Depression
As I sit here on a cold, gray New England morning in the supposedly "merry" month of May, I think about several recent encounters I have had with depression. My own fleeting depression was recent. It was reactive, easy to pin down the source. Selling a house, floods in March, other complications. The upside was that I lost that nagging three pounds I am always wanting to shed at the belt line. Well, the causes of the depression have resolved. Things are moving along. My mood has bounced up and so have the three pounds on my belt line. I am a veteran of dealing with depression. I know its cycles all too well.
Others are less fortunate. Their depression is entrenched. Genetic biochemistry, deprived childhood, trauma...all of these can contribute to a primary, inner-sourced, depression, with which many people must struggle on a daily basis. The advent of anti-depressant drugs and their mass marketing by pharmaceutical corporations for huge profit has masked much of this depression in society. Frankly, these drugs are so over-prescribed now, that it is hard to know who is depressed and who isn't. The percentage of people with primary depression is rather low, but anti-depressants are handed out like candy by irresponsible doctors, spurred on by drug salesmen.
The great tragedy in this is that anti-depressant drugs all have serious side effects and limited efficacy. They were originally designed to work in concert with professional psychotherapy. The insurance companies took care of that. They basically gutted the payment mechanisms for cognitive and behavioral psychotherapy in favor of paying for the quick-fix drugs. So, in response, the medical profession transitioned away from therapy and into psychopharmacology, almost exclusively. After all, doctors in the U.S. seldom pass up a method for becoming richer. The slack has been absorbed by psychologists and social workers, whose work is poorly covered by most health insurance.
Frankly, Americans are over-medicated and under-treated. All the social networking sites in the world will not cure depression. In fact, I will speculate that their virtual nature and ease of access only increase real-time social isolation. The drugs eventually lose their effects and require changes and dose adjustments, all accompanied by physical, toxic side effects. The side effects then cause a whole new barrage of anxiety and depression. Yes, this is a serious, wide-spread American problem.
The health insurance companies are crying poverty. How is this possible? The hospitals are crying poverty. How is this possible? The pharmaceutical companies are bemoaning losses on drug research. How is this possible? It isn't. It is all bullshit. And, I think we are beginning to see the turn-around.
The good news is that some depressed people are turning their own depression around by getting in touch with their anger. The bed news is that this anger can be extremely volatile and unpredictable. I offer the recent riots in Thailand as an example of this volatility. In the U.S., our history of race riots has been suppressed, but I assure you they were quite real and not really that long ago.
Yes, I am suggesting that corporate America has profited from under-treating depression in the population in the hopes, perhaps, that it would ensure their political power and profits. Keeping people medicated and isolated from therapy groups or therapists is an effective way to temporarily squash dissent. After all, the group therapy movement, along with various self-actualization movements, in the 1960s could be credited with waking Americans from the materialist malaise of the 1950s. This fueled, at least in part, the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
The poor, who have not had access to anti-depressant drugs or therapy, have fallen behind even further in this aggressively materialistic period of the 1990s and early 2000s. Obesity rates have soared as they have eaten their way to some level of comfort. Corporate America has gladly sold them cheap foods filled with corn, soy and chemical additives. Obesity is a good way to keep people immobilized, mentally dulled and powerless.
If this exploitation of the American people for profits is not intentional, then why does corporate food manufacturing spend millions of dollars every year in Congress to prevent regulations which will end this decimation of American health? Why does the pharmaceutical industry do likewise? And, why would a health insurance industry, crying poverty, want to stay in business when the government proposed single-payer health care, which would end their misery?
Preliminary election results in recent primaries across the nation herald a change. Unfortunately, as I have said, the anger that arises out of depression without proper cognitive treatment is volatile and unpredictable. It often manifests itself in ways that are counterproductive for everyone. Ultimately all the people pay the price for the greed and corruption of the few who hold wealth and power.
