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…)

The most obvious reason is if you do not want to explore thoughts and feelings. Sometimes, for purely personal reasons, people do not want to explore or choose to change, and sometimes people respond to the pressure of the norm of their culture. In England it is not quite culturally acceptable to see a psychiatrist or psychotherapist or to explore feelings; this stigma often inhibits people who are, underneath, very willing to do so. In America it is perfectly acceptable to see a psychotherapist, and someone might see one who, underneath, had no interest in change at all. (more…)