With an ongoing war in Iraq, a serial killer on the loose, looming terrorist attacks and millions dying around the world of diseases without known cures, it’s no small feat we aren’t all paralyzed by fear and sadness.
As if the apocalyptic overtones of Operation Iraqi Freedom weren’t enough to stop us dead in our tracks, we still have to go to class, take tests, work and continue breathing all at the same time.
Take a moment to realize how things have changed. We live in a far different world than the one in which we were raised. There are no kids playing in the streets, as I did wholly unsupervised for hours on end. Women can’t walk from their cars to their houses without fearing for their lives. The idea of nightly family dinners has given way to ambition, late hours on the job and the seemingly endless pursuit of the American dream, whatever that is. It seems as though we are islands of individuals rather than communities of families and friends, separated from anything familiar in the midst of everything uncertain.
Everybody locks their doors, even in the safest neighborhoods. If only momentarily unsupervised, cars are kept under lock and key. Faith in our fellow man is a thing of the past. According to the FBI, crime has fallen more than 15 percent since 1994, but do you feel safer? Back in the day, only thugs carried guns. Nowadays, Grandma Sue down the block is packin’ heat.
All told, we live in a sad state of affairs. For many people, that is exactly what has happened. They are sad, overwhelmed by life. They feel helpless and unable to change anything while being bombarded with images … images of bombs falling on a people who would gleefully welcome liberty without brutal destruction, images of snipers shooting people as they walk out of malls. All of these images are taking a tremendous toll that most don’t consider. Their consequence? Rampant depression.
Depression is a serious illness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the third leading cause of death in people between the ages of 15 and 24, with the incidence tripling from 1952 to 1995. More teenagers and young adults died in 1999 from suicide than from cancer, heart disease, AIDS, birth defects, stroke and chronic lung disease combined.
Our society’s reaction to the dilemma of treating this unfortunate illness: a pill. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, spending on antidepressants represents 11.8 percent ($5 billion) of the total increase in national drug expenditures from 1993 to 1998. The Institute for Socioeconomic Studies reports that national spending on antidepressants increased 399 percent from 1993 to 2000, with a 20.9 percent increase in 2001 alone. Rather than a concerned, critical inquiry into its underlying causes, this disease has been reduced to a chemical reaction.
In the April 2000 edition of The Family Therapy Networker, an article outlined this paradigm shift in treatment. “There was a time when therapists, and much of our larger culture, saw depression and other human troubles as complex conditions of mind and heart, influenced by many subtle inner and outer forces. But in the last decade, a vast intellectual and emotional sea change has taken place. We now inhabit a culture where many people hold the view that their emotional pain is ‘biochemical’ and can be cured by simply taking a pill.”
It is time to go back to the basics. Biotechnology has its place, but clinicians should treat folks with less chemicals and more talk therapy. A recent research project by the National Institute of Mental Health concluded that talk therapy had narrowly outperformed drug therapy. However, in the 18 months following the study, people who had taken part in talk therapy sustained their gains much better and relapsed far less than those given drug treatment. These results were bolstered by a long-running study of the American Psychiatric Association that concluded in 2002 with similar results.
The saddening condition of our society has taken its toll — depression affects millions. It is time to stop consuming all these pills (as if we don’t passively ingest enough chemicals anyway) and take it back to the basics. Talk therapy and a genuine concern for friends and family goes much farther than drug treatment for this unfortunate, often debilitating, illness.
Back to Basics
March 24, 2003