Thread: Depression And The Cure?

Ok, I know some heads are going to chew me off on this one. But I want to talk about something that I think society is turning a blind eye on, namely, Depression. I am genuinly concerned however that society doesnt really care about getting into the heart of the problem.

THIS IS A LONG THREAD, BUT PLEASE READ IT ALL. TAKE YOUR TIME!

We have first, what I like to call, our teeny-pooper depression. Since it happens with so many teenagers. This depression happens as far as we know it becuase of a situation. Your boyfriend dumps you. Your parents hate you. You were kicked off the basketball team, or yatta yatta. For a short while, whether for a day or for a week you are a total EMO. With situational depression, we can still see an imbalance of chemicals in the brain that as far as we are concerned, is caused by the bad situation.

With clinical depression, there is supposidly no outside situation that is bad. This person supposidly has a happy life, and has a million and one reasons to be happy. There are people with clinical depression who are married, who have a nice house, a nice job, who have loving kids. Since no one can see what situation could possibly be causing this depression, it is assumed that problem is that there is something wrong with the brain. Studies show that those suffering from this depression lack neurotransmitters that are associated with the sense of well being.

Current medications can help the one suffering experience that sense of well being again.

The truth is however, these medications are temporary effects. They are like a bandaid being laid over a wound. The bandaid protects the wound from air, from dirt, from bacteria that can cuase more pain. Thus, the skin gets to heal faster. However, the bandaid itself is not the cure to a wound or has anything to do with why the wound is there.

The biggest problem I see with these medications associated with depression, as well as other diseases, is that medication has a very greedy agenda. And that agenda is to keep you on medication so that greedy ass companies can continue taking your money.

Doctors and scientists alike are so damn greedy these days, they don't really care about finding true cures to our diseases. They just find medications. If that happy pill truly was a cure for depression, the one suffering would only need to take it ONCE. Just ONCE, ever. And its gone, over with. But no, instead, they become dependent, even to the point where they truly believe they can never feel happiness without a pill. Which is I think is a damn shame and an INSTULT to those suffering.

I think the reason why we have yet to find the true cure to long term depression is becuase of our point of view of what depression is. For so long, we have carried the idea that depression is caused by an outside influence, and if its not, therefore something is 'wrong' with someones brain. However, at the same time, scientists admit they do not have a clear answer to SITUATTIONAL depression to begin with, the teeny-pooper depression that is. Part of the reason why there is no true answer to situational depression is becuase two people can be suffering from the SAME situation, but that doesnt mean they both will suffer from it.

Two teenage girls can both be dumped by their boyfriend. But one suffers from a 'situational' depression. The other doesn't. Why? If its NOT the situation that is causing situational depression, then, what IS? And if we don't have the answers to situational depression, how can we expect to have the answers for long term clinical depression? Or rather, how can we assume they are so different, and being caused by such different reasons? It is recognized that bad situations CAN make clinical depression worse.

Some other problems in the depression bubble - females can suffer from depression MONTHLY outside of situations. The down in the dumps feeling can be an effect of the menstruation cycle. At the same time, to further complicate this bubble, another group of females can suffer from EXTREME HAPPINESS during their menstruation cycle instead of feeling down in the dumps. These females can have an extreme energetic high, even if their house is falling apart, or roaches are crawling all over their food.









............... what if infact, the situation has NOTHING to do with depression of any form to begin with, but merely a factor that can spin it out of control???


I want to concider some other factors. A sense of well-being. Happiness. Health. Stress. Psychological reinforcement, and the temporary chemical imbalance in temporary depression.

If you look at teenagers who suffer from a temporary depression, and adults who suffer from long-term depression, there is something that is lacking in both people - a healthy sense of well being. In the case of the long term depression, we just simply assume its the lack of neurotransmitters. A healthy sense of well being includes respecting yourself and loving yourself. A lot of teenagers fall into temporary depression, especially when someone does them wrong, becuase they lack the self-love to pull themselves out of it. This is also why, a lot of people who are very optimistic almost sickeningly never suffer from temporary depression as the teenage EMO'r does. Why? While people think optimistic people are people who turn a blind eye from bad situations, thats not true. Many are right in the middle of it. Many can be poor. Many can have abusive parents. The reason why they do not however suffer from depression as often as other teenagers is a simple reason - they love themselves so much that they believe they deserve to be happy. This belief isnt just surface, its rooted in their subconscious, deeeeeply rooted. Their subconscious therefore always finds that not loving themself, which includes being misreble, is a crime against nature.

