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Depression is the most important thief of productive life for women around the world, and the second-most important for men. We sometimes imagine it is a first-world problem, but depression is just as widespread, if not more so, in poor countries, where there is a good deal more to be depressed about. And it is more debilitating, as a vast majority of sufferers have no safety net… In rural Rawalpindi, Pakistan, the Thinking Healthy Program taught basic cognitive behavioral therapy for only two days to female community health workers with a high school education. The trainees, called Lady Health Workers, then integrated the therapy into their regular visits with pregnant women and new mothers. Six months later, only 3 percent of those treated were still depressed. The largest study was in Goa, India, where local people with no health background were given an eight-week course in interpersonal psychotherapy and worked with physicians to treat patients with mental health disorders. This, too, was very successful.”
I want these practices to be taught to college freshmen, to help each other, to form supportive communities.
This reminds me of an awesome Moth episode (a story-telling podcast) by a man who was researching depression treatment techniques and tells this great story about being treated by a medicine woman in a tiny village in Ghana, and points out that older treatments for depression involve being outside and movement and community and action whereas current treatments are much more passive and secretive and scheduled and sort of the result of a lot of stigma and medicalization.
It makes me think about what is lost with raw individualism – in a community, a sickness is a problem for everyone, so everyone gets together to fix it. In an individualistic community, the sick person really has to fix themselves. Which doesn’t work super well.
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