Reasons for depression

What are the Reasons for depression?

Looking at the reasons for depression can help us in a number of ways. On the one hand we can learn to understand and have greater compassion for people who are suffering with this condition at the moment and on the other hand we can get a better understanding as to what we need to do in order to heal this condition and come back to emotional balance again. There has been much written about the reasons for depression but what I want to do here to look at some conventional theory and then look some ideas that you don’t hear very often about the reasons for depression. Ultimately the more information and understanding we have about this condition the better in my opinion, because knowledge in power and in this the power we have the tools to enable ourselves to get free from this painful emotional state.

1)      The chemical argument

Although traditional medicine does not completely understand depression it tends to favour the argument that depression is caused by some kind of chemical imbalance in the brain. This chemical imbalance may be due to a genetic disposition but the result is that it tends to make some people more vulnerable to depression. It’s hard to prove a theory such as this and it must be said that certain people do indeed react well to anti-depressant treatments that claim to address this chemical imbalance issue. There are people however, who don’t get the same effect from anti-depressants so the universal aspects of this theory would be open to question. I can’t help thinking that having the reasons for depression being solely related to a chemical process provides the doctors with a very convenient solution to depression and the drug companies with a very profitable theory. Different professionals in the field have their own opinions here too as Wayne Goodman, chairman of the US Food and drug administration says that the understanding of depression from a serotonin/chemical imbalance perspective is a useful method for understanding depression but not one he uses in his own practise.

2)      Life events

Sometimes the reasons for depression are attributed to different events that happen in a person’s life that lead to a depressive episode. The most common ones sited are things like a death a loved, divorce or some traumatic upheaval that leads the person to go into a state of sadness that they find difficult to get out of. Reasons for depression such as these are commonly cited and accepted reasons for depression but less talked about and understood is the idea of trauma from childhood causing depression. As humans we spend a large amount of years in a developmental stage where we are very vulnerable to being overcome emotionally when something traumatic happens. These traumatic energies can become trapped inside of us and can lead to depression further along down the line when the stressed emotional charges become troublesome. There is plenty of evidence out there to support the idea that depression is related to life events with one study showing that something as seemingly simple as building a relationship with a child can be something that can lead to mood disorders in women (O’hara, Lewis, Schlechte and Varner 1991)

3)      What we like doing

One of the other reasons for depression that is talked about less than others is when people do not find what they truly love to do in life but spend their days doing various tasks that are meaningless to them and have no joy. When this happens it’s easy for us to feel sad and depressed in life find that it holds no meaning for us other than the hum drum of daily life existence. According to work by Jackie Calming, depression may simply be the related to the “call of the soul”.

4)      Unrealistic expectations

Another cause of depression that is rarely touched upon centres on how we perceive the world and how our perception of what happens to us affects the way we feel. Sometimes for one reason or another we may develop unrealistic expectations of what the world should look like and when our reality does not meet this expectation we may feel sad about our lives. A good example of this is perfectionism. According to Mc Grew and Hill 2009, the pursuit a perfectionism can lead to psychological disorders such a depression, thus I think it must be considered one of the reasons for depression.

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