10 Ways to fight depression

This is a small reflection on the latest social media craze: “10 tips to fight…”

On a purely subjective note...there is nothing that scares me more than a therapist with a list. Although I understand that we use lists to spatially organise complicated and chaotic subjects, it can be misleading as it implicitly implies that there is a sort of "road map" that a sufferer can follow to find their way out of depression

. This of course has nothing to do with the chaos of actually experiencing depression...and this has unfortunately become very popular in the social networks recently...10 ways to find happiness....15 ways to beat bipolar disorder....etc...

The idea of being able to "fight" depression implies that it is firstly fightable and secondly following these 10 easy steps one will be armed with the weapons with which to fight it. That of course leaves the proverbial ball of responsibility in the clients court and if they are unable to "fight" and indeed "defeat" depression, then there is something fundamentally wrong with them. Of course it is impossible to fight against depression as it doesn't exist as an object; we can’t see it, hear it or taste it, the only thing we see is people behaving in a depressed manner. 

As is the case with other “battles” against illness, it is often the economically privileged that are at an advantage..."I'm a famous person and read about how I won the battle against cancer/depression/drugs" which of course begs the question...what about those who didn't win the battle? What does that say about them? Didn't they try hard enough? Or maybe they got their just rewards for being working class, fat and poor.

So when we talk of "fighting" we must make sure that there is a level playing field and everybody has the same opportunities and access to resources. 

When we behave in a depressed manner we often feel incoherent with how we see ourselves and with what modern society demands of us...so we start to "fight" the depression. which invariably makes it worse...we are told that being depressed is weak, strong people fight it...but we don’t have the strength, the economic resources or the social support...but everywhere you look, every blog on the internet tells you how easy it is with 10 steps to "fight "beat" and "overcome" depression. This in itself feeds thoughts and feelings of inadequacy, helplessness and hopelessness.