A Realistic, Encouraging, Compassionate, No-Nonsense, Research-Backed, Action-Oriented Guidebook to Managing Your Depression | The Art of Manliness

Everyone loves a good, clear, easily grasped narrative. “X leads to Y.” “A causes B.”

But as we’ve seen over the course of this series, the nature of depression is simply too complex to follow a nice, neat storyline.

In exploring the history of depression, we saw that the way we view melancholy today is not how it’s always been seen, and that the condition has in fact been understood in widely different ways over the centuries.

In our discussion on what causes depression, we demonstrated that our modern theories are no more clear-cut, and that because melancholy results from the interaction of several different factors, we’ll likely never be able to precisely pin down its origins.

Finally, we saw that there isn’t a bright line that distinguishes “normal” sadness from clinical depression, and that being diagnosed with the latter remains a somewhat subjective call.

Now, as we finish this series, we must challenge two final narratives:

via A Realistic, Encouraging, Compassionate, No-Nonsense, Research-Backed, Action-Oriented Guidebook to Managing Your Depression | The Art of Manliness.