Depression

"As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth."

"I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed."

"Depression is known to be caused by a deficit of certain neurochemicals or neurotransmitters, especially norepinephrine and serotonin."

"So what could be so useful about depression? Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time."

"Analysis requires a lot of uninterrupted thought, and depression coordinates many changes in the body to help people analyze their problems without getting distracted."Depression is creating a situation and believing you can't get out of it.""

"But depression is nature’s way of telling you that you’ve got complex social problems that the mind is intent on solving. Therapies should try to encourage depressive rumination rather than try to stop it, and they should focus on trying to help people solve the problems that trigger their bouts of depression. (There are several effective therapies that focus on just this.) It is also essential, in instances where there is resistance to discussing ruminations, that the therapist try to identify and dismantle those barriers."

"Though modern therapies exhort you to act against your passions (compulsions), claiming health and integration lies in that direction, you've learned that delving more fully into your pain, anger, despair, depression will move you through them to the other side, where you can use their energy to heal."

"The solution to your depression lies en esa cueva oscura [in this dark cave] and a deeper integration of your psyche."

"The soul uses everything to further its own making. … States which disrupt the smooth flow (complacency) of life are exactly what propel the soul to do its work: make soul, increase consciousness of itself. Our greatest disappointments and painful experiences—if we can make meaning out of them—can lead us toward becoming more of who we are."

"What, therefore, is the cause of your condition? What lies at the root of your malaise (as the Latins call it)? What leads to your sense of physical ill and to the gloom and depression with which you greet the world? Just the glamour of preoccupation— an intense preoccupation with yourself. If I should call this attitude "self-pity," will you accept it and use your intelligent mind to reason yourself out of your impasse? p. 493"

"Right motive and a clear vision of the sources of action are still imperative needs of yours. They will lead to right activity, truthful thought and right speech. But you have made progress, my brother, and have no cause for depression or to waste time in regret over the past. The only regret that is justifiable is based on failure to learn the lessons of failure. You, however, are learning. p. 605"

"None are so desolate but something dear, Dearer than self, possesses or possess'd A thought, and claims the homage of a tear."

"Depression is seductive: it offends and teases, frightens you and draws you in, tempting you with its promise of sweet oblivion, then overwhelming you with a nearly sexual power, squirming past your defenses, dissolving your will, invading the tired spirit so utterly that it becomes difficult to recall that you ever lived without it...or to imagine that you might live that way again. With all the guile of Satan himself, depression persuades you that its invasion was all your own idea, that you wanted it all along. It fogs the part of the brain that reasons, that knows right and wrong. It captures you with its warm, guilty, hateful pleasures, and, worst of all, it becomes familiar. All at once, you find yourself in thrall to the very thing that most terrifies you. Your work slides, your friendships slide, your marriage slides, but you scarcely notice: to be depressed is to be half in love with disaster."

"Desolate—Life is so dreary and desolate— Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle, Yet with itself every soul standeth single, Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan— Holding and having its brief exultation— Making its lonesome and low lamentation— Fighting its terrible conflicts alone."

"I am cross and depressed, and people bore me with their excessive attentions. I can't breathe, I can't work; I feel alone, alone, alone, although I am surrounded. There are a whole lot of ladies, 70 to 80 year-old lords, but no young folk: they are all out shooting. One can't get out of doors because it has been raining and blowing for several days."

"The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape."

"My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise."

"Better a handful with peaceful mind, than two handfuls with toil and worry of spirit."

"Eros conquers depression. It delivers us from the inferno of the same to th atop, indeed the utopia, of the wholly other."

"In the last decade, neuroscience and psychiatric research has begun to unlock the brain’s secrets. We now know that mental illnesses – such as depression or schizophrenia – are not “moral weaknesses” or “imagined” but real diseases caused by abnormalities of brain structure and imbalances of chemicals in the brain."

"That terrible mood of depression of whether it’s any good or not is what is known as The Artist’s Reward."

"What? shall we accept good fortune at the hand of God, and shall we not accept misfortune as well?"

