Depression ramble

This ramble is on a lot of things. Its in part about language and
conceptualising depression and mental illness outside their medical
sense, and perhaps in their real sense. Its about treatment for
depression and another way of looking at things.
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Depression is an affective disorder in psychiatric terms. Its also
unhappiness and misery in normal language.

Sometimes unhappiness happens for a reason. Sometimes it doesn't. The
difference is usually not clear and often not the the reason. 2 weeks is
psychiatric minimum for the cluster of symptoms it uses to define
depression though it caveats grief as a natural process and applies a
much longer time for unhappiness associated with death (2 years in DSM
if I remember right). Bereavement and the pain associated with it
defined as acceptable misery whereas any other form of misery is dealt
with by medication.

On the one hand treatment with antidepressants is compassionate. Its
society providing drugs that get people high and away from their
problems, and its a lot cheaper than alcohol and drugs. Antidepressants
also offer hope to those trapped in the deepest of miseries, or what was
traditionally defined as melancholia in Kraeplin's day. They are a much
better than an electrically-induced seizure, or electro-convulsive
therapy as doctors call it. Thankfully the majority of people don't get
to that stage.

Its easier than attempting to understand why an individual may be
unhappy or miserable. Its easier for the individual if the negative
feeling, or the emotional and behavioural disorder to use the
psychiatric language, is about a change process because that process can
be averted or the pain taken away by all sorts of drugs. It may be
easier for society to hand out drugs to deal with the unhappiness of the
masses rather than see that perhaps society isn't working. It may be
considered better by governments focused on productivity as the value of
an individual that a person stays working and the drugs mean they're
capable of doing that whereas the change process may mean they could
temporarily be in a state where they could not work or should not work.

The reflection and the soul searching that can be associated with
unhappiness, the depth of thought and the seeking of answers that can be
associated with unhappiness may be important to an individual's journey
through life however society is not designed to understand that people
need that time without the mental illness system, however the system
often moves to medication people far too quickly and mistreats something
that may have significance to the individual outside psychiatric
measures of mood.

A society where 10-15% of people are worred and unhappy at some point in
the year, or anxious and depressed, is a distressing figure in itself.
One option is to drug those people up and another is to offer them
treatments to change the way they think and behave. It is perhaps
something in the vision of modern government but far from a reality that
the other option is to change society such that people are less unhappy
and worried. The systems that have developed within society are causing
the suffering in individuals but to see that may be hard for politicians.

It will be likely be the next century where the 1 in 4 or 1 in 6 figure
is seen as a measure of the failure of society and a government willing
to understand that large changes are needed to correct the illness in
society that's causing the distress.