There is something wrong with a society that consumes more SSRI's than Tylenol and lists suicide as the fastest growing cause of death. That society hums along to lines like "happiness is the truth" and "do what makes you happy" but can't actually find any joy. We are sick. Billions of dollars are spent seeking the cure, but almost none to find the cause. What is making us so sad?
One of the biggest problems with mental illness is that it's something of a chameleon. People with chemical imbalances don't exhibit any behaviors that don't occur in healthy people. Everyone has bad days. People mourn losses. People have sleepless nights. People get caught in negative thought cycles. People even find themselves in situations where suicide seems like the only alternative (like the guy in my city who's suicide attempt followed the discovery of twenty years and more million dollars of fraud, embezzlement and ponzi scheme behaviors). The things that help those people also help people with dysthymia (long term depressive disorders) at least to some degree AND vice versa.
As Matt Walsh recently pointed out, a lot of the growth in depression is simply because people are living sad lives. They are looking for happiness in all the wrong places. Sex has replaced relationships. Offense has replaced charity. Addiction has replaced self control. Entitlement has replaced contribution. Facebook communities have replaced face-to-face communities. Things have replaced people. Self has replaced God. These are all fools gold. They are just shiny objects. They won't make you happy anymore than pyrite will make you wealthy.
If you are surrounded by spiritual pyrite, despair is a normal emotion, not a disease. The good news is, you can throw it away and find real gold. Focus on the well-being of others and you will find it in yourself. Accomplish things that are hard for you. Stop abusing substances (for some of you this may require outside help, and that's ok). Be the kind of friend, spouse, employee, etc, that you would like to have. Remove the phrase, "I deserve," from your vocabulary. Pray. Find a community of people you can shake hands with. They will bring you the sunlight you were trying to find in neon signs.
Unless they don't. I believe that lifestyle changes that don't touch your mood are a really good indicator that you have a physical problem. When I'm in a depressive trough, I can buy a few minutes of peace with a selfless act, but then I'm right back in the dark and the chaos. I've learned over the years not to retroactively find a trigger for my panic attacks but they are still physically painful and exhausting. And I was always going to have these problems. Like my mother before me and her mother before her. No one knows the exact genes responsible for these problems but if they ever find them I'll show you mine. Depression, mania, addiction, anxiety issues and panic attacks pepper my family like confetti at a New Year's parade. Psychoactive drugs have saved us a lot of funerals, divorces and jail time.
There are still environmental issues at play. The more "crises" that are in my life, the more frequent my panic attacks. Everyone's defines crisis a little differently, but every deadline, criticism, phone call, startle, unexpected project, dropped dish, bill and siren triggers the fight or flight system to some degree. Running and hitting are almost never appropriate responses anymore, so the chemicals that help with those things don't finish their natural cycle. The human adrenal system is ill-equipped for the modern world. Mine is shot. Meds take me from feeling like I was just chased around the block by a grizzly several times a day to once a week or so. Those are mostly kind of random, but every startle has the potential to trigger the avalanche.
Modern life, even a good one, is full of artificial crises and short on meaningful activities. Most of us never see the things we help produce and are constantly bombarded with criticism. Way too many of us work at desks on phones and computers. It's a recipe for destroying your neurotransmitter system. If I was born with a straight up bad gene, how many people are born with a weak gene? A system that would work fine in a agrarian society where most crisis situations actually call for fight or flight is vulnerable in an office. I have to believe that long term abuse of the adrenal system can cause permanent damage. We know intense events can (PTSD).
If we want to be cured of the epidemic of mental illness, we need a three pronged approach. We need to stop chasing neon lights and teach our kids to recognize real gold and not be fooled by everything that glitters. We need to look at the way we live and work and recognize the real damage we do to our emotional health. We need to learn how to better distinguish between natural emotional response and mental illness so we can help sufferers get the correct treatment. None of these things are cheap or easy. But cheap and easy are a huge part of what got us here in the first place.
