Hammersmith author Michael Guilding has written a brilliant new piece for Psychology Today. Guilding is the author of Fear in the Therapy Room.
In “What We’ve Been Getting Wrong About Depression,” Guilding challenges one of the most widely accepted explanations for depression. He draws on 30 years of clinical experience. He argues depression isn’t caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Instead, he makes the case that it’s a normal biological threat response — one that has become stuck.
Below is a short extract. Read the full piece on the Psychology Today website.
Depression is not some sort of defect in the individual sufferer—a sense of safety depends on the environments in which we live and work. Along with anxiety, depression arises from normal biological responses to threat, which become stuck and cannot deactivate because the context of our lives is sensed to be insufficiently safe. By giving full attention to a client’s external circumstances, as well as their hard-wired reactions to threat, therapists play an important role in the alleviation of depression, but ultimately, the solution to the scourge of depression which affects so many of us lies in the responsibility we hold individually and collectively to create a society in which every person can feel safe and secure.
