How The Mind, Body And Environment Can Lead To Depression

A person who is physically ill or suffering from chronic and debilitating pain will find his bodily ailments eating away at his once cheerful mental disposition. On the flip side, a physically active and fit person is less likely to succumb to depression – there has been much research to validate this point. It’s as though depressive thoughts melt away in a vibrant and positive body and are not allowed to take root and sprout. Also, a difficult environment – for example abusive relationships or a highly stressful workplace – can bombard a person whose mind and / or body is already weak and slowly allow a depressive state to develop.

Thus, if one is “discontented”, having a sense of “hopelessness” and unable to “accept the problem and move on”, there is every likelihood that there are some elements along the mind-body-environment spectrum which are at play. For example, one’s thyroid gland could be under-performing, and the resulting sluggish energy levels are hampering one’s ability to cope with life’s struggles. Those of us who have ever suffered from sluggish thyroids and got them working properly again will be able to testify on the importance of this endocrine gland.

Or insomnia could be suppressing one’s physical wellbeing. Or, there could be a chemical imbalance in the brain which is blocking one’s ability to be more at peace with unhappy life moments, or one’s ability to properly socialize. A nutrient imbalance or deficiency can also affect’s one mental state. And there are numerous chemical poisons and toxins in our food and living environment which can negatively impact our state of mind. The list goes on.

Treating and Healing Depression

Through Baumel’s three-condition model of depression, it follows that if we deal with or get rid of at least one of the three conditions, recovery from the ailment will then follow. Good remedies and treatments for depression will seek to tackle these elements.

Very often, unhappiness or discontentment sets in due to values and benchmarks imposed upon us by society, cultures, religions or families. Are we thin enough? Earning enough? Smart enough? Achieving enough? Life can be difficult. And chronic perfectionism just makes everything worse, because one seems to never be able to meet many of the expectations one has for oneself.

Problems in life are a given. Nobody who has ever walked on this Earth did not have any problems at all. At the end of the day, depression treatments and therapies seek to make life “good enough again”; to make problems seem not-so-big and manageable again; and to make life worth living again.

Main Resource

Baumel, Syd. Dealing With Depression Naturally. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 2000. Print.

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