Hi Friends,

The things that ail us the most, the pains we feel the most, the hurt that that tears through our soul and scars us more than anything else come from deep within. Most times, we don't lose anything, or have a disease in the body, yet we feel a sort of foreboding unhappiness within ; something that lurches straight into our mind, soul and body, so that we feel heavy; we can't carry ourselves, neither can we carry a smile. While this feeling is known to occur once in a blue moon for some people, for some other people (especially the melancholic folks like myself), it is a regular. Although I would personally tell you that this awful feeling caged within one's stomach is unexplainable in its own right, the psychologists have insisted in pinning it with a name; Depression. And I can't agree or disagree any less.

Image Source: Wikimedia Andrew Mason CC BY SA 3.0

At this point (especially not with the way I am feeling), I don't want to talk about depression as a term or a psychological condition that one could be rid of through some self-searching therapeutic prescriptions, I want to revel in it, extol it and see it as a scientific matter-of-fact, some discovery that is as old as time. By not focusing on the feeling of pain, degradation and loneliness, by not sinking in its destruction, by concretising the experience, not with fluid psychotherapeutic logic, but with scientific explanations, the pain might as well go away and all that would be left are shards of empty thoughts.

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The Sorcery in Depression

Image Source: Wikimedia - Author: Welcome Collection Gallery - License: CC BY 4.0

In most places around the world where culture controls the very basic lifestyle of the people, depression comes as a very strange phenomenon. That a person would be dissatisfied with life and be so drunken with a moodiness that can kill, has no name within their books. In fact, there is only one word to surmise issues ranging from mild depression to extreme mental conditions, and that word is madness. A person does not want to live life again, a person is not sociable and does not find the things other people do amusing, a person flaunts a disturbing gesture and suddenly, the person is MAD. Even worse, there are unfounded claims that these people have either been struck with these conditions by an enemy (human or spirit), or they are messengers of deific beings, and thus, should be revered!

Of course, these hold no relevance in present day scientific studies on depression and the likes. But then, they are quite amusing claims.

The Four Humours

• Blood
• Phlegm
• Yellow Bile
• Black Bile

Image Source: Wikimedia - Author: KVPD - Public Domain Licensed

I first heard of the four humours in school, but not in anyway related to science. It came as a further denunciation of a Renaissance form of comedy called the Comedy of Humour. Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and other such poets cum playwrights upon hearing about the nature of these humours and how they went on to determine the behavioural traits of individuals went ahead to build their characters and plot based on the humours. But they were less concerned about the synergy of these humours and they dwelt on its imbalance instead.

Although an old Greek ideology, the notion of the four humours form the oldest scientific discourse on depression. They are strong tenets in Hippocratic medicine. These humours are believed to be the agents of metabolism; the substances that constitute digestion itself. Accordingly, Blood stands at the top as AIR. Scientifically speaking, it is the red blood cell, the hemoglobin rich content that represents a good, healthy life. But as far as psychology and temperaments are concerned, Blood signifies the Sanguine humour.

Phlegm comes next in line. It literally signifies WATER.. Water here represents every clear fluid in the body, just as it is used to connote the phlegmatic mood. The yellow bile, FIRE, holds the Choleric to ransom; and the Black Bile, being another way of talking about the cold and dry EARTH, sums up the personality of the melancholy.

It follows that the blood makes one joyous and easily excitable; the phlegm promotes lethargy, sensitivity and quick emotional responses; Yellow Bile expectedly causes emotions of rage, irasciblilty, envy and the courage to follow a passion. While the black bile and melancholic substance makes one really withdrawns and pessimistic, it also keeps us in check, and helps us stay collected and rational. These humours, in having very different compositions, work together to keep us sane and balanced. The harmonious balance of these humours is what is called eucrasia.

Now, the Greek scientists maintained that it was the imbalance of these humours, called dyscrasia that caused an imbalanced, depressed and unstable mind. According to them, there was no way having a deficit of the humours or an excess wouldn't lead the mind to the gates of utter distress. Having a deficit of the blood and yellow bile, and an excess of the black bile and phlegm is said to cause a catastrophe of depression.

The truism of this has been contested over time but it is the fact that these Greek scientists did not let us in on a way to balance the humours that makes me distrustful of the theory. And oh, did I mention that our literary patrons were the ones that suggested that comedy and comic relief were the best way to help balance the humours, hence the comedy of humour.

The Biological Biography of Depression

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So with years passing and with technology advancing, depression has moved slightly from being an abstract phenomenon that is wildly speculated on to a mental condition that has been reasonably explored. At present, the different types of clinical depression have been identified and the root causes are being delineated.

Sigmund Freud and his league of psychotherapists like Carl Jung have subtly and directly addressed the root cause of depression as enunciated by the concepts of the unconscious, repression, sublimation, and the guilt complex. According to Freud, people suffer from depression when they feel guilty about something. This deed and guilt might have been repressed for a while and subjected to the element of sublimation. But on a final, inevitable outburst, depression sets in.

In a clinical research conducted in the University of Manchester by a group of professionals, with Dr. Roland Zahn as the lead researcher, it has been proven that the feeling of guilt over social acts condemned by the general public has triggered depression, in those prone to the condition. Through the use of functional Magnetic Imaging (FMRI), they were able to detect the part of the brain that linked the knowledge about social rightness to feelings of guilt especially in depression prone people. This, in this case, had everything to do with the anterior temporal lobe and the subgenual region of the brain.

However, on a more biological level, scientists have the hunch that a low level of seratonin in the body can lead to depression. Seratonin is the neurotransmitter in the body responsible for happiness and excitement. Being low on this can lead to depression. In confirming this, a number of depressed patients have been given drugs with seratonin in them, and some of these patients were said to recover.

And that's not all. It has also been discovered that hippocampus, the structure in the body responsible for affairs that concerns the memory and emotion, have shown to be irregularly and unusually smaller in depressed people. And the more depressed these people get, the smaller their hippocampuses. It is possible to grow the hippocampus with new neurons and cure the patients of their depression.

Clinical depression has also been affiliated with genetic causes. For whatever reason, a depressed parent can pass down depression to the child(Ren) just like every character trait. That's very uncanny, when I come to think of it. Although drugs have been sufficiently provided to combat depression, the most successful cases of those who overcame it have been known to take radical, psychological steps. And even while the drugs and psychological nurturing might work for some, it never works for so many other people.

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The Me I might Never Meet

Image Source: Wikimedia - Author: Vassil; Sculpture credit: Arc-en-Barrois CC BY SA 3.0 - something about this picture makes me feel there is dignity in sadness

Personally, I have come to discover that it is fighting off depression, trying so hard to be 'normal', to not drag other people into my gory cesspool of nihilism that makes things muddled up and hard enough. In making unrealistic attempts to stay above the suicidal thoughts, stop being extremely sad and live up to the smiles and laughter in the society, it's easy to forget that depression is less of a condition, and more of an identity. Yes, this identity is rather dark and abnormal, but 'abnormal' can be very relative, and acceptable. Accepting this identity, seeing it as not a cross to bear, but a part of me, makes it possible to deal with the part of the whole that can snuff life out of me. I find new, eccentric ways to deal with my sadness, and keep up with happiness. These ways might be strange but they make me happy, they keep me sane in my own right.

Yes, I might never meet the part of me that laughs easily at jokes, talks freely and does not see a bad omen in everything. I might never meet the part of me that is thoroughly happy. But until I come to love this me there is, I might never get to even catch a whiff of happiness.

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References

The Biology behind the Dark mind

Greek Medicine: The Four Humour

Was Freud right about Depression and Guilt