Depression In The Culture

Written by Tony Schirtzinger, MSSW, CICSW

Self-Therapy For People Who ENJOY Learning About Themselves

Professionals refer to ongoing, mild depression as "dysthymic disorder."

People who do not know the jargon tend to say much clearer things like:
"I just feel blah all the time."
"I'm sick and tired of how my life is going."
"I'm tired and everyone says I'm grouchy."
"I don't have much motivation lately."
"I'm not even interested in pleasure anymore."

Before the late 1960's and early 70's, people who were mildly depressed were almost ignored. Sufferers were essentially told to stop complaining and live with it because we didn't know what to do about it.

But in the 70's we began to see that the more people expressed their anger the less depressed they were!

This led to many treatment strategies which emphasized that anger is good and natural and that expressing it is vital to our emotional health.

But some people stayed depressed, no matter how much anger they expressed. Why?

OVERLAPPING ANGER AND EARLY CONDITIONING

The cause for chronic, mild depression is 'overlapping anger.'

People stay depressed because they face so many anger inducing situations in daily life that they can't get over the last thing that made them angry before the next thing comes along!

We can easily see how these people would have been chronically depressed:

• Those who worked in sweatshops early in the century.
• The starving poor during the depression.
• African-Americans in many situations throughout the century.
• "War widows" in the 40's.
• "Housebound housewives" in the 50's.
• Frightened citizens of all ages during the 60's and 70's.

We don't work in sweatshops. We aren't living during economic depression. Unless we live in a terribly violent neighborhood, we don't have to fear losing loved ones through war. Even bigotry - against women, blacks, and in all it's forms, is much less severe than in the past.

When we look back on current years, how will we explain all this chronic depression?

I think we will understand that we got depressed because we were like kids in a candy store!

We were usually able to find work but we worried about increasing our income and we worked way too hard!

We were able to afford luxuries, but we couldn't decide how much was enough!

We got depressed because we overvalued work and play, and undervalued rest.

Some things I've actually heard from the chronically depressed people I've met:

• "Sometimes I only work a little over 50 hours most weeks."
• "I can't be happy until I've socked away my first million."
• "My wife and I only have the two cars, but at least they are recent models."
• "My career is all I've got!"

Most frequently heard, and the most telling of all: "We don't have time for each other anymore. We're even too tired to make love."

The people who had plenty of good reasons to be depressed in past years were our parents and grandparents!

For them, depression was normal! (A natural response to a life of overlapping anger.)