Introducing "Depression, blogged" I: Why a word?

The title is “Depression, blogged.” I’ll get to why I decided on that in a post or two. But first I would like to draw special attention to the subtitle: “Notes and thoughts on a word, and on a condition.” Why a word, and why a condition? I represent depression as a word here because words have histories, and words have contexts. Likewise, depression has its own particular histories, and its own different meanings across different contexts. In contemporary American society, we tend to think of depression as a disease, or as a disorder. Moreover, we see it as one disease which replicates itself across different settings: Mary may have depression, Jake has it too, so does my neighbor – but these are in the end all instances of the same depression, repeated within different bodies. This provides the ground for standardized treatment: if in different people it’s the same thing, then the same medicine can treat different people. Although many people accept this view, it is very limited and exclusive. Depression is far from so homogenous, or so universally similar. It has its own particular histories, in different individual lives and in different individual contexts. For example, what we think of as “depression” differs greatly across history; indeed, over the course of Western civilization we find not only that interpretations of melancholia vary widely, but that the term ‘depression’ is largely absent. Likewise, in the contemporary world a great many languages do not include a word for ‘depression,’ whereas also in many cultures the malady is virtually absent and as such not culturally significant (although with the process of globalization, this situation is quickly changing). In fact, our current interpretations of depression and its associated medical treatment are, by comparison, rather new and unique, having originated in North America and Europe only in the past 100 years, or in the past 40-50 years if we consider the emergence of psychopharmaceutical treatments like antidepressants alongside efforts by psychiatrists to make the psychiatric model resemble more closely those of other medical disciplines.

I’m not saying that the medical view of depression is ‘wrong,’ only that it is one view among many (and it does have its uses); to stick to it exclusively only seriously hinders our ability to gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of depression as part of the human condition. Depression now is different from depression 300 years ago; depression in America is different from depression in Indonesia; depression in my life is different from depression in your life; and depression in my life now is different from depression in my life 15 years ago. And all of these are significant.