This is the third in my series of articles on depression — my depression. They are written from a very personal perspective; they are my views of how I see things working and what it feels like on the inside. Your views and experiences may be vastly different. My views and experiences are not necessarily backed by scientific evidence or current medical opinion. These articles are not medical advice or treatment pathways. If you think you have a problem then you should talk to your primary care physician.

The medical profession generally characterise different types of depression by their causes and effects, and they may range from mild, through moderate to severe. (See, for instance, www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health-a-z/D/depression/.)
However pragmatically, over the years, I’ve come to realise that there seem to be two types of depression, which I have never heard voiced by a clinician. I’ll call them Dynamic Depression and Static Depression on the basis of what appears to help alleviate them. I’m not in a position to work out if the symptoms and/or causes are different although I suspect Dynamic Depression is at the milder end of the spectrum.
Dynamic Depression
This is the type of depression which everyone thinks you have, and which is the subject of every self-help book (and a lot of counselling) that I’ve encountered. The “cure” (which is how I characterise these two types) goes along the lines of “put on some brass band music, have a cold shower, think how blessed you are with everything you have going for you, and just get on with life”. Yeah, right. That may work for some people; probably those with low-grade depression who have a short-term problem. This is out of the book of “tell it like I want it to be and it’ll be that way” management. It is a fallacy which does nothing but con the brain — though that may of itself be valuable for some. It doesn’t work for me; it never has; and it may be why I’ve never succeeded with talking therapies.
Static Depression
Many years ago I read an article by a couple of medics who had looked at a small number of patients hospitalised with depression. Unfortunately I didn’t keep the article and I cannot now trace it, but this was the gist … They found that if these patients were given the standard treatment of drugs and compulsory occupational therapy they didn’t get better and sometimes got worse. Further they observed that all the patients wanted to do was to sit in the corner. So the medics allowed them to sit in the corner. And they found that as long as the occupational therapy was there, and visible to the patients, then allowing the patients to sit and vegetate meant they eventually started to get better; they eventually came out and joined in the occupational therapy and started to recover. The medics’ hypothesis was that this was because these patients were suffering from too much stress and change in their lives and they needed a prolonged period of stability, on their own terms, to recover.
This is what my depression is like. It is (at least in part) triggered by stress, lots of expectation and a high level of change. Which, I suspect, is why the “dynamic” approach doesn’t work on me.
Fortunately it is now recognised that change, especially, is a major contributor to depression. And change is why our society has increasing rates of depression — society is always chasing after “faster, better, cheaper”; there is no stability and no respite. It is becoming a major mental health problem, and the solution is not to keep popping happy pills.

To be continued …