Clinical depression, according to the esteemed Cleveland Clinic is:  “….a severe, persistent mental health condition characterized by a low mood, loss of interest in activities (anhedonia), and low energy lasting at least two weeks. It impairs daily functioning and requires professional treatment, such as therapy or medication, rather than passing on its own”.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 280 million people of all ages suffer from depression globally. This represents roughly 5% of all adults (4% of men and 6% of women), making it perhaps the leading ailment of our modern times.

There are at least 20 antidepressant drugs.  They largely seem to smother feelings of depression rather than heal them.  Some call it a ‘chemical disorder’ of the brain.  But unlike, say, high cholesterol, there is no measurement.

In one of my favorite podcasts, Shankar Vedante’s Hidden Brain,  Cornell psychologist Jonathan Rottenberg offers a truly new perspective on depression – an evolutionary one.

Thomas Jefferson wrote, in the Declaration of Independence, that we all have the right to “the pursuit of happiness”.  That almost has become an obligation, rather than a right.  And the converse is, say, misery.  If society says we are obligated to be happy, and somehow we are not – then perhaps depression emerges.

Rottenberg notes that happy people are not necessary those whom evolution selects —  but instead people who are actively engaged with the world around them and who find meaning in it.  There is even a therapy related to this, logotherapy, dealing with stress through finding meaning.  Victor Frankl, in a Nazi death camp, used it to survive, even though the situation warranted deep depression.

Is depression a useful evolutionary process, in which our brain is telling us,  the ways things are now, they are not good, we need change, we need to evolve differently?   Rottenberg himself suffered long, deep clinical depression, despite his success as a history graduate student.  Was his brain telling him to find a better, different path in life?  He applied to Stanford for a Ph.D. in psychology – and has become a top expert at Cornell, training clinical psychologists and offering new approaches to deal with depression.

Perhaps, using medication smothers the pain of depression, and maybe prevents us from acting on it.  If we are unhappy, perhaps our brain is telling us, to change, to evolve, to try a different path, different place, different vocation, different people.  The paradox is, the symptoms of depression, inaction, inability to engage and act, are the very things that prevent us from finding a solution.  Therapists, psychologists, loved ones, friends, can be greatly helpful in this.

Rottenberg, J. (2022). Depression: What everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)