The Suppressed Truth About Depression

BY SOFO ARCHON

According to the World Health Organization, about 300 million people suffer from depression. So, why is that?

If you pay attention to what pharmaceutical companies say on the topic, you might come to believe that the cause of depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain, and that the only way to treat it is by taking chemical drugs—more specifically, antidepressants.

But here’s the truth they don’t want you to know: there is no solid evidence supporting the claim that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Yet most people—including mental health “experts” such as psychiatrists—think otherwise, having fallen victim to misinformation spread by pharmaceutical companies in order to sell their products.

Contrary to what Big Pharma would have us believe, the body is not a machine you can simply tweak with chemicals to restore health. Rather, the body is an organic unity, intrinsically connected to our psyche as well as our social and natural environment. Hence, you can’t treat a multidimensional condition like depression with the one-dimensional approach of just taking drugs.

Although depression often has biological, genetic, and neurochemical components, it cannot be understood in isolation from psychological, social, and ecological factors. Why? Because our neurochemistry, genes, and biology are deeply influenced by those factors.

For example, research shows that early-life stress, such as childhood maltreatment, has a detrimental effect on brain structure, significantly increasing the risk of developing depression. Racism, sexism, unemployment, poverty, unfair working conditions, loneliness, nature deprivation, and tragic events—among many other factors—have also been shown to increase that risk.

To deal with the epidemic of depression, therefore, we need to address all these issues instead of just ingesting antidepressants, as if they alone could magically heal us.

In fact, studies suggest that, generally speaking, antidepressants have little to no positive effect on treating depression. It could even be argued that, overall, they do more harm than good, considering their severe side effects—which include weight gain, fatigue, loss of libido, insomnia, emotional flatness, agitation, increased suicidal thoughts, and withdrawal symptoms. (Note: if you’re on antidepressants, I’m not implying that they are necessarily bad for you or that you should stop taking them. I’m simply putting things into perspective.)

The good news is that, over the last few years, there has been a relatively small yet noteworthy shift in the approach to treating depression. More and more psychiatrists are becoming aware of the dangers of antidepressants, as well as the ineffectiveness of relying on them alone. As a result, many—though not most—psychiatrists are now more careful about prescribing them. And when they do prescribe, they often advise patients to also engage in psychotherapy and other healing modalities, such as hypnosis, meditation, yoga, gardening, forest bathing, and life coaching—all of which have been shown to help.

But here’s one thing that almost nobody in mental health care is talking about: changing society—and by that, I mean our social systems and institutions. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists are focused on treating the individual, with the goal of “fixing” them so they can readjust to society and function as “normal” people. But what if society itself is sick? Then, it isn’t really the individuals who need fixing, but the social conditions that damage them in the first place.

For example, if someone is depressed due to the stress of unemployment, helping them find work won’t do anything to reduce depression on a larger scale. Nor is it an effective long-term solution for that person, since they might lose their job again due to the market’s inherent instability and competition. A true, lasting solution would be to change our economic system from its very foundations so that it no longer produces unemployment. The same can be said about loneliness, unfair working conditions, nature deprivation, and other causes of depression mentioned earlier—all of which are inevitable results of the social systems currently in place.

Of course, supporting individuals with depression is important too. But if our goal is to address depression at the population level, then we must deal with its root causes—our social systems—rather than merely its symptoms, the depressed individuals. An analogy I often use to illustrate this point is that of a sick tree producing sick leaves. One might try to treat the leaves one by one, but if the source of their sickness—the tree—isn’t addressed, then chances are the leaves won’t be healed. And even if one could somehow—maybe with some magical drug!—heal a leaf or two, the tree would still keep producing new, sick leaves.

That is the holistic understanding we need to develop in order to effectively deal with depression. If we don’t, we will only manage to perpetuate—and quite possibly worsen—this serious health condition that afflicts so many people across the globe.