Quotes & Sayings About Major Depression

Also, isolation leads to chronically lowered levels of the feel-good neurotransmitter serotonin. It is one of the bizarre ironies of major depression that being depressed causes people to withdraw from the most powerful antidepressant known - rich and varied social contact. However therein lies a rich lesson also - in some cases one of the quickest and most effective ways to reverse depression is to socialize. — James Lee

If I had to define a major depression in a single sentence, I would describe it as a genetic/neurochemical disorder requiring a strong environmental trigger whose characteristic manifestation is an inability to appreciate sunsets. — Robert M. Sapolsky

Whereas the structural trend toward increased inequality was gradual and went for a long time unobserved, the crises in the lives of the urban poor were public and dramatic. The new armies of the homeless that seemed suddenly to materialize in every major city in the early 1980s, sleeping in doorways, camped under elevated highways, spreading their temporary cardboard shelters over office tower heating grates, were a startling and disturbing sight. Not since the Depression had the least-advantaged Americans been so starkly visible to the rest. — Daniel T. Rodgers

No one wants to admit that they suffer from a mental illness, because of the stigma," I said. "Both of us suffer from major depression. He knows that I've been through a lot of the same things that he's going through now. — Patrick J. Kennedy

There's major depression, and then there's clinical depression. Major depression is what makes you jump off a bridge. I have clinical depression. I jump out of first story windows. It's the psychological equivalent of lying on a bed of rubber nails. — Doug Westberg

In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces. — Herbert Hoover

Mental health can be just as important as physical health - and major depression is one of the most commonly diagnosed mental illnesses. — Michael Greger

Depression in its major stages possesses no quickly available remedy: failure of alleviation is one of the most distressing factors of the disorder as it reveals itself to the victim, and one that helps situate it squarely in the category of grave diseases. — William Styron

The major motivation theories by which most men live can lead them only to depression and cynicism. — Abraham Maslow

The results of decades of neurotransmitter-depletion studies point to one inescapable conclusion: low levels or serotonin, norepinephrine or dopamine do not cause depression. here is how the authors of the most complete meta-analysis of serotonin-depletion studies summarized the data: Although previously the monoamine systems were considered to be responsible for the development of major depressive disorder (MDD), the available evidence to date does not support a direct causal relationship with MDD. There is no simple direct correlation of serotonin or norepinephrine levels in the brain and mood.' In other words, after a half-century of research, the chemical-imbalance hypothesis as promulgated by the drug companies that manufacture SSRIs and other antidepressants is not only with clear and consistent support, but has been disproved by experimental evidence. — Irving Kirsch

There is no common standard for education about diagnosis. Distinguishing between bipolar depression and major depressive disorder, for example, can be difficult, and mistakes are common. Misdiagnosis can be lethal. Medications that work well for some forms of depression induce agitation in others. — Kay Redfield Jamison

It baseball is an American institution and more lasting than some marriages, war, Supreme Court decisions and even major depressions — Art Rust Jr.

My depression had grown on me as that vine had conquered the oak; it had been a sucking thing that had wrapped itself around me, ugly and more alive than I. It had had a life of its own that bit by bit asphyxiated all of my life out of me. At the worst stage of major depression, I had moods that I knew were not my moods: they belonged to the depression, as surely as the leaves on that tree's high branches belonged to the vine. When I tried to think clearly about this, I felt that my mind was immured, that it couldn't expand in any direction. I knew that the sun was rising and setting, but little of its light reached me. I felt myself sagging under what was much stronger than I; first I could not use my ankles, and then I could not control my knees, and then my waist began to break under the strain, and then my shoulders turned in, and in the end I was compacted and fetal, depleted by this thing that was crushing me without holding me. — Andrew Solomon

There are days when I can hardly make it out of bed. I find it an effort to speak. I measure progress in steps, the next one and the next one, as far as the bathroom. These steps are major accomplishments. I focus on taking the cap off the toothpaste, getting the brush up to my mouth. I have difficulty lifting my arm to do even that. I feel I am without worth, that nothing I can do is of any value, least of all to myself. — Margaret Atwood

One crucial distinction between major depression and chronic depression is that, in the latter, one largely ceases to howl in protest that the world is hard or painful. Rather, one becomes accustomed to it, expecting such hardship and greeting it with, at best, a stoic determination. — Joshua Wolf Shenk

Most of you guys can't see the potential in a nervous breakdown. A real collapse. There's more chance of finding yourself in a major depression than there is in a bottle Prozac. — Keith Ablow

