I am having one of those days where I am looking for some clarity. I have all kinds of different thoughts going on in my head, but I can’t seem to rope them in. I am wishing for some common ground so I can put them all together and have a nice, neat picture of how they are all related and thus make up my singular present world view. But, does that ever happen? I highly doubt it. As humans, we are pretty complex. We have a lot of different thoughts about a lot of different things. We also say and do a complex amount of things too. We are not simple, we are messy.
Given that messy is the human baseline, imagine adding an illness like depression to the mix. Talk about complexity. In previous posts, I have talked about some the factors that may lead to depression, and there is a large number of variables that may contribute. Plus, I assume the experience of depression is different for each person, and that a depression also incorporates pieces of the person who is going through it. No wonder that depression can be so hard to treat – depression by default includes a lot of complexity.
Thinking about the complexity of depression also helps us to realize that usually just one thing is not going to take care of it. A lot of time a pill doesn’t do it, nor therapy sessions. Typically, there is usually a combination of several treatments that can help, and sometimes even then that is not enough. The overall takeaway here is that assuming something simple will take care of something complex is unrealistic in many cases of depression, and mental health overall. A complex problem deserves deep, thought provoking discussions about a variety of treatments, options, and solutions.