Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression.

AuthorSullum, Jacob

I get depressed on Sundays. I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe it's emotional conditioning, the anticipation of work, or the burden of free time. Maybe it's a biochemical phenomenon. Whatever the cause, I tend to feel unaccountably sad on Sunday afternoons.

No big deal. But if you knew a way to avoid the Sunday-afternoon blues--say, an attitude adjustment or a handy little pill with no unpleasant side effects--I'd be interested.

Julian Simon also used to be depressed on Sundays--and every other day of the week. This was a big deal. As the distinguished University of Maryland economist describes it in Good Mood, he was depressed "for 13 long years from early 1962 to early 1975. When I say that I was depressed I mean that, except for some of the hours when I was working or playing sports or making love, I was almost continuously conscious of being miserable, and I almost continuously reflected on my worthlessness. I wished for death, and I refrained from killing myself only because I believed that my children needed me .... Endless hours every day I reviewed my faults and failures, which made me writhe in pain. I refused to let myself do ... pleasurable things ... because I thought that I ought to suffer."

Simon's problem and mine are obviously quite different. Indeed, according to the definition of depression that he uses--prolonged sadness, accompanied by feelings of low self-worth, helplessness, and hopelessness--my experience does not even qualify. It is merely "the garden variety of the blues that come and go in a day or a week."

Still, Simon's overwhelming, 13-year-long depression and my mild, occasional dysphoria are both cases of mysterious sadness with a variety of possible psychological and biological explanations. And both might respond to psychotherapy or drugs. Simon, in fact, overcame his own depression through the cognitive-therapy methods he describes in his book. These techniques, which focus on changing self-destructive ways of thinking, are intended for people who are depressed in the noncolloquial sense. But they probably could do some good for just about anybody who suffers because of unreasonable self-criticism. Simon's approach certainly appeals to me as a way of dealing with everyday problems of living, although I have never experienced anything approaching the ordeal that he went through.

Simon did not try anti-depressant drugs, but he writes that "I ... probably would and should have tried such drugs during my long depression if they had been as well-established as they now are." Prozac, the anti-depressant that psychiatrists are most enthusiastic about these days, was not available until December 1987. Since then it has helped many severely depressed people escape psychological states as bad as or worse than Simon's. And as psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer details in his thoughtful, elegantly written book, Listening to Prozac, even mildly depressed people like the drug, which has few significant side effects. (An appendix to the book persuasively debunks reports of suicides and murders allegedly caused by Prozac.) Kramer describes several individuals, active and productive but vaguely unsatisfied, who found they enjoyed life more while taking Prozac. Psychiatrists generally do not prescribe Prozac for the Sunday-afternoon blues, but who knows? It might just do the trick.

The...

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