More Than A Chemical Imbalance – Why Depression Cannot Be Cured By Medication Alone

By Steve Taylor Ph.D

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

A few months ago a friend asked me for some advice about his father, who was suffering from depression. After finding out that his father spent most of his time indoors, watching television, I told my friend about ecotherapy, which investigates the therapeutic effects of contact with nature. As I informed my friend, there is a great deal of research showing that regular contact with nature — such as a daily walk in the park or countryside — can have a very beneficial effect on well-being. The research suggests that this can be just as effective against depression as medication or other forms of psychotherapy. So I asked my friend to encourage his father to get out of his house and go for a walk in his local park every day — or better still, go for walks in the countryside.

A couple of weeks later, my friend got back into contact to say that he had told his father’s doctor about my advice. The doctor had gotten angry and told my friend, “Your father has anillness! Would you tell a cancer patient to go for a walk in the countryside? Would that help their condition? Depression is an illness that has to be treated medically.”

It seems to me that this attitude to depression — or to any psychological condition — is simplistic, misleading and possibly even dangerous. This is not to say that brain chemistry isn’t involved in depression. But it’s certainly not the only factor.

All of the main fields in psychology interpret depression in different ways, and recommend different kinds of treatment or therapy, based on those interpretations. For example, while in psychobiology depression might be seen as a problem with brain’s serotonin reuptake system, in behaviourist terms, it might be seen as a habitual emotional response to negative events, perhaps learned from our parents. A humanistic psychologist might interpret it as the result of the frustration of basic human needs, and a blocking of the urge for development, or self-actualisation. A positive psychologist (or a cognitive therapist) might see it as the result of faulty thinking styles, a “script” of negative thoughts manifesting themselves as negative emotions. A social psychologist might see depression in environmental terms, as a reaction to an unfair society, to inequality and oppression. An ecopsychologist would see it as the result of lack of contact with our natural environment, while a transpersonal psychologist might see it as the result of a false identification with our superficial ego-selves, and the result of a sense of separateness from reality.

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Previous articles by Steve Taylor:

• Harmony of Being – Returning to Our True Nature
• Touching the Earth Again
• Transcending Time in Egoless States of Consciousness
• Transcendent Sexuality — How Sex Can Generate Higher States of Consciousness
• The Power Of Silence
• Happiness Comes from Giving and Helping, Not Buying and Having
• Empathy – The Power of Connection
• Transcending Human Madness
• If Women Ruled the World – Is a Matriarchal Society the Solution?
• Transpersonal Purpose and the Impulse for Spiritual Development
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