Q: I have a friend who takes medication for Depression. Can depression really be attributed to chemical imbalance or life situations? I read your article about anger. Could repressed emotions trigger the imbalance? Thanks for any info.
A: First of all you should understand that all of this is theory, and very little of it is proven through rigorous science. Almost all of therapy is “art” rather than proven biological science.
But, yes, most therapists believe that depression is both chemical imbalance and environmental stress (suppressed anger about life situations). It is seldom clear whether the chemical imbalance causes the depression, or the depression causes the chemical imbalance.
What is clear, however, is that if we habitably tell ourselves we aren’t angry when we actually are angry, we get depressed. And since our culture is phobic against anger, there are a lot of depressed people in the U.S. and other Western European cultures.
