Appendix (4): Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression

Good Mood

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Good Mood:
The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

Chapter 4

cont.

The word "repair" seems overly strong. The most important reason not to rely on drug therapy is that, in the words of one psychiatrist, "The drugs do not cure the illnesses; they control them."(11) As noted earlier, one long-term follow-up study shows that patients treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy in addition to drugs have few recurrences than do patients treated with drugs alone. (11.1 Miller, Norman, and Keitner, 1989)

There are also several other persuasive reasons why one should continue to seek psychological understanding of depression, and psychological methods for its treatment:

It is not clear in most cases whether depressed thinking caused the chemical imbalances, or the chemistry caused the depression. If the former is true, though drugs may help temporarily, is reasonable to expect a recurrence of the depression when drugs are stopped. If so, it seems more reasonable to attack the depression by working on the bad thinking as the first method, rather than by starting with drugs.
Physical treatment can have side-effects years after their use, as too many tragic examples such as improperly- prescribed birth-control pills and x-ray radiation have shown too well. Since there is an inherent unknown danger in the use of drugs, non-drug treatment that promises equal success must be preferable.
There are some immediate physically dangerous side- effects from the common anti-depressant drugs.(12)
There may be immediate mental side-effects destructive to creativeness and other thinking faculties, though there is little discussion of such side effects by such psychiatric drug enthusiasts. A reasonable conclusion drawn from the studies that have been made on this issue suggest that anti-depressant drugs reduce the creativity of some writers (and presumably, other artists) while increasing the creativity of others by enabling them to work. The crucial dosage is "delicate" and "complex", according to physicians who have studied the matter.(13)
Drugs do not work in some cases.
For at least some people the process of conquering depression without drugs can lead to valued states of ecstasy, self-knowledge, religious experience, and so on: Bertrand Russell is one such example:

The greatest happiness comes with the most complete possession of one's faculties. It is in the moments when the mind is most active and the fewest things are forgotten that the most intense joys are experienced. This indeed is one of the best touchstones of happiness. The happiness that requires intoxication of no matter what sort is a spurious and unsatisfying kind. The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties, and the fullest realization of the world in which we live.(14)

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