Naturally, it causes psychological harm as well; it shouldn't surprise you that a national survey of 24,000 workers found that men and women with few social ties were two to three times more likely to suffer from major depression than people with strong social bonds.9 When we enjoy strong social support, on the other hand, we can accomplish impressive feats of resilience, and even extend the length of our lives. One study found that people who received emotional support during the six months after a heart attack were three times more likely to survive.10 Another found that participating in a breast cancer support group actually doubled women's life expectancy post surgery.11 In fact, researchers have found that social support has as much effect on life expectancy as smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, and regular physical activity.12 — Shawn Achor

I had thought that when you feel your worst your tears flood, but the very worst pain is the arid pain of total violation that comes after the tears are all used up, the pain that stops up every space through which you once metered the world, or the world, you. This is the presence of major depression. — Andrew Solomon

Large numbers of under-capitalized banks were a recipe for financial instability, and panics were a regular feature of American economic life - most spectacularly in the Great Depression, when a major banking crisis was exacerbated rather than mitigated by a monetary authority that had been operational for little more than fifteen years. — Niall Ferguson

When I closed in "King Lear" I went into a period of depression for about three weeks, and every actor I've talked to who's ever played a major, major Shakespeare role has done this. — Frank Langella

There was another epidemic that was not talked about much, a silent scourge - the explosion of mental illness: major depression, psychosis, schizophrenia, manic-depression, personality disorders, grief response, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, etc. - on a scale none of us had ever witnessed. — Chinua Achebe

Avoidance therapy does not work. One major reason for that is because Avoidance Therapy (diversion, think yourself happy, positive affirmations) is predicated on the validity of 'Failure of Will.' Depression is not a choice. — Northern Adams

The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government. — Milton Friedman

Blame is the world's greatest excuse. It enables us to remain limited and small without feeling guilty. But there is a cost - the loss of our freedom. Also, the role of victim brings with it a self-perception of weakness, vulnerability, and helplessness, which are the major components of apathy and depression. — David R. Hawkins

Back in July 2003, he'd written them a long essay on the causes and consequences of what he took to be a likely housing crash: "Alan Greenspan assures us that home prices are not prone to bubbles - or major deflations - on any national scale," he'd said. "This is ridiculous, of course ... . In 1933, during the fourth year of the Great Depression, the United States found itself in the midst of a housing crisis that put housing starts at 10% of the level of 1925. Roughly half of all mortgage debt was in default. During the 1930s, housing prices collapsed nationwide by roughly 80%. — Michael Lewis

It's an unfortunate word, 'depression', because the illness has nothing to do with feeling sad, sadness is on the human palette. Depression is a whole other beast. It's when your old personality has left town and been replaced by a block of cement with black tar oozing through your veins and mind. This is when you can't decide whether to get a manicure or jump off a cliff. It's all the same. When I was institutionalised I sat on a chair unable to move for three months, frozen in fear. To take a shower was inconceivable. What made it tolerable was while I was inside, I found my tribe - my people. They understood and unlike those who don't suffer, never get bored of you asking if it will ever go away? They can talk medication all hours, day and night; heaven to my ears. — Ruby Wax

Economist Frederick Thayer has studied the history of our balanced-budget crusades and has come up with some depressing statistics. We have had six major depressions in our history (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929); all six of them followed sustained periods of reducing the national debt. We have had almost chronic deficits since the 1930s, and there has been no depression since then - the longest crash-free period in our history. — Molly Ivins

That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorror, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal - unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

I think there is universal agreement within the economics profession that the decline - the sharp decline in the quantity of money played a very major role in producing the Great Depression. — Milton Friedman

Terminally ill cancer patients who were put on a mechanical ventilator, given electrical defibrillation or chest compressions, or admitted, near death, to intensive care had a substantially worse quality of life in their last week than those who received no such interventions. And, six months after their death, their caregivers were three times as likely to suffer major depression. — Atul Gawande

If the spectrum linking everyday depression to Major Depression sometimes hinders understanding of it, it also offers an opportunity for empathy. Because almost everyone, at some point, experiences feelings of sadness, of hopelessness, of emptiness, not to mention lethargy and irritability. — Gayle Forman

Alan Greenspan assures us that home prices are not prone to bubbles - or major deflations - on any national scale," he'd said. "This is ridiculous, of course ... . In 1933, during the fourth year of the Great Depression, the United States found itself in the midst of a housing crisis that put housing starts at 10% of the level of 1925. Roughly half of all mortgage debt was in default. — Michael Lewis

