Читать книгу Understanding the Depressions - Wyn Bramley - Страница 5

What Causes

“The Depressions”?

Who falls prey to them and why? Are they inherited or acquired? Are they associated with intelligence, social or educational factors? Are certain personalities – artists, ambitious types, grumpy characters maybe – more susceptible than others?

The short answer is that there appears to be no isolated single determinant, except perhaps in the cases of severe and recurrent Depression or bipolar illness, where a personal and/or pronounced family history make clear that genes must dominate, whatever other factors may be involved. When, how and why those genetic tendencies become actualities, however, begs further research. Are incidents already primed to “go off” no matter what, like an alarm clock; or might there be predictors that, once identified, could mitigate an attack, or alert us sooner to an impending one?

Neither do profiles exist, boxes of personal characteristics to tick, that will neatly slot you into the different types of Depression you are likely to suffer, though there are indices, likelihoods. These types (chapters 4 and 5) are in any case sketches not portraits. Anyone of any intelligence, personality or background, whatever their genes, can be affected by mood disorder. Though adverse circumstances such as bereavement, poverty, redundancy might contribute to or worsen an already negative outlook, they’re not single explanatory causes. The picture is more complex than that.

It may be more useful to look at the Depressions – from the littlest ‘d’ to the biggest ‘D’ – from a dynamic rather than a causative point of view, the word dynamism referring to a field of interplaying forces. A simple diagram can illustrate how many features within and without the individual can interact with each other in countless combinations and in constant movement to produce the state of mind (and body!) we know as Depression. The symptoms themselves will vary, wax and wane, according to the unique distribution of those features and which of them are being stimulated, charged if you like, in that especial person at a specific point in time. “Causes” are lifeless, abstract things: this diagram illustrates potent forces that move around in a person all the time, hence the possibilities for getting worse and (hallelujah!) for getting better.