Depression, the stolen disorder

Depression, the stolen disorder

The dominant approach to depression – as a brain disease or cognitive bias – negates the depressed person’s experience of discord. This denial makes depressive disorder into a ‘stolen disorder’. That doesn’t mean that people should never use antidepressants, or that they should not try to restrain their negative thoughts with, say, the aid of cognitive behavioural therapy. It doesn’t deny either that someone’s unique, personal situation can be so stressful that it leads to a mental disorder. But when we talk of a ‘depression epidemic’ the source is something which is not unique – it is the way we are shaped by our culture: it is ‘depressogenic’, it makes people ‘sick’.

My research demonstrates that we have to situate the sources of depression much more outside than inside. That will not directly reduce the suffering of people who feel depressed, but hopefully it will make them less lonely. They are contending with a collective problem. They are not ‘mad’, on the contrary, perhaps they are just a little too realistic, because they suffer more than others from something disruptive about the way we presently live together.