Taking the path of most
resistance
Oftentimes, sadness or grief is diagnosed
or rebranded as depression and as such
this term becomes a clinical bypass to
circumvent the examination and experience
of true feelings. A diagnosis provides the
supposed safe landing where we don’t have
to confront how we feel.
Saying we are depressed is easier than
acknowledging we are sad and subsequently
investigating its causes. We have been
taught to avoid the discomfort of that state.
Because we have been given shelter under
umbrella terms such as depression or
anxiety, we are given permission not to
explore what we might be truly feeling. We
squirm and wriggle out of confronting our
unexplored emotions because it hurts so
much. But sometimes we just have to sit in
it and wait it out. While the sun might not
come out for a long time, it will come out.
Dr Joanne Cacciatore, who suffered
the loss of her own child, has written
extensively on grief. Her seminal book
on loss, Bearing the Unbearable: Love,
Loss and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief,
provides no shortcuts to recovery and she
certainly doesn’t advocate diagnosing
or pathologising loss as many of her
colleagues do.Her aim is not to cure grief but rather
to accept and live with the pain, finding
ways to come to terms with the unbearable
discomfort. What other emotion could one
feel but inconsolable pain for the loss of
a child? There’s nothing medical about it.
In the 1950s, the American Psychiatric
Association devised a manual, commonly
called the DSM, which provided a
comprehensive list of all known mental
illnesses including depression, ascribing
both symptoms and treatments. However,
they didn’t know what do with bereavement
so they created what was called The Grief
Exception so that grief quite rightly would be
regarded as a “normal” reaction to loss.
But, by the fifth edition, this exclusion
was scrapped. Grief, the most human of
emotions, was in effect medicalised by
psychiatrists who redeployed it as a form
of depression. It could be argued these
clinicians sought to clinicalise the human
condition, reducing emotion to a medical
ailment that can be cured with a pill.
Now, in the US, a parent can be
diagnosed and prescribed antidepressants
within minutes of their child perishing.
This supposed medical progress comes
at the cruel expense of compassionate
understanding and healing.
In the animal world, bereavement is a
community event. If anyone has seen a David
Attenborough documentary on the family
and community structure of primates, big
cats or dolphins, loss is handled with great
empathy and mutual suffering by the group.
A mother elephant, upon losing her calf,
will stand over her child for hours, gently
goading it back to life. The wider family
consisting of aunts, cousins, brothers andin-laws supports the grieving mother until it
is time for the herd to move on. The mother
reluctantly moves with the herd, never failing
to look back at her fallen child.
Death is a social, sombre event and
grief is experienced in a deeply visceral and
heartrending way. There is a community to
support the distraught mother.
We no longer operate in herds and we
lack the social support our tribal ancestors
enjoyed. For many of us, loss doesn’t need
exclusively to pertain to death — it can be
the loss of a relationship, a job or home —
and is a very isolated, solitary experience.
How many people can you really call on in
times of dire need?Human intervention is the cure
We see more and more that everyday feelings
are being given a clinical moniker. No longer
can you feel lonely or despondent — no, you
must be depressed. Anxiety too has become
a dirty word when we all feel overwhelmed or
under pressure at times.
Anxiety and depression are real and some
of us experience it at acute or chronic levels,
but the solution to managing these so-called
conditions can often be myopic, uncreative
and far from holistic.
The seven-minute consultation has
meant a person’s problems have been
reduced to a medical issue rather than
a psychological or emotional state. Doctors
ask the question, “What’s the problem?”
rather than “What’s the cause of the
problem?” and then, more often than not,
a prescription is written.
Nowadays, a high proportion of
people are presenting to therapy already
taking antidepressants. This compares
unfavourably with even 10 years ago when
the numbers were much lower. Talking
therapies or even just social engagement
and support are running a very distant
second to the clinical approach, which can
be both cynical and formulaic. The human
condition is not taken into account.
We have always been social beings from
the time we conjured up fire and the ironic
thing is now more than ever we need real
connection, not connectivity, for survival.
Sharing a conversation over a cuppa is in fact
far more medicinal than popping a pill. A bear
hug can be the best antidepressant of all.
The World Health Organization in March
2018 stated that mental health was not
an isolated issue merely based on the
individual’s state of mind. Instead, it is
a social issue with predetermining factors
including genetics and sense of wellbeing
but also social and environmental factors.
Unlike our tribal ancestors, we no
longer live in tightly woven communities,
all looking out for each other; rather we
live mainly alone in homes cut off by four
walls where we have minimal contact
with our neighbours. Some people have
little or no meaningful contact with any Photography^ GettyImages“The idea you could
reduce depression to one
neurotransmitter is obviously
absurd. It has as much to
do with social connectedness
and social supports.”90 | wellbeing.com.au
mind
MEDICALISING EMOTIONS