I believe that there is such a thing as depression, and that it can be devastating. I also believe that as a culture, we have taken it to an entirely new level. The word has snuck into our vocabulary, and is often overused in even that sense."She's depressed because the boy she likes asked someone else to the dance." No, she's probably just a little sad about it, and would get over it normally in just a few days. I think part of the problem with labeling people as depressed, whether done casually or diagnosed, is that it actually makes people feel worse about their situation than before they had that label.
Having worked for Hospice for a few years, I've seen people that have every right to be depressed, but aren't, and I've seen people labeled as depressed who most likely aren't. When someone is ill and grieving their upcoming death, or a family member is upset over a fatal illness of a loved one, that's probably not depression. It's just a normal grieving reaction, and the grieving process lasts a long time. Yet even before anything else is done or even spoken about, many of these people find themselves slapped with a label of depression and a bottle- or two, or three, of antidepressants. What ever happened to teaching people coping skills?
Gone are the days of doctors telling people to vacation in the country or on the ocean to relieve stress, and the days when a good friend would drag you out of the house when you were sitting there moping about. I wonder, sometimes, how it was that people even lived for the thousands of years before antidepressants. I mean, maybe it is as rough as people say in this day and age, but what about the days of the plague, the days of slavery, the eras of constant warfare? If that was today, 95% of them would be handed a bottle of pills and sent on their way, but in their day and age they learned to live and cope with things we couldn't even imagine today.
Adults are depressed. Kids are depressed. Teenagers and the elderly are almost always depressed. When I went through a rough few months sorting out finishing college, struggling to work through it, and being unhappy with my job, half of the people I knew wanted to put me on medication. I got through it, just as I knew I would- but you know what? Being told over and over again that you are depressed IS depressing.
I do believe that there are people truly in need of medication and treatment for depression. These people have been afflicted for a long time, cannot cope with daily life, do not care about themselves or anything else, do not take care of their homes or their hygiene, and may be suicidal. For some, it truly is an issue- perhaps a chemical imbalance or the like, and these people will most likely benefit from the use of medication. Yet for most of the population, this is not the case. Emotions are normal, we all go through rough patches, we all feel sad or discouraged at times. But for most of us, medication is not the answer.
For most of us, human interaction, sunlight, a few changes in our personal lives, a little more activity, some faith or personal insight, or a change in scenery is enough to get us out of our slumps. Society has become lazy, and medical diagnoses and a pill or two is the easy way out. Sadly, it has also become the way of much of our society that the diagnosis of depression goes around and around, and adds to the problem more than it helps as depression becomes an excuse as well as an affliction.
If someone is a victim of what might be depression, they should seek help. But that help can come in many forms, and many of them are simpler and less costly than medical treatment for depression. If only we could get doctors to buy in to some of the things that our predecessors have known for years- instead of just taking out that little script pad and writing out an order for a pill to make everything better.