ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Andrew Solomon - Writer
Andrew Solomon writes about politics, culture and psychology.

Why you should listen

Andrew Solomon is a writer, lecturer and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University. He is president of PEN American Center. He writes regularly for The New Yorker and the New York Times.

Solomon's newest book, Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change, Seven Continents, Twenty-Five Years was published in April, 2016. His previous book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity won the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction, the Wellcome Prize and 22 other national awards. It tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so. It was a New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback editions. Solomon's previous book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, won the 2001 National Book Award for Nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize and was included in The Times of London's list of one hundred best books of the decade. It has been published in twenty-four languages. Solomon is also the author of the novel A Stone Boat and of The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost.

Solomon is an activist in LGBT rights, mental health, education and the arts. He is a member of the boards of directors of the National LGBTQ Force and Trans Youth Family Allies. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Columbia University Medical Center, serves on the National Advisory Board of the Depression Center at the University of Michigan, is a director of Columbia Psychiatry and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. Solomon also serves on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yaddo and The Alex Fund, which supports the education of Romani children. He is also a fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University and a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Solomon lives with his husband and son in New York and London and is a dual national. He also has a daughter with a college friend; mother and daughter live in Texas but visit often.

More profile about the speaker
Andrew Solomon | Speaker | TED.com

TEDxMet

Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share

Filmed: 2013-10-23

Readability: 3.5

10,174,764 views

"The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment." In a talk equal parts eloquent and devastating, writer Andrew Solomon takes you to the darkest corners of his mind during the years he battled depression. That led him to an eye-opening journey across the world to interview others with depression -- only to discover that, to his surprise, the more he talked, the more people wanted to tell their own stories.

Andrew Solomon - Writer
Andrew Solomon writes about politics, culture and psychology. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:15

"I felt a funeral in my brain,

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and mourners to and fro

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kept treading, treading till I felt

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that sense was breaking through.

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And when they all were seated,

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a service, like a drum,

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kept beating, beating, till I felt

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my mind was going numb.

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And then I heard them lift a box

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and creak across my soul

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with those same boots of lead again,

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then space began to toll,

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as if the heavens were a bell

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and being were an ear,

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and I, and silence, some strange race

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wrecked, solitary, here.

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Just then, a plank in reason broke,

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and I fell down and down

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and hit a world at every plunge,

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and finished knowing then."

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We know depression through metaphors.

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Emily Dickinson was able to convey it in language,

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Goya in an image.

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Half the purpose of art

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is to describe such iconic states.

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As for me, I had always thought myself tough,

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one of the people who could survive

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if I'd been sent to a concentration camp.

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In 1991, I had a series of losses.

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My mother died,

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a relationship I'd been in ended,

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I moved back to the United States

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from some years abroad,

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and I got through all of those experiences intact.

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But in 1994, three years later,

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I found myself losing interest in almost everything.

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I didn't want to do any of the things

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I had previously wanted to do,

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and I didn't know why.

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The opposite of depression

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is not happiness, but vitality,

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and it was vitality

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that seemed to seep away from me in that moment.

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Everything there was to do

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seemed like too much work.

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I would come home

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and I would see the red light
flashing on my answering machine,

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and instead of being thrilled to hear from my friends,

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I would think,

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"What a lot of people that is to have to call back."

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Or I would decide I should have lunch,

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and then I would think, but
I'd have to get the food out

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and put it on a plate

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and cut it up and chew it and swallow it,

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and it felt to me like the Stations of the Cross.

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And one of the things that often gets lost

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in discussions of depression

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is that you know it's ridiculous.

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You know it's ridiculous while you're experiencing it.

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You know that most people manage

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to listen to their messages and eat lunch

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and organize themselves to take a shower

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and go out the front door

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and that it's not a big deal,

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and yet you are nonetheless in its grip

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and you are unable to figure out any way around it.

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And so I began to feel myself doing less

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and thinking less

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and feeling less.

