>Not quite sure of your point here, Doug. Depression
>has a biochemical basis if materialism is true, so
>you'd expect the brains of depressed people to behave
>different from those of others.
>
>And while it is true that depression often has
>situation occasions and standing situation causes,
>clinical depression is different from ordinary sadness
>or even grief caused by loss or misfortune. It will
>often be triggered by causes too minor to produce
>feelings that dark, or last long after the situational
>cause has disappeared. That's on the one hand.
>
>The other hand is that in a great many cases,
>antidepressants actual work to improve people's lives.
>They can be, literally, lifesavers, since depression
>and suicide (especially manic depression and suicide)
>are strongly correlated. (A quarter of untreated
>diagnosed manic deppressives commit suicide. Half
>attempt it.)
What's vulgar about biochem explanations of psychological disorders is that they assume that the chemicals are the cause - that once you've identified some chemical configuration or process, you've hit the bedrock first cause. But what if the chemicals themselves are an effect, a reflection of environmental influences? Or what if the chem configuration interacts with a particular set of environmental influeces to give rise to depression? And I don't mean just personal history - Carl's right that capitalism causes depression. And I'll bet that the anomic, individualistic American kind is more depressogenic than others. If you're life is fucked, it's *your* fault! Just pull up your socks, pick up a self-help book, and get on with it.
Personal history and social structures are also materialist explanations. They're just more complicated ones.
And yes, the drugs "work" to a certain extent. But as the conclusion of the article pointed out, the relapse rate is higher than with cognitive-behavioral therapy.
Doug