The criteria of agency and ownership distinguish structural dissociation from other manifestations of insufficient integration such as intruding panic attacks in panic disorder or intrusions of negative cognitions in major depression. — Onno Van Der Hart

Increasingly economic historians can draw analogies between the development of the present crisis and the period between the two world wars, as well as the crisis of a century ago, which was associated with the so-called great depression of 1873-1895. The latter crisis resulted in the rise of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, but also the end of Pax Britannica, as Britain began its decline from world leadership in the face of challenges from Germany and the United States. The present world crisis seems to be spelling the beginning of the end of Pax Americana and may hold untold other major readjustments in the international division of labor and world power in store for the future. — Andre Gunder Frank

It is not pleasant to experience decay, to find yourself exposed to the ravages of an almost daily rain, and to know that you are turning into something feeble, that more and more of you will blow off with the first strong wind, making you less and less. Some people accumulate more emotional rust than others. Depression starts out insipid, fogs the days into a dull color, weakens ordinary actions until their clear shapes are obscured by the effort they require, leaves you tired and bored and self-obsessed- but you can get through all that. No happily, perhaps, but you can get through. No one has ever been able to define the collapse point that marks major depression, but when you get there, there's not much mistaking it. — Andrew Solomon

We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We're inheriting a situation - when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of those crises. — Lawrence Summers

To the contrary, they frequently desire only relief from the symptoms of their depression "so that things can be as they used to be." They do not know that things can no longer be "the way they used to be." But the unconscious knows. It is precisely because the unconscious in its wisdom knows that "the way things used to be" is no longer tenable or constructive that the process of growing and giving up is begun on an unconscious level and depression is experienced. As likely as not the patient will report, "I have no idea why I'm depressed" or will ascribe the depression to irrelevant factors. Since patients are not yet consciously willing or ready to recognize that the "old self" and "the way things used to be" are outdated, they are not aware that their depression is signaling that major change is required for successful and evolutionary adaptation. The — M. Scott Peck

All the way back in 1999, when I first stumbled upon the idea of a project tracking John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson and all the major Depression-era bank robbers, I thought the subject was too big to be a single book. Instead, with a friend's help, I pitched the idea as a miniseries to HBO. To my amazement, they bought it. — Bryan Burrough

The nature of capital was a major debate issue at the turn of the twentieth century because economist wanted to know how quickly the economy could adjust and recover from a depression. If capital were homogeneous and highly liquid, then the adjustment process should not take long and the economy could soon be back on its feet. But if capital were heterogeneous and not easily transferable to other uses, then the adjustment process could take much longer and it might take years for a nation to recover from a depression — Mark Skousen

Day zero, the disaster, the serious shock, the near self-destruction.
Day two, the suffering, the repentance, the depression, and the promises.
Day three, the recovery, the wall, some light, and the joy.
Day four, the strength, the resolution, the celebration, and the plan.
Day five, exercise to purify and strengthen, the first twinge, small and beaten.
Day six, many twinges, major twinges, the doubt, the questions, the boredom, the resentment, and the wall begins to crumble.
Day seven, off to buy booze. — Robert Black

Let us, just for a moment, look at the implications of that 'distress'. Severe depression affects more than 120 million people worldwide and more than 5 million in the UK. By 2020, according to the World Health Organisation, it will be one of the world's most debilitating conditions, second only to heart disease. Is that distress? Or is it a major illness? The danger in polite euphemisms is that they drive the condition underground. I constantly see people struggling with severe depression, clamping down on the pain so as not to bother anyone. I know how they minimise both themselves and the severity of their struggle. Mute, pale shadows, they are gagged by polite euphemisms and by misunderstanding. — Sally Brampton

There are scientists all around the world looking for the genes responsible for bipolar illness and major depression. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Two-thirds of the terminal cancer patients in the Coping with Cancer study reported having had no discussion with their doctors about their goals for end-of-life care, despite being, on average, just four months from death. But the third who did have discussions were far less likely to undergo cardiopulmonary resuscitation or be put on a ventilator or end up in an intensive care unit. Most of them enrolled in hospice. They suffered less, were physically more capable, and were better able, for a longer period, to interact with others. In addition, six months after these patients died, their family members were markedly less likely to experience persistent major depression. In other words, people who had substantive discussions with their doctor about their end-of-life preferences were far more likely to die at peace and in control of their situation and to spare their family anguish. — Atul Gawande

Though major depression is often associated with lethargy to the point of being frozen, many people with chronic depression not only work well but devote more energy to their vocation than to any other endeavor. — Joshua Wolf Shenk