"In this arid and dark night wherein He sets the soul, God has restrained its concupiscence and curbed its desire so that the soul cannot feed upon any pleasure or sweetness of sense, whether from above or from below; and this He continues to do after such manner that the soul is subjected, reformed and repressed with respect to concupiscence and desire. It loses the strength of its passions and concupiscence and it becomes sterile, because it no longer consults its likings. Just as, when none is accustomed to take milk from the breast, the courses of the milk are dried up, so the desires of the soul are dried up. And besides these things there follow admirable benefits from this spiritual sobriety, for, when desire and concupiscence are quenched, the soul lives in spiritual tranquillity and peace; for, where desire and concupiscence reign not, there is no disturbance, but peace and consolation of God. ... Finally, inasmuch as the soul is now purged from the affections and desires of sense, it obtains liberty of spirit, whereby in ever greater degree it gains the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit. Here, too, it is wondrously delivered from the hands of its three enemies—devil, world and flesh; for, its pleasure and delight of sense being quenched with respect to all things, neither the devil nor the world nor sensuality has any arms or any strength wherewith to make war upon the spirit."

"He's turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he's miserable and depressed."

"In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. ... My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known—no wonder, then, that I return the love."

"Enough has been said about the light-mindedness of the age; it is high time, I think, to say a little about its depression. … The egotistical depression naturally fears on its own account and, like all depression, is self-indulgent in enjoyment. … Sympathetic depression is more distressing and also somewhat more noble; it fears itself for the sake of the other."

"Sometimes, my heart hurts so much, I beat it with my fists. I try to run. But you cannot run away from this. You cannot run from it. Wherever you run, it waits for you. Even when you think you have escaped it, it is there, where you have run to. It waits for you, to ambush you. It is like those vines called lianas, those tropical creepers that grow around you and strangle you. You cut off one branch, but there is another that grows. You leap over the wall of one ghetto and find yourself in another ghetto."

"Although previously the monoamine systems were considered to be responsible for the development of major depressive disorder (MDD), the available evidence to date does not support a direct causal relationship with MDD. There is no simple direct correlation of serotonin or norepinephrine levels in the brain and mood. In other words, after a half-century of research, the chemical-imbalance hypothesis as promulgated by the drug companies that manufacture SSRIs and other antidepressants is not only without clear and consistent support, but has been disproved by experimental evidence."

"A low serotonin level . . . can dry up the wellsprings of life’s happiness, withering a person’s interest in his existence and increasing the risk of depression and suicide."

"The First Truth is an assertion that all manifested life is sorrow, unless man knows how to live it... the Cause of Sorrow is always desire. If a man has no desires, if he is not striving for place or power or wealth, then he is equally tranquil whether the wealth or position comes or whether it goes. He remains unruffled and serene.... Being human, he will of course wish for this or that, but always mildly and gently, so that he does not allow himself to be disturbed... the Noble Eightfold Path... can be taken at all levels. The man in the world, even the uneducated man, can take it in its lowest aspects and find a way to peace and comfort through it. And yet the highest philosopher may also take it and interpret it at his level and learn very much from it."

"How often, for example, a young man desires affection from someone who cannot give it to him, who has it not to give! From such a desire as that comes often a great deal of sadness, jealousy and much other ill-feeling. You will say that such a desire is natural; undoubtedly it is, and affection which is returned is a great source of happiness. Yet if it cannot be returned, a man should have the strength to accept the situation, and not allow sorrow to be caused by the unsatisfied desire."

"The way nerves talk to each other, and communicate, is through the secretion of a chemical called a neurotransmitter, which stimulates the circuit to be activated. And when this regulation of chemical neurotransmission is disturbed, you have the alterations in the functions that those brain areas are supposed to, to mediate. So in a condition like depression, or mania, which occurs in bipolar disorder, you have a disturbance in the neurochemistry in the part of the brain that regulates emotion."

"No one is so accursed by fate, No one so utterly desolate, But some heart, though unknown, Responds unto his own."

"Abomination of desolation."

"Depression is the inability to construct a future."

"Buddhism’s famed Four Truths are called noble because they liberate us from suffering."

