on depression
Music: Bon Iver: self-titled (2011)
A friend and colleague passed along a link to an interesting article in Scientific American about proposed revisions for the DSM-5, slated for publication in 2013. Currently, the manual specifies a two-month waiting period for the diagnosing the aggrieved with clinical depression. Grieving is a fact of life, something all of us have or will endure, and feelings of sadness after the passing of a loved one are generally recognized as "normal" from just about any perspective. The psychological community only deems a sadness persisting more than two months as a possible, clinical depression. The proposed revisions would lift this two-month test, making the treatment of depression possible to grievers almost immediately after the event of their loved-one's death.
The article is interesting and relevant to my personal life at the moment. I have been mourning my granny's death, and then more recently, the death of a dear friend's sister. As I said to a buddy recently smoking a pipe on my patio, "How have I been? Well, sad. I'm in a depression." At my age, I don't have any problem calling a thing what it is; if I'm depressed, I just say so. If I'm happy, I just say so. I name it. I'm depressed. Period. It's not despondency. It's not wanting to get out of bed. It's not the thought of razor blades. It's not having a desire to work or write or research or grade. It's just, so, . . meh.
Perhaps I use the word "depression" too immoderately, which is the core issue of the DSM controversy (for professionals, what's at stake in the revision is pharmaceutical profits---surprise!). Depression, in general, refers to an unwarranted sadness---a sadness that is deemed to be too profound for the exigency, either in depth or duration. Having been in long-term, loving relationships with the clinically depressed, I understand why the DSM defines the condition as it does; I've seen it.
Of course, in psychoanalytic theory depression is not always defined as a pathological condition; for Melanie Klein the "depressive position" is one in which the subject realizes others are autonomous wholes. One worries about harming others in such a position, and by working through depression one comes to a more ethical relationship to others. The lesson Klein teaches us is that depression is not bad, that being depressed my be instructive and goad one toward a more humane disposition toward other people.
Regardless, since I'm very clearly in a space of sadness---and because I'm wont to intellectualize my feelings as a way of working-through---I've been thinking a lot today about the difference between sadness and depression. Obviously the "two month" waiting period for diagnosing the first as really the second is completely arbitrary . . . but I want to say I side with those who resist the revision to the new edition of the DSM, and not on socialist grounds (viz., my objection to pharmaceutical capitalism). Mouring and grieving are inevitable, human experiences and we all must "deal." Enduring one's grief and pain is a good thing, crying is good, it allows one to experience an life that is largely unconscious most of the time. In dreams we encounter our mortality, often in terms of the nightmare. But rarely are we made to confront the raw emotion of death as a senseless inevitability. And I think that confrontation is good and necessary.
If we were only made to confront the fragility of life and the senselessness of death more often, perhaps Klein was right: we'd be more ethical people. We certainly wouldn't get so mad when that bad driver cuts us off on I-35.
Eh, I guess it comes down to the felt certitude that I don't want to die, and I don't want you to die either. That we both will go that way is reason enough to get depressed. But, depression is not always a bad thing. Yes, depression is frequently so miserable that it is a bad thing, and I very much want the depths of the clinical disorder cured. But I think what I mean to say is that sadness, in general, is a humanizing affect that we should not banish. There is even enjoyment in sadness, a kind of enjoyment that makes us be better toward one another.
I've noticed these past few weeks I've been the most moral, best version of myself in the wake of death; there's a reason for that. I'd like to be the grieving me toward others all the time, but without, you know, the grief.