One of the first interventions made in cognitive therapy for people with depression is the assertion that the depression will not last forever. As Americans awake from the depression of the last decade, in which they have been lulled to sleep by hollow materialism and propagandized nationalism, they will inevitably experience anger and frustration with their government and themselves. Hopefully, they will look to leaders who, like responsible healers, will advocate truly democratic change which is in the interest of the whole American family.
Others are less fortunate. Their depression is entrenched. Genetic biochemistry, deprived childhood, trauma...all of these can contribute to a primary, inner-sourced, depression, with which many people must struggle on a daily basis. The advent of anti-depressant drugs and their mass marketing by pharmaceutical corporations for huge profit has masked much of this depression in society. Frankly, these drugs are so over-prescribed now, that it is hard to know who is depressed and who isn't. The percentage of people with primary depression is rather low, but anti-depressants are handed out like candy by irresponsible doctors, spurred on by drug salesmen.
The great tragedy in this is that anti-depressant drugs all have serious side effects and limited efficacy. They were originally designed to work in concert with professional psychotherapy. The insurance companies took care of that. They basically gutted the payment mechanisms for cognitive and behavioral psychotherapy in favor of paying for the quick-fix drugs. So, in response, the medical profession transitioned away from therapy and into psychopharmacology, almost exclusively. After all, doctors in the U.S. seldom pass up a method for becoming richer. The slack has been absorbed by psychologists and social workers, whose work is poorly covered by most health insurance.
Frankly, Americans are over-medicated and under-treated. All the social networking sites in the world will not cure depression. In fact, I will speculate that their virtual nature and ease of access only increase real-time social isolation. The drugs eventually lose their effects and require changes and dose adjustments, all accompanied by physical, toxic side effects. The side effects then cause a whole new barrage of anxiety and depression. Yes, this is a serious, wide-spread American problem.
The health insurance companies are crying poverty. How is this possible? The hospitals are crying poverty. How is this possible? The pharmaceutical companies are bemoaning losses on drug research. How is this possible? It isn't. It is all bullshit. And, I think we are beginning to see the turn-around.
The good news is that some depressed people are turning their own depression around by getting in touch with their anger. The bed news is that this anger can be extremely volatile and unpredictable. I offer the recent riots in Thailand as an example of this volatility. In the U.S., our history of race riots has been suppressed, but I assure you they were quite real and not really that long ago.
Yes, I am suggesting that corporate America has profited from under-treating depression in the population in the hopes, perhaps, that it would ensure their political power and profits. Keeping people medicated and isolated from therapy groups or therapists is an effective way to temporarily squash dissent. After all, the group therapy movement, along with various self-actualization movements, in the 1960s could be credited with waking Americans from the materialist malaise of the 1950s. This fueled, at least in part, the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
The poor, who have not had access to anti-depressant drugs or therapy, have fallen behind even further in this aggressively materialistic period of the 1990s and early 2000s. Obesity rates have soared as they have eaten their way to some level of comfort. Corporate America has gladly sold them cheap foods filled with corn, soy and chemical additives. Obesity is a good way to keep people immobilized, mentally dulled and powerless.
If this exploitation of the American people for profits is not intentional, then why does corporate food manufacturing spend millions of dollars every year in Congress to prevent regulations which will end this decimation of American health? Why does the pharmaceutical industry do likewise? And, why would a health insurance industry, crying poverty, want to stay in business when the government proposed single-payer health care, which would end their misery?
Preliminary election results in recent primaries across the nation herald a change. Unfortunately, as I have said, the anger that arises out of depression without proper cognitive treatment is volatile and unpredictable. It often manifests itself in ways that are counterproductive for everyone. Ultimately all the people pay the price for the greed and corruption of the few who hold wealth and power.
One of the first interventions made in cognitive therapy for people with depression is the assertion that the depression will not last forever. As Americans awake from the depression of the last decade, in which they have been lulled to sleep by hollow materialism and propagandized nationalism, they will inevitably experience anger and frustration with their government and themselves. Hopefully, they will look to leaders who, like responsible healers, will advocate truly democratic change which is in the interest of the whole American family.
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