"Males with depressed roommates may end up feeling a bit blue themselves, according to Daniel Eisenberg, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Michigan who recently led a survey of 1,600 freshmen at two universities — a public one in the Midwest and a private one in the Northeast — on the issue. He found no such carryover for female students. This mood contagion seems to occur when the student keeps his feelings bottled up, Dr. Eisenberg says. And it’s only a mild case; roommates typically don’t develop their friends’ more serious conditions. “It’s not like you catch a mental-health cold,” he says. “People are resilient. They have a lot of coping strategies.”"

"The melancholic errs by turning against his own ego all the critical energies that ought to be directed outward against the powers of the status quo. ... Encouraged to draw all of his aggressions inward, away from the true source of discontent, the compliant melancholic sets up a superegoic agency harboring the ego’s own former rage against the object. ... Introjection becomes a form of deflected critique. Meanwhile, the berated and debased ego, busy with its own internal insufficiencies and thoroughly discouraged from political activism, is not only fully censured but also is fashioned into a willing, productive—if ultimately impotent—participant in society. ... The ideal subject under capitalism is melancholic."

"Am I a rock? What is it with me, that I am not stirred by this liquor and these songs?"

"What is the light that can dispel this ignorance of ours and remove all sorrows? A. The knowledge of the Four Noble Truths, as the Buddha called them... How can we escape the sufferings which result from unsatisfied desires and ignorant cravings? A. By complete conquest over, and destruction of, this eager thirst for life and its pleasures, which causes sorrow.... By following the Noble Eight-fold Path which the Buddha discovered and pointed out...The man who keeps these... in mind and follows them will be free from sorrow and ultimately reach salvation."

"Depressive or anxiety-ridden kids can't compete effectively against their peers. A tendency to low mood, and the spectrum of subordinate behaviour with which depression is associated, may have been genetically adaptive for low-status tribal weaklings on the African savannah. For depressive behaviour, contingently activated, can be a viable fallback strategy for stressed low-status tribal animals in an adverse social environment. This may explain why depressive disorders are so common. But a genetic predisposition to low spirits, or at least anything like unipolar depression as distinct from bipolarity, is not part of an optimal reproductive strategy for potential "winners". If intelligently engineered, a genetically enhanced sense of well-being is empowering. Its behavioural phenotypes are potentially far more adaptive than the predisposition to learned helplessness and behavioural despair characteristic of the depressive spectrum. So in the new reproductive era, pushy parents in particular are likely to shun depressive genotypes."

"Depressed or nominally euthymic people are easier for the authorities to control than exuberant life-lovers."

"Can you help me remember how to smile Make it somehow all seem worthwhile How on earth did I get so jaded Life's mystery seems so faded I can go where no one else can go I know what no one else knows Here I am just drownin' in the rain With a ticket for a runaway train."

"People here [in Congress] often think of depression as being sad; no matter what I tell other legislators, they don't know. They don't understand how it is emptiness, how it is a vast nothing."

"Because of the grave times, one should speak about the need for joy and of the terrible harm of any and all depression. Therefore I am quoting here a Discourse, useful for the entire group. "Even during the difficult days you know that strength issues from joy. I said long ago that 'joy is a special wisdom.' Verily so, because joy must be observed, discerned, and realized. Depressed people carry a cloud of miseries and woes. In this dark covering they cannot perceive joy. Because of this pall of sorrow people become blind and lose strength...They do not admit Our Help... As if no one ever told people about the harm of depression! Depressed people are said to be deprived of their share. Ponder these words. Who has deprived them of their inherent share? First of all they deprived themselves of any possibilities. They began their own destruction long ago. Discontent, malice, irritation cut off the path to joy. Dark thoughts deprived them of the source of strength. Selfhood prevented the discernment of joy. Egoism whispered, Joy lies only in personal gain. Thus the most fruitful joy was hidden behind ugly piles of depression. Those blinded by depression are the most pitiful of bipeds. (7 May 1938)"

"Helena Roerich, Letters II, (7 May 1938)"

"Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced. … It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it's a healthy feeling. It's a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different."

"My desolation does begin to make A better life."

"Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression."

"Living with depression is like trying to keep your balance while you dance with a goat — it is perfectly sane to prefer a partner with a better sense of balance."