Against Depression
(Peter D. Kramer)
In "Against Depression,? psychiatrist Peter Kramer expands the hypothesis he first presented in his 1993 work ?Listening to Prozac.? Depression is an overly glorified state of human existence. Our culture claims to be dedicated to the pursuit of happiness while embracing the state of melancholy and depression. If drugs can provide permanent, societal relief from the disease of depression, asks Kramer, why not go for it?
Kramer rails against the idea that depression is an indicator of a great sensitivity to the true nature of the world, and states that too many of our idea of beauty, civics, wisdom, and religion are based upon a mood disorder that, in this new age, can be treated by pharmacology.
Kramer dreams of a world that has rid itself of the pest of depression. He dismisses the criticism that he may be trying to cure the Western world of its innate and necessary resistance to typical ?bourgeois satisfactions.? Apathy, he argues, is not the opposite of depression and melancholia. Resilience is. And what greater good could we all be doing if we were more resilient?
According to Kramer?s hypothesis, there will soon come a day in which we cannot imagine the world without antidepressants and neuroprotectants. It would be like imagining psychology without Freud?s theory of the unconscious.
Depression, states Kramer, is a disease like any other, sometimes corrosive and brain-damaging. Kramer likens it to a stuck switch, which may be caused by a traumatic event or situation, but continues to function in a dysfunctional way, time making it worse rather than better. As an enlightened society, we should seek to eradicate it like any other disease. Currently, antidepressants such as Prozac are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). In the future, pharmacological responses to depression may do even more. According to Peter Kramer, we should be welcoming this future with open arms.
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