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It was a kind of nullity.

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And then the anxiety set in.

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If you told me that I'd have to be

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depressed for the next month,

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I would say, "As long I know it'll be
over in November, I can do it."

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But if you said to me,

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"You have to have acute anxiety for the next month,"

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I would rather slit my wrist than go through it.

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It was the feeling all the time

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like that feeling you have if you're walking

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and you slip or trip

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and the ground is rushing up at you,

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but instead of lasting half a
second, the way that does,

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it lasted for six months.

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It's a sensation of being afraid all the time

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but not even knowing what it is that you're afraid of.

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And it was at that point that I began to think

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that it was just too painful to be alive,

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and that the only reason not to kill oneself

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was so as not to hurt other people.

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And finally one day, I woke up

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and I thought perhaps I'd had a stroke,

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because I lay in bed completely frozen,

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looking at the telephone, thinking,

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"Something is wrong and I should call for help,"

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and I couldn't reach out my arm

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and pick up the phone and dial.

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And finally, after four full hours
of my lying and staring at it,

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the phone rang,

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and somehow I managed to pick it up,

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and it was my father,

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and I said, "I'm in serious trouble.

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We need to do something."

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The next day I started with the medications

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and the therapy.

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And I also started reckoning

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with this terrible question:

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If I'm not the tough person

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who could have made it
through a concentration camp,

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then who am I?

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And if I have to take medication,

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is that medication making me more fully myself,

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or is it making me someone else?

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And how do I feel about it

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if it's making me someone else?

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I had two advantages as I went in to the fight.

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The first is that I knew that, objectively speaking,

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I had a nice life,

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and that if I could only get well,

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there was something at the other end

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that was worth living for.

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And the other was that I had
access to good treatment.

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But I nonetheless emerged and relapsed,

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and emerged and relapsed,

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and emerged and relapsed,

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and finally understood

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I would have to be on medication

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and in therapy forever.

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And I thought, "But is it a chemical problem

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or a psychological problem?

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And does it need a chemical cure
or a philosophical cure?"

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And I couldn't figure out which it was.

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And then I understood that actually,

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we aren't advanced enough in either area

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for it to explain things fully.

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The chemical cure and the psychological cure

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both have a role to play,

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and I also figured out that depression was something

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that was braided so deep into us

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that there was no separating it

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from our character and personality.

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I want to say that the treatments we have

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for depression are appalling.

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They're not very effective.

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They're extremely costly.

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They come with innumerable side effects.

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They're a disaster.

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But I am so grateful that I live now

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and not 50 years ago,

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when there would have been almost nothing

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to be done.

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I hope that 50 years hence,

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people will hear about my treatments

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and be appalled that anyone endured

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such primitive science.

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Depression is the flaw in love.

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If you were married to someone and thought,

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"Well, if my wife dies, I'll find another one,"

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it wouldn't be love as we know it.

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There's no such thing as love

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without the anticipation of loss,

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and that specter of despair

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can be the engine of intimacy.

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There are three things people tend to confuse:

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depression, grief and sadness.

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Grief is explicitly reactive.

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If you have a loss and you feel incredibly unhappy,

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and then, six months later,

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you are still deeply sad, but
you're functioning a little better,

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it's probably grief,

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and it will probably ultimately resolve itself

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in some measure.

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If you experience a catastrophic loss,

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and you feel terrible,

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and six months later you can barely function at all,

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then it's probably a depression that was triggered

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by the catastrophic circumstances.

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The trajectory tells us a great deal.

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People think of depression as being just sadness.

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It's much, much too much sadness,

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much too much grief

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at far too slight a cause.

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As I set out to understand depression,

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and to interview people who had experienced it,

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I found that there were people who seemed

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on the surface to have what sounded like

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relatively mild depression

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who were nonetheless utterly disabled by it.

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And there were other people who had what sounded

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as they described it

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like terribly severe depression

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who nonetheless had good lives in the interstices

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between their depressive episodes.

