Lifestyle Choices

If you have a history of depression in your family, statistically the chances are higher that you may be prone to periods of depression. How much of this correlation is hereditary and how much environmental cannot be answered quantitatively. Although there has been some dogmatic insistence on hereditary factors by geneticists, and on environmental factors by psychotherapists, most will at least agree that susceptibility to depression is affected by both heredity and by early environment, whatever the proportions. These influences weave a complicated and inextricable pattern: a depressed parent may pass on hereditary qualities of susceptibility to the children, but the children will also learn by copying the behaviour of their parent. Depression occurs much more frequently in certain types of personality, and personality is affected by hereditary factors, by copying parents and by reactions to the family environment. The family environment is affected by the general culture, which may be more or less depressive. (more…)

Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) is like banging a TV set when it does not work. However, the crudity of whamming a 100-volt electric shock through someone’s brain does not take away the fact that this technique has saved people’s lives when all else has failed. As with every new and seemingly successful physical treatment of mental ailments, such as tranquillizers and anti-depressants, ECT has a history of gross overuse. It has also been misused in some institutions as a form of control or punishment.

ECT produces a temporary epilepsy. It was started on the theory (later found to be untrue) that epilepsy and schizophrenia never co-exist. It was therefore used to treat schizophrenia but with no success beyond a significant placebo effect. However, the technique was also used on people in severe depressive states with incredible results. In a few weeks people who were expected to remain in hospital for months or even years were recovering from the blackest and whitest of depressions. (more…)