I was asked to host the Firedoglake book salon this evening. I hope you'll join us.
It's at 5PM Eastern Time Zone and is for anyone who wants to learn more about the epidemic of depression in the United States, or who is just feeling some holiday blues.
If you're hurting, if you live in the United States, you're not alone.
Here's a sobering fact. The rate of depression in the U.S. has increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years. Unfortunately, the U.S. mental health system is largely part of the problem for failing to confront the societal sources of despair and for promoting simplistic therapies of doubtful value.
The book we're going to be discussing is SURVIVING AMERICA'S DEPRSSSION EPIDEMIC by Bruce Levine.
Because I’m someone incapable of getting instant gratification from the great American pastime — wielding a maxed-out credit card and buying-buying-buying stuff — I’m most interested in exploring what Bruce Levine, in his brilliant new book SURVIVING AMERICA’S DEPRESSION EPIDEMIC: How to Find Moral, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy, calls the "the societal sources of despair," as he attributes much of our national malaise to a "not unreasonable" response to the pressures of corporate authoritarianism and "community malnourishment."
Dr. Levine explains that "standard mental health treatments routinely ignore the depressing effects of an extreme consumer culture," and it’s surely no understatement to label the United States as the leading extreme consumer society. What did our government ask of us after 9/11? To sacrifice? No. To spend? Yes. And we happily complied.
Since reading SURVIVING AMERICA’S DEPRESSION EPIDEMIC I’m beginning to understand the causes of my angst and why I periodically say to anyone who will listen, "I’m just not made for this country."
The other day, I read in a New York newspaper that the sports announcer Bob Costas spent 11 million dollars on an apartment. In our country, this is an act that we glorify. Could someone tell me what this man contributes to society? Very little, I’d say. Indeed, maybe nothing. Even worse, when you place such profligacy against the reality that half the population of the planet earth lives on less than two dollars a day; well, to me, that falls into the category of "depraved." Far from being uplifting, information about overpaid sports announcers in multimillion dollar apartments both depresses and makes me angry.
We live in the most acquisitive of times, in the most acquisitive nation on earth, and God pity those of us who fail to find spiritual, psychic, or emotional solace from the great American pastime, Shop ‘Til You Drop. A pastime which, not-so-parenthetically, has left the United States with an economy-devastating zero savings rate. But this is something for a different book salon.
I’m convinced that shopping/spending/buying is a means of dulling the intense psychic distress of being an American citizen in 2007 — nearly 2008. Let’s be straight, as Dr. Levine suggests, it’s not easy living in George Bush’s America.
I’m not a scholar of depression. Thankfully, I’ve never had to grapple with it, though I am very close to several people who struggle with depression every day. And I can tell you from watching them, it’s a daily battle. What fascinates me about Dr. Levine’s book is that it approaches the American epidemic of depression from an entirely new perspective. In an interview, he discussed the relationship between mental well-being and politics, which again is what I find most relevant to the psychic crises faced by millions of Americans.
"Depression is highly associated with the experience of hopelessness and helplessness, and politics is all about power. In genuine democracy, people don’t merely get to vote but instead they have a real sense that they actually have an impact on their society. When you are voting, year after year, for the lesser-of-two-evils, neither of whom you support and both of whom are in the pocket of corporations and wealthy individuals, you don’t experience an y real political power. Politics is all about power, and depression is largely about powerlessness."
We're also going to discuss the "medicalization" of ordinary life, which is rightfully described as disease-mongering. The medical-pharmaceutical-industrial complex is dramatically widening the definition of treatable illness in order to expand markets for those who sell and deliver treatments and drugs.
There is, for example, the big business of protecting drug patents: Patents allow drug makers the exclusive manufacturing rights for 20 years or more before competitors can market generic versions. To protect their patents and profits, the drug industry "evergreens" or reformulates a product just before it goes off patent by claiming some new formulation such as a time-release version, or by combining it with another existing drug, or by marketing it for another "illness" or condition ("restless leg syndrome" anyone?), or even claiming a patent on an inactive ingredient. A minor change extends a patent and a product’s profits for at least another three years.
All of this is another huge problem in the United States. Spend one hour watching television and count the number of pharmaceutical commercials which conclude with "Ask your doctor if X is right for you." More often than not, X is probably not right for you, but your doctor, who doesn’t want to lose you as a patient, will happily comply with your request for another drug for another disease-mongered illness.
I could go on and on.
Please join us. 5PM today at the book salon on Firedoglake.