«DEPRESSION»

       Moods are an everyday part of the human experience. We all know sadness, but to some of us our image of depression is that thing which inspires artists to achieve immortality. We know that singers who are depressed wail “the Blues”; poets wring their pale hands in anguish and artists languish in garrets and eat very little. Dürer’s Melancholia depicts inscrutable magical formulae, making depression look mystical and interesting, whilst writers such as Kafka wander endlessly in and out of castles in wild despair.

These are wistfully beautiful and inspiring images when we filter them through our romantic image of depression, but they do not begin to describe the world of the person locked up in the bleak world of clinical depression. Here there is no life, no art, no inspiration. The world is colourless; sleep and memory are disturbed and hopelessness becomes a constant companion whilst fatigue and thoughts of worthlessness strike like vampires to suck pleasure and meaning from life.

Many factors can contribute to bringing about a state of depression. Variables include our life experiences and the particular way we process these. It is not easy for the depressed person to move forward and advice by friends and relatives to “snap out of it”, however well meaning, is rarely useful.

Studies indicate that a combination of Medication and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) are probably the most efficacious ways of dealing with clinical depression. CBT therapists believe that it is not a life-event on its own which triggers the mood, but rather it is our personal interpretation of that event which leads to its impact on our mood. Of course there are some events, such as the death of a loved one, which provoke deep grief in everybody. But in less clear-cut cases there is an ambiguous situation and onto this we project our own meanings. Thus our belief system conditions our expectations of certain happenings. We then assess a situation in terms of these and this generates certain thoughts in us. These thoughts in turn give rise to feelings. Thus, for example if I have a belief system which makes me take excessive responsibility for the happenings in the world around me, then I am likely to see every issue as one in which I “should” act dutifully. Thus inevitably I will feel guilty of failure and guilt feelings will follow. “Should” statements are just one of a list of cognitive distortions which govern our ways of interpreting the environment. Others include All-or-nothing thinking, Overgeneralisations, Mental filters, Disqualifying the positives, Jumping to conclusions, Magnifying or minimising and Emotional reasoning.

Once we can identify the ways in which we distort the events of our world we can develop strategies to combat these thoughts which undermine us and impact so negatively on our moods. Depression so often leads to passivity and an inability to move but slowly we can wriggle free from the grip of inactivity and start to “be” again. Activity is important, even if, as experts recommend, we have to “fake it until we make it”.

Mind Matters is a regular Times column by Pamela Glyn, a Howick-based psychologist. Tel/Fax: 535-2224. Email: glynpsy@pl.net Web site: www.glyn-psychology.co.nz