Where as the EMOing teenager, deep in their subconscious can have lack of security, lack of self respect, and lack of self-love. Deeep deeep down their subconscious craves for someone elses love or approval. This is a HUUUGE problem which leads to teen suicide. The truth is, no ones love can substitute for self love.

Next I want to talk about the happy factor. The biggest argument supporting clinical depression is that the one suffering has a 'happy' life. They can be married, have a nice car, have kids and so on, GREAT job. They can be living the american dream. BIG DEAL, WHO CARES! This is the biggest and flawest argument ever. why? Becuase a true sense of well-being has NOTHING to do with your situation. Every human being deserves to be happy regardless of what they have. This however is strange topic for western society *which has sooooo many depressed people*. In the western society happiness and fullfillment is attained through material goods and ownership - even if that ownership is the ownership of another human being such as a wife or kids.

The idea that someone can be 'single' or even living alone as an adult and be truly happy is a foreign concept, becuase the western concept of happiness is about ownership. However, there are many singles who can testify how happy they are NOT living the american dream.
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And to further go on the idea of happiness, look at the east. Which is why I have this in the philosophy section. There are sooo many people in the east who are happy, and yet they dont even own a TV!! So how can we use OUR western definition of happiness *ownership* as absolute truth that there is something wrong with someones brain if they aren't happy in the american dream?

I want you now to concider Stress. Stress kills people. Stress is silent. Stress virtually has no set of defined symptons. Its symptons can be more or less no different from depression. Its symptons are physical, psycological, mental, emotional. Stress makes you feel like shit. Stress overwhelms you to the point where you can't function properly. Teenagers feel a lot of stress, especially from the demands of school. Like temporary depression, teenagers often get a temporary stress episode depending on the time of year.

However, the difference between a teeanger and an adult is summer vacation. Summer vacation relieves a lot of stress from the school year. Adults do not have vacation. The truth is adults can live with stress, EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES FOR YEARS. I repeat, they can live with stress EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIFE for YEARS. Where is the stress coming from? From life. Westerners over work themselves unhealthily. And the work of the 'happy' american is not done when they get home. Becuase now there is work to do at home. You can have stress right now, and not even realize it, mostly becuase you have been suffering from stress for so long. But studies show, it is a disease in that it kills. Stress can kill you, and it causes symptons related to depression.

I want you to realize, its americans who live the american dream who suffer from Stress THE MOST. Lazy slobs living in their parents basement are not the ones who suffer from stress.

Stress is largely over-looked from the medical field is a valid disease, in that Stress affects not just your mind, but physical health. Since the symptons are so complicated and spread out, no single drug can cure it. At the same time, the one suffering from stress is perfectly sane - therapy is not needed.

In other words, on the OUTSIDE, the one suffering from Stress can be living a perfectly HAPPY life. Yet realize it can cuase symptons of depression. Put this in with the fact that doctors shoove pills down your throats for money, and you can be on the happy pill bandwagon when really your only problem was you needed a little vacation from life.

The next factor is health. Health IS related to depression, and it is related to stress. What we eat influences us so much, more than people are willing to admit. Your diet CAN and DOES influence how you feel. Studies show that people who feel horrible, are not eating as healthy as they can. While I am not saying diet is the reason for depression *far from it* I am saying an american diet can be a huge factor. If you have ever eaten a frozen meal JUST ONCE. Youve have introduced a whole lot of weird things normally not found on the human diet.