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And I set out to find out what it is

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that causes some people

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to be more resilient than other people.

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What are the mechanisms

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that allow people to survive?

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And I went out and I interviewed person after person

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who was suffering with depression.

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One of the first people I interviewed

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described depression

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as a slower way of being dead,

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and that was a good thing for me to hear early on

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because it reminded me

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that that slow way of being dead

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can lead to actual deadness,

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that this is a serious business.

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It's the leading disability worldwide,

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and people die of it every day.

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One of the people I talked to

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when I was trying to understand this

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was a beloved friend

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who I had known for many years,

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and who had had a psychotic episode

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in her freshman year of college,

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and then plummeted into a horrific depression.

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She had bipolar illness,

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or manic depression, as it was then known.

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And then she did very well

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for many years on lithium,

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and then eventually,

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she was taken off her lithium

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to see how she would do without it,

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and she had another psychosis,

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and then plunged into the worst depression

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that I had ever seen

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in which she sat in her parents' apartment,

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more or less catatonic, essentially without moving,

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day after day after day.

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And when I interviewed her about
that experience some years later --

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she's a poet and psychotherapist
named Maggie Robbins —

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when I interviewed her, she said,

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"I was singing 'Where Have All The Flowers Gone'

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over and over to occupy my mind.

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I was singing to blot out the
things my mind was saying,

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which were, 'You are nothing. You are nobody.

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You don't even deserve to live.'

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And that was when I really started thinking

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about killing myself."

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10:15

You don't think in depression

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that you've put on a gray veil

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10:19

and are seeing the world through the haze

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of a bad mood.

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10:23

You think that the veil has been taken away,

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10:25

the veil of happiness,

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10:27

and that now you're seeing truly.

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10:30

It's easier to help schizophrenics who perceive

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that there's something foreign inside of them

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that needs to be exorcised,

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but it's difficult with depressives,

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because we believe we are seeing the truth.

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But the truth lies.

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I became obsessed with that sentence:

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"But the truth lies."

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And I discovered, as I talked to depressive people,

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that they have many delusional perceptions.

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People will say, "No one loves me."

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And you say, "I love you,

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your wife loves you, your mother loves you."

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You can answer that one pretty readily,

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at least for most people.

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But people who are depressed will also say,

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"No matter what we do,

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we're all just going to die in the end."

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Or they'll say, "There can be no true communion

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between two human beings.

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Each of us is trapped in his own body."

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To which you have to say,

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"That's true,

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but I think we should focus right now

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on what to have for breakfast."

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(Laughter)

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A lot of the time,

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what they are expressing is not illness, but insight,

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and one comes to think what's really extraordinary

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is that most of us know about
those existential questions

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and they don't distract us very much.

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There was a study I particularly liked

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in which a group of depressed

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and a group of non-depressed people

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were asked to play a video game for an hour,

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and at the end of the hour,

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they were asked how many little monsters

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they thought they had killed.

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The depressive group was usually accurate

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2212

11:55

to within about 10 percent,

285

703018

2058

11:57

and the non-depressed people

286

705076

1471

11:58

guessed between 15 and 20 times as many

287

706547

3545

12:02

little monsters — (Laughter) —

288

710092

1742

12:03

as they had actually killed.

289

711834

4111

12:07

A lot of people said, when I chose
to write about my depression,

290

715945

3066

12:11

that it must be very difficult

291

719011

1769

12:12

to be out of that closet, to have people know.

292

720780

3124

12:15

They said, "Do people talk to you differently?"

293

723904

2200

12:18

And I said, "Yes, people talk to me differently.

294

726104

2072

12:20

They talk to me differently insofar

295

728176

1914

12:22

as they start telling me about their experience,

296

730090

2790

12:24

or their sister's experience,

297

732880

1835

12:26

or their friend's experience.

