Depression as a Symptom

In my lost two posts I spoke about how depression is not an illness but a cultural meme. The I went on to analyze the perception of illness since it is directly related to how most people perceive depression to begin with.

Today, I will continue on the subject by addressing depression as a symptom to an underlying illness. I strongly believe that most of the diagnosis about depression aim to address it as an illness when in fact there is an underlying disease that is causing it. Same thing applies to most — if not all — long term psychological illnesses unless we are talking about serious deformities such as tumors, synapses deteriorating and other obvious neurobiological alterations.

When we get the flu we might also develop a fever. The doctor will not address the fever as an illness but rather tackle the flu. When the flu goes away the fever will recide. The fever after all, is nothing more but the body's reaction to an external threat.

Depression is so prevalent because many illnesses have it as a symptom. It's popularity prevails due to the cultural meme factor as well and for the reasons we analyzed. We get a bit romantic about this state of mind and and since it serves as a form of "reboot" for our system we rather enjoy it, even if it takes a bit longer. This is no secret since studies have shown that magic mushrooms can also "reboot" depressed brains. People can get addicted to unhappiness (see emos). Like we mentioned in the post before, depression is a state of mind that we might fall due to an event/experience. It can prevail if we let it due to its cultural popularity.

There is no "magic balance" to the human body. We are very complicated and elaborate machines that strive constantly to keep myriads of balances in check. On a micro-scale we are an ecosystem of thousands of other organisms that strive to compete with each other. Depression happens to be the aftermath of the battles amongst those organisms.

When we slowly "shut down" the body gets into repair mode. We feel down because the energy is used elsewhere. Sometimes is because of a physical illness. Sometimes is because it is trying to deal with reality (especially if we have been tricking it to act in fake parametres). Depression is nothing more than a symptom, a mechanism the body uses in order to get back to a functioning state.

By all means, it is not supposed to take far too long because after that it starts sculpting a different reality for itself. In much the same way, a long term fever can damage the body permanently. Unfortunately the fake reality around us doesn't allow for depression to be only a parodic instance with a short cycle. Much like a frog in a boiling pot, we get used of the rising temperature and we don't realize when get used to it to the point it can destroy us.

This is how depression has been perceived as an epidemic for the modern world. The more we drift away from reality with artificial realities the more the brain is trying to get in touch, throwing us into a "Reboot" depressive mode. We know it is cultural because no other time in history this has been observed in such an extent. Heck, even in our times, many human groups don't experience anxiety, depression, anorexia/bulimia, ocd, ADHD and other popular western "disorders".

Labeling depression as a disease only reinforces this notion that we are helpless. Saying that at some point in the future we will suffer from it, exemplifies a normal symptom into something monstrous that cannot be controlled easily unless we take medication and go into behavioural therapy. Jackson Pollock, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens and many others all embraced this "negative" state of mind we call "depression" and produced great works. Let us not fasten chains in our ankles and rethinking how we perceive depression.