Depressed For A Reason

In a recent Huffington Post article the author discusses a number of recent publications about evolutionary psychologists who argue that depression may well serve an evolutionary problem solving purpose.

At the core of this theory is the concept that rumination, the deep periods of thought experienced during depression, act as a way of gathering thoughts, learning from mistakes and identifying the source of the psychological pain and working through it. Therefore cognitive behavioral and problem solving therapies may simply accelerate a natural process to bring about an end to a depressive episode. In short, if these theories are correct, people become depressed for a reason and the depression is our body's way of trying to help us solve the cause of the emotional and/or psychological wound.

Which is all well and good but, having found myself thrown into a depressive episode of my own in the last couple of weeks, knowing these feelings may be an evolutionary mechanism for problem solving is little help in actually solving the problem in the here-and-now. Feeling apathetic, lethargic, low-energy, low-appetite, and stuck musing about all of life's problems just doesn't really seem to help solve anything. Sure thinking about a problem really hard may provide some useful insights and solutions but it can also just be a major downer. Even once a solution is identified it is one thing to figure out a possible solution and another entirely to make it happen, which is not exactly easy when one is already feeling apathetic and lethargic.

Ultimately what these theories seem to suggest is that medication is not the be-all-end-all solution but merely masks the symptoms of an underlying crisis-period within an individual's psychology. At the least medication should be combined with cognitive behavioral and problem solving therapies to identify what caused the depressive episode, solve it and make sure it does not happen again, all while perhaps using medication to ameliorate the worst of the symptoms. A multi-faceted approach to mental health I suppose you could say. 

I suppose that maybe the best thing that could come out of this new work is that it might help to unravel the aura of shame around depression. It might shift popular perception from depression as a rare thing suffered by the mentally ill to something that probably affects all of us at some point or other in our lives. If a few more people stop hiding and seek therapy and treatment as a result of these studies then that is no bad thing.