298

734715

1774

12:28

Things are different because now I know

299

736489

2292

12:30

that depression is the family secret

300

738781

2681

12:33

that everyone has.

301

741462

2077

12:35

I went a few years ago to a conference,

302

743539

3628

12:39

and on Friday of the three-day conference,

303

747167

2653

12:41

one of the participants took me aside, and she said,

304

749820

2891

12:44

"I suffer from depression and

305

752711

3405

12:48

I'm a little embarrassed about it,

306

756116

2769

12:50

but I've been taking this medication,

307

758885

2103

12:52

and I just wanted to ask you what you think?"

308

760988

2948

12:55

And so I did my best to give
her such advice as I could.

309

763936

2834

12:58

And then she said, "You know,

310

766770

1720

13:00

my husband would never understand this.

311

768490

2791

13:03

He's really the kind of guy to whom
this wouldn't make any sense,

312

771281

2573

13:05

so I just, you know, it's just between us."

313

773854

2867

13:08

And I said, "Yes, that's fine."

314

776721

1786

13:10

On Sunday of the same conference,

315

778507

2109

13:12

her husband took me aside,

316

780616

3044

13:15

and he said, "My wife wouldn't think

317

783660

1694

13:17

that I was really much of a guy if she knew this,

318

785354

2435

13:19

but I've been dealing with this depression

319

787789

2466

13:22

and I'm taking some medication,

320

790255

1354

13:23

and I wondered what you think?"

321

791609

2505

13:26

They were hiding

322

794114

1423

13:27

the same medication in two different places

323

795537

2215

13:29

in the same bedroom.

324

797752

2645

13:32

And I said that I thought

325

800397

2021

13:34

communication within the marriage

326

802418

1684

13:36

might be triggering some of their problems.

327

804102

2014

13:38

(Laughter)

328

806116

4191

13:42

But I was also struck

329

810307

1655

13:43

by the burdensome nature

330

811962

1806

13:45

of such mutual secrecy.

331

813768

2373

13:48

Depression is so exhausting.

332

816141

1885

13:50

It takes up so much of your time and energy,

333

818026

2768

13:52

and silence about it,

334

820794

1504

13:54

it really does make the depression worse.

335

822298

2731

13:57

And then I began thinking about all the ways

336

825029

1733

13:58

people make themselves better.

337

826762

1966

14:00

I'd started off as a medical conservative.

338

828728

2439

14:03

I thought there were a few
kinds of therapy that worked,

339

831167

2372

14:05

it was clear what they were --

340

833539

1809

14:07

there was medication,

341

835348

1644

14:08

there were certain psychotherapies,

342

836992

1476

14:10

there was possibly electroconvulsive treatment,

343

838468

2445

14:12

and that everything else was nonsense.

344

840913

2675

14:15

But then I discovered something.

345

843588

1832

14:17

If you have brain cancer,

346

845420

1752

14:19

and you say that standing on your head

347

847172

1472

14:20

for 20 minutes every morning makes you feel better,

348

848644

2995

14:23

it may make you feel better,

349

851639

1514

14:25

but you still have brain cancer,

350

853153

1588

14:26

and you'll still probably die from it.

351

854741

2289

14:29

But if you say that you have depression,

352

857030

2512

14:31

and standing on your head for 20 minutes every day

353

859542

2105

14:33

makes you feel better, then it's worked,

354

861647

2484

14:36

because depression is an illness of how you feel,

355

864131

2360

14:38

and if you feel better,

356

866491

1609

14:40

then you are effectively not depressed anymore.

357

868100

2830

14:42

So I became much more tolerant

358

870930

2033

14:44

of the vast world of alternative treatments.

359

872963

2925

14:47

And I get letters, I get hundreds of letters

360

875888

2384

14:50

from people writing to tell me
about what's worked for them.

361

878272

2516

14:52

Someone was asking me backstage today

362

880788

2201

14:54

about meditation.