But if diet is a factor, why is it some americans suffer severely from diet and others dont seem to? With health I want to bring up other known problems. Diabetes and allergies. The strange thing about allergies is, you can be born with it. But you can also develop an allergy to just about ANYTHING at ANY POINT in your life. The strange thing about diabetes is, you can be born with, but you can develop diabetes at ANY POINT in your life. People turn a blind eye at this reality. We tend to think diseases are caught two ways. One, genetics, and two - a foregn invasion via a virus. The idea that we can develop a disease however, without a viral invasion is something were not thinking about. We turn a blind eye on it. What does it mean if humans can develop a disease, without foreign invasion, at any point in their life, doing what everyone else does? Well hell, it means our lives are simply not healthy and others are more sensitive to this. Breast cancer is aslo a reality of this. And it also means we know shit about genetics and how psychology plays into it. How does a 40 year old obiese SUDDENLY develop an allergy to chicken?? I hope you can see, that deep down the 40 year old women began to associate obiesity with chicken.

Thats the truth we dont want to admit. We human beings have some how developed diseases and have made them permenant in our genetics just by believing it is permenant. Look at all the diseases humans can suffer from now? Do you really believe each one was already in our genetics when we first walked the earth? You can to an extent, make a disease permenant by never curing it. It can be passed down to the next generation. This is why if YOUR parents have mental issues, you can have them too. We are not recognizing that depression, like diabetes and allergies is developed during a persons lifetime. And, there are OUTSIDE as well as INTERNAL factors to why. Not just one or the other. Its both.

My stupid long argument is coming to its end soon!

I want to talk about pyschological reinforcement. And part of the reason why this is in philosophy and not extended discussion is my mind reinforcement brings up ideas that are brought up by the Secret. The idea that what you percieve and believe becomes your reality. Here with clinical depression we are telling the ones suffering several things. One. They are living a happy life. Two. A happy life defines a healthy sense of well being. Three. There is something wrong with their brain. Four. Becuase something is wrong with their brain *versus the world* they can never be happy unless they take these drugs for the rest of their life. Five. The fact that once upon a time they knew happiness WITHOUT the drugs is not important and entirely irrelevent to the truth about how depression is developed.

I hope you can see how in terms of the Secret this leads to DISASTER. We are actually implementing condracitory ideas into a persons head, having them accept it as true, therefore it becomes the truth becuase we do create our own realities. We leave them NO ROOM to question that maybe its not their brain. That maybe their life isnt as happy as it seems. We leave them no room to discover if it is a problem with their sense of well being at its core, lack of self-love, which western society really doesnt care whether or not you love yourself - since it cant make money out of it.

This brings me to my last argument of turning a blinds eye on depression. Remember how with temporary depression, so classic with teens, that there was a chemical imbalance in their brain also? It was temporary though, and assumed that it was the outcome of temporary situations of their life. Although the mechanics of HOW an event leads to an imbalance of the brain is a mystery, the point is something caused it.

Now we have clinical depression, with lacking neurotransmitters. SOMETHING caused it. The idea that we have all accepted, that they just disappear on their own is as silly as it is to accept to that leprekuns magically made them disappear. I guarantee you, even if we were to open someones brain and give them the necessary neurotransmitters, they would just DISAPPEAR all over again. I mean that fact that out of control emotions has NOTHING to do with out of control chemical reactions right? *rolls eyes* just like a lacking sense of self-being has NOTHING to do with a lacking of neurotransmitters for a sense of self-being *rolls eyes*. If we are soooo willing to accept that with temporary depression, outside factors causing bad emotions also displays a chemical imbalance, why is it soooooo strange to think that some outside factor causing a lack of self-being can display a lack of neurotransmitters in the brain? and that a lack of self-being stems from the subconscious which is why a drug can not change it? nooo?? I guess not???





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I am not saying I know what the problem is. I have no idea! I see soo many factors really. I am not saying that those suffering simply 'cheer up'. If it turns out its actually cuased by a dietary problem, like diabetes, thats entirely unhelpful. I am not saying that its wrong to take medications. Any form of a bandaid is helpful and can prevent worse scenarios.

I am saying however, that it is MORALLY WRONG to just assume that a bandaid is a cure. We truly do not know what is causing it. Western science has not offered a cure becuase it is content with all the money it is making off these sad people it does not care if they are suffering