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No, Mental Illness Isn’t “Caused” by Chemicals in the Brain
Biology is how our moods and mental states are expressed, but it’s not the root cause of them.
I was listening to an advice podcast this morning that I really enjoy (Danny Lavery’s Big Mood Little Mood), and the subject of depression’s manifold causes came up. The advice-seeker was a listless and burn-out lawyer who, after months of toiling alone at home during the pandemic, had begun to feel life had lost its meaning. They were seeking suggestions for dealing with the fact that the next forty or sixty years unfolding before them seemed doomed to be nothing but working, cooking dinner, doing a quick workout, and then heading off to sleep.
Danny Lavery recognized right away that the advice-seeker was dealing with an issue that’s both localized and global. Lots of people have been stuck alone at home for upwards of fifteen months at this point, and a lack of stimulation, meaningful social contact, and things to look forward to can leave almost anybody feeling pretty grim. His visiting co-host, Inkoo Kang, suggested that the advice-seeker find some sources of novelty and intellectual challenge in their regular day, to help recapture the joy they once felt as a college student with a fun course schedule and lots of free time.
Lavery remarked that it can be hard to untangle the existential dread that comes with being a conscious adult aware of their own mortality (and laboring under capitalism), and being a depressed adult with shitty job who needs to claw their way out. He also suggested that, while the advice-seeker is still sorting all of this out, they get into the habit of smoking more weed to take some of the edge off.
I really loved Lavery’s response (and the response of his co-host), which reflected that when it comes to states like depression, there is no clean line between having an interior problem and being in miserable circumstances. For a moment, Kang described depression as a “biochemical blankness” and suggested the advice seeker consider stabilizing their mood with anti-depressant. I was worried for a moment that she was going to say depression is caused by an internal chemical imbalance, but that wasn’t Kang’s point at all. Instead, her point was that though the advice…
