra, Prozac, Valium, Claritin, Amoxicillan…Tamifoxen and dozens of other potent drugs, along with hair removers, mosquito repellents, sunburn creams, musks and other fragrances? No one knows, but evidently we’re going to find out, learning by doing.”
Now you may find all this fairly depressing and it may be. But what about our response and our responsibility to the mythic elements of our lives? If depression is a way in which darkness is made visible to us, as novelist William Styron suggests in the title of his book, perhaps there are actually reasons for exploring it, being curious, having a conversation and even befriending it, rather than avoiding it as too fearful and paralyzing to deal with except by dulling it and ourselves into a kind of half life. Are we turning away from the messages our bodies and minds are sending about things needing to change? What needs to change? While saving the world is a truly daunting challenge, isn’t it also very challenging to change from within? Yet this is within our power. For such work, getting relief by suppressing symptoms just doesn’t go far enough.
I’m not suggesting going cold turkey on the meds, but I am suggesting that in depression there is a deep opportunity for healing work on profound levels, and commitment to healing can lead to a life without antidepressants, a life more fully present, calm and open. We certainly can benefit on every level from more fully present, calm and open individuals in this world today.
Here is one of the most chilling aspects of the antidepressant story. Each year, antidepressant use among children and adolescents grows by 10 percent, according to a study published in the April 2004 issue of Psychiatric Services. Preschoolers account for the biggest increase in use. Preschoolers, 1-5 years of age. We have no clue what effects these substances will have on the long-term mental and physical health of children. Antidepressants have also been linked to youth suicides. Are they responsible? The debate continues, and the number of children and teens ingesting these drugs continues to escalate. May it change for the better, and soon.
Social psychiatry, the study of feelings and behavior in the context of society, had a brief flowering in the 50s and 60s, then faded back and all but disappeared from the scene. Now instead of exploring the social causes of mental unrest and imbalance, psychiatry prescribes antidepressants. Isn’t this reminiscent of the way that the inhabitants of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World dutifully ingested the fictional drug Soma, which placated and lulled them, distracting them from living fully, or from contributing to social change? Dan Blaser in his book The Age of Melancholy, suggests that it is similar and urges a revival in the field of social psychiatry.
There is actually a spectrum of ways to relieve depression that can be used either in relation to pharmaceuticals, or independently. One of the most obvious and low-cost is exercise. A study just published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine concludes that exercise may be more effective than drugs in treating mild to moderate depression. The report by researchers at Freie University in Berlin found that just thirty minutes of exercise a day significantly improved the moods of patients who had been suffering from depression for nine months.
‘Physical activity has the same effect as antidepressants,’ said Dr Fernando, who led the research. ‘Aerobic exercise stimulates neurotransmitters in our brain to produce serotonin, an endorphin which make us feel good. And exercise, unlike antidepressants, has no negative side effects.’
Using exercise to boost your mood has an instant effect. And exercise, unlike antidepressants, is not chemically addictive. There are a variety of other ways to relieve and transform depression. These include hypnotherapy, homeopathy, herbal medicine, mindfulness based stress reduction and rapid eye healing. Watch for Part II of this article in which I will explore natural and holistic ways to heal depression.
This article was first published in Sentient Times, a wonderful bi-monthly publication that focuses on “alternatives for personal and community transformation.” Website: www.SentientTimes.com