Maps and Mirrors

I've been thinking about depression a lot lately. OK, I'm pretty much thinking about it all the time in the way anyone with a chronic condition would, but recently I've been thinking about things I feel like writing down. Surely one of the joys of medication changes, whee!

A little while ago I saw someone mentioning the links between depression and creativity again. This crops up pretty frequently with some people insisting their creativity has been greatly enhanced by their depression and some people insisting that depression sucks their creative potential dry.

To me this illustrates what I think is one of the biggest misconceptions about depression, even shared by some of the people who suffer from it: that depression is just one thing, that it is only a single set of symptoms and that everyone who suffers from depression suffers in the same way. That's just not accurate.

Depression can mean periods of crippling sadness, but it can also result in uncontrollable strong emotions of a wide variety, or the inability to feel any strong emotions. It can affect the same person differently at different times. It can affect people differently depending on whether or not they suffer chronic depression, how severe their depression is, at what point in there life they first experience it, or a variety of other factors.

Even understanding the basics of this I still need to reassess from time to time. When my doctor would ask about my energy levels I would tell her they were fine, but the truth was I was only thinking in terms of physical energy. What I was having difficulty identifying was that I was suffering from a kind of mental fatigue that among other things made it hard for me to make choices, to put myself in situations that would involve interacting with other people, or even at times to read a book. Even after I had a suspicion of what was going on I kept forgetting to talk to my doctor about it, which began to make me feel like I was in a science fiction story (or an episode of House) where I was possessed by some parasite that would do whatever it took to keep from being dislodged. It also might have been related to my deep-seated problems with asking for help that requires medication, or my tendency to think of these kinds of symptoms as shameful personal faults, but I think it mostly pointed to one of the really frustrating aspects of depression, that it can be so difficult to identify the precise nature of your problem while you are still experiencing it.

Thankfully I was able to be open enough with my doctor about how much trouble I was in that she was able to point out to me that I was in trouble. As I mentioned earlier, this has involved a change in medication that at the moment seems to be very helpful. But I do wonder how long that will last, and how long it will be next time before I'm able to say that I need more help.

I am really loving the Marvel Noir series. I haven't been picking up the original runs but I have the collected editions of Spiderman Noir and X-Men Noir and Wolverine Noir should be shipping soon. I'm also really looking forward to Daredevil Noir next month. So far the stories have been fantastic with their commitment to the period and the art has been top-notch, and (as long as I'm paying Amazon prices, damn me) I don't mind paying for the hardbacks.

I'll tell you though, X-Men Noir had some bite to it. A lot of the story concerned eugenics and the related ideas that people can be born bad and can have "bad blood". It's incredibly appropriate for recasting an X-Men story during that time period but still unpleasant to read about. It can be easy to forget how prevalent those attitudes were during that time period, even with J.K. Rowling reminding us. A lot of people believed it and it led to a lot of horrible things being considered acceptable. The sad truth is that too many people still believe it.

I was horrified several years ago to read an interview with Dean Koontz in which he made it very clear that he believed aberrant behavior was solely a factor of genetics, with environment playing no role whatsoever. His rationale for this is that he was horribly abused by his father and it had no ill effects on him, though he and his wife decided not to have children because according to him these things tend to skip a generation. I feel more pity towards him than anger, but I can't help but wonder about the attitudes he's influencing through his writing. I mean, what's the point of getting children out of bad situations if it's not going to make any difference? What's the point in addressing abuse or poverty or drug use or any of those things if if won't change anything?

Science has given us a better understanding of the fact that genetics does in fact play a role, but it's more in terms of vulnerability, a stronger likelihood that an abusive environment will have a disastrous result. As we tend to hear pretty often these days, genetics loads the gun but environment pulls the trigger. Or as one scientist studying the brain development of abused children put it, it's not surprising that some abused children become serial killers; what's surprising is that they all don't.

I believe very strongly that if we could guarantee that every child was loved and safe we'd solve a lot more problems than most people realize. Is that an impossible task? Most certainly. But that doesn't mean it should be an impossible goal.