Chemistry

Here's a brief rumination from an anonymous blogger about a topic I've raised here before:

https://przxqgl.hybridelephant.com/2017/04/21/depression-4/

Reading this, I'm reminded that my own depression never "just happens". It's a response to targeted violence from others around me, and common among those who take refuge in a spiritual path. Because when we pill depression away, we green-light further abuse, typically on grounds that our society profits in some way from the consequences.

I'm on record as endorsing the treatment of depression with meds. I also endorse plaster casts for broken arms, but I don't pretend broken arms are the result of an innate cerebral dysfunction; even less that the occasional need for a cast indicates disability.

Yet the medicalisation of depression implies both. When I question this, I often hear that depression patients are a kind of evolutionary beta release; we're just not bundled with the latest DNA upgrade that allows us to function productively in a society whose survival relies on toughness and insensitivity.

This in spite of the fact that it's the animalistic members of the human family who are by definition the atavists.

Thus my various intellectual reactions to objections that the nation will fall unless citizens are permitted to abuse one another, none of which are, "Oh, I see – carry on, then."

So check out the post linked above. My brother's two paragraphs are short and to the point. At minimum, they prove I'm not the only one who's noted a touch of self-service in our culture's take on this matter.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)