363

882989

1463

14:56

My favorite of the letters that I got

364

884452

2465

14:58

was the one that came from a woman

365

886917

1474

15:00

who wrote and said that she had tried therapy,

366

888391

2207

15:02

she had tried medication,
she had tried pretty much everything,

367

890598

2387

15:04

and she had found a solution
and hoped I would tell the world,

368

892985

2837

15:07

and that was making little things from yarn.

369

895822

3812

15:11

(Laughter)

370

899634

2999

15:14

She sent me some of them. (Laughter)

371

902633

3524

15:18

And I'm not wearing them right now.

372

906157

3688

15:21

I suggested to her that she also should look up

373

909845

2515

15:24

obsessive compulsive disorder in the DSM.

374

912360

4048

15:28

And yet, when I went to look
at alternative treatments,

375

916408

3128

15:31

I also gained perspective on other treatments.

376

919536

2908

15:34

I went through a tribal exorcism in Senegal

377

922444

2903

15:37

that involved a great deal of ram's blood

378

925347

2013

15:39

and that I'm not going to detail right now,

379

927360

2062

15:41

but a few years afterwards I was in Rwanda

380

929422

2000

15:43

working on a different project,

381

931422

1758

15:45

and I happened to describe
my experience to someone,

382

933180

2796

15:47

and he said, "Well, you know,

383

935976

1760

15:49

that's West Africa, and we're in East Africa,

384

937736

1820

15:51

and our rituals are in some ways very different,

385

939556

1834

15:53

but we do have some rituals that have something

386

941390

2013

15:55

in common with what you're describing."

387

943403

1987

15:57

And I said, "Oh." And he said, "Yes," he said,

388

945390

1663

15:59

"but we've had a lot of trouble with
Western mental health workers,

389

947053

2642

16:01

especially the ones who came
right after the genocide."

390

949695

2757

16:04

And I said, "What kind of trouble did you have?"

391

952452

2327

16:06

And he said, "Well,

392

954779

1546

16:08

they would do this bizarre thing.

393

956325

2664

16:10

They didn't take people out in the sunshine

394

958989

1885

16:12

where you begin to feel better.

395

960874

1700

16:14

They didn't include drumming or music
to get people's blood going.

396

962574

3094

16:17

They didn't involve the whole community.

397

965668

1842

16:19

They didn't externalize the depression

398

967510

1775

16:21

as an invasive spirit.

399

969285

1433

16:22

Instead what they did was they took people

400

970718

2631

16:25

one at a time into dingy little rooms

401

973349

2628

16:27

and had them talk for an hour

402

975977

1343

16:29

about bad things that had happened to them."

403

977320

2230

16:31

(Laughter) (Applause)

404

979550

5460

16:37

He said, "We had to ask them to leave the country."

405

985010

2362

16:39

(Laughter)

406

987372

3057

16:42

Now at the other end of alternative treatments,

407

990429

2444

16:44

let me tell you about Frank Russakoff.

408

992873

2035

16:46

Frank Russakoff had the worst depression

409

994908

3053

16:49

perhaps that I've ever seen in a man.

410

997961

2915

16:52

He was constantly depressed.

411

1000876

1993

16:54

He was, when I met him, at a point at which

412

1002869

2141

16:57

every month he would have electroshock treatment.

413

1005010

3158

17:00

Then he would feel sort of disoriented for a week.

414

1008168

2575

17:02

Then he would feel okay for a week.

415

1010743

1803

17:04

Then he would have a week of going downhill.

416

1012546

1700

17:06

And then he would have another
electroshock treatment.

417

1014246

2685

17:08

And he said to me when I met him,

418

1016931

1415

17:10

"It's unbearable to go through my weeks this way.

419

1018346

2552

17:12

I can't go on this way,

420

1020898

1507

17:14

and I've figured out how I'm going to end it

421

1022405

2264

17:16

if I don't get better.

