Why depression is not just a you problem

If your brain chemistry is altered, is it still you?

Sometimes it is, like when you fall in love.

Sometimes, it is not. For example, when you do drugs or become non compos mentis from stress. This is still partially you, but a version so different that it could very well exist in a parallel universe. You don’t remember what you do. You don’t attribute your actions and emotions to yourself, even if other people do recognize you. Sometimes, we joke about versions of ourselves like a drunk Joe and a sober Joe.

As a society, we accept that when someone’s brain chemistry is severely altered, they are not themselves. So in my case, if I’m constantly taking medicine that alters my brain chemistry, am I me? What I mean is, how much of what I think and feel is really me? Is it a non-depressed me or some changed me?

Having taken antidepressants for the most conscious years of my life, I’d say that the medicine really changed me in an unnatural way. This state of complete calmness and emotional stillness was not a healthy happy version of me. I almost could not experience traditionally negative emotions like sadness, fear, guilt, or anxiety. And while these emotions are unpleasant to experience, they are healthy. What’s not healthy is the absolute nocturnal state I was in and how I reacted to heartbreaking events like death, war, or the pandemic. I felt indifferent and optimistic.

Apparently, my negative emotions were also the main source of my creativity, dedication, and rich emotions. When I get angry, I work hard. When I am sad, I write. When I am anxious, I draw and paint. When I’m on antidepressants, I literally just watch TV.

Despite this, the antidepressant experience gave me a glance at what it feels like to be a semi-normal human who is joyful and optimistic 80% of the time. Someone who doesn’t cry and has nothing specific to say when someone asks, “How are you?” Someone completely boring yet happy.

My point is definitely not to say “Stop taking antidepressants, be sad, and stay creative.” No. Depression is extremely hard, and I haven’t even had the most severe depression. I know such people: they force themselves to get up every morning. They feel a crazy amount of sadness, anger, frustration, and pain. They struggle with constant nightmares, hallucinations, and emotional instability.

And the world just tells them: “It sounds like a you problem, bro.”

When someone gets depressed, our society treats the individual only, hardly ever spreading the treatment upon even their closest family. Because of individualism and, ultimately, capitalism, when someone is depressed, we do everything to get them to normal urgently so that they go back to work. We do not consider the family, community, and social issues that lead the person to depression.

This approach is totally wrong. While we explore ridiculous depression causes like sugar consumption and brain damage, depression is still on the rise. The causes are trivial: lack of communities and personal relationships, isolation of the city and district structure, and literal global warming.

Of course, there is no Big Pharma conspiracy aimed at concealing these depression causes and making more young people around the world medicate their brains. The reason for our search for individual depression causes is how psychology works as a science. Individual cause-and-effect experiments are just simpler.

See, it would be extremely hard to test if a green and accessible city makes you happier. Yes, people in Sweden are happier than people in Denver. However, it could be because of anything! Wages, better food, absence of Trump... You can’t prove anything.

To prove a cause-and-effect relationship, scientists would need to place a group of healthy people into a depression-provoking environment to see what happens. Such experiments are expensive, time-consuming, and have too many interfering variables.

Even if such research was conducted at scale, we might not be able to put its results to use. Our society is so big and complex that it's really hard to fix. Many try — and become depressed in the process.

Finally, the same system that causes depression offers the cure: some expensive drugs from the 1950s with many side effects. Take the pill, shut up, and keep smiling.

So that when next time someone asks you, “How are you?”

You thoughtlessly reply, “Good, how are you?”