422

1024669

1557

17:18

But," he said to me, "I heard about a protocol

423

1026226

2708

17:20

at Mass General for a procedure called

424

1028934

2223

17:23

a cingulotomy, which is a brain surgery,

425

1031157

2026

17:25

and I think I'm going to give that a try."

426

1033183

2571

17:27

And I remember being amazed at that point

427

1035754

1954

17:29

to think that someone

428

1037708

1300

17:31

who clearly had so many bad experiences

429

1039008

3221

17:34

with so many different treatments

430

1042229

1859

17:36

still had buried in him somewhere enough optimism

431

1044088

3122

17:39

to reach out for one more.

432

1047210

2550

17:41

And he had the cingulotomy,

433

1049760

2180

17:43

and it was incredibly successful.

434

1051940

2041

17:45

He's now a friend of mine.

435

1053981

1493

17:47

He has a lovely wife and two beautiful children.

436

1055474

3492

17:50

He wrote me a letter the Christmas after the surgery,

437

1058966

2949

17:53

and he said,

438

1061915

1189

17:55

"My father sent me two presents this year,

439

1063104

2407

17:57

First, a motorized C.D. rack from The Sharper Image

440

1065511

2602

18:00

that I didn't really need,

441

1068113

1421

18:01

but I knew he was giving it to me to celebrate

442

1069534

2097

18:03

the fact that I'm living on my own

443

1071631

1728

18:05

and have a job I seem to love.

444

1073359

2047

18:07

And the other present

445

1075406

1561

18:08

was a photo of my grandmother,

446

1076967

1576

18:10

who committed suicide.

447

1078543

2252

18:12

As I unwrapped it, I began to cry,

448

1080795

2935

18:15

and my mother came over and said,

449

1083730

1880

18:17

'Are you crying because of the
relatives you never knew?'

450

1085610

3315

18:20

And I said, 'She had the same disease I have.'

451

1088925

4088

18:25

I'm crying now as I write to you.

452

1093013

2581

18:27

It's not that I'm so sad, but I get overwhelmed,

453

1095594

3595

18:31

I think, because I could have killed myself,

454

1099189

2221

18:33

but my parents kept me going,

455

1101410

1703

18:35

and so did the doctors,

456

1103113

1749

18:36

and I had the surgery.

457

1104862

1854

18:38

I'm alive and grateful.

458

1106716

2815

18:41

We live in the right time,

459

1109531

2260

18:43

even if it doesn't always feel like it."

460

1111791

3879

18:47

I was struck by the fact that depression

461

1115670

1897

18:49

is broadly perceived to be

462

1117567

1725

18:51

a modern, Western, middle-class thing,

463

1119292

3537

18:54

and I went to look at how it operated

464

1122829

2152

18:56

in a variety of other contexts,

465

1124981

2003

18:58

and one of the things I was most interested in

466

1126984

2119

19:01

was depression among the indigent.

467

1129103

1790

19:02

And so I went out to try to look at

468

1130893

1781

19:04

what was being done for
poor people with depression.

469

1132674

2580

19:07

And what I discovered is that poor people

470

1135254

2158

19:09

are mostly not being treated for depression.

471

1137412

2557

19:11

Depression is the result of a genetic vulnerability,

472

1139969

2919

19:14

which is presumably evenly
distributed in the population,

473

1142888

3158

19:18

and triggering circumstances,

474

1146046

1953

19:19

which are likely to be more severe

475

1147999

1903

19:21

for people who are impoverished.

476

1149902

1875

19:23

And yet it turns out that if you have

477

1151777

2427

19:26

a really lovely life but feel miserable all the time,

478

1154204

2140

19:28

you think, "Why do I feel like this?

479

1156344

2000

19:30

I must have depression."

480

1158344

1669

19:32

And you set out to find treatment for it.

481

1160013

1923

19:33

But if you have a perfectly awful life,

482

1161936

2093

19:36

and you feel miserable all the time,

483

1164029

1867

19:37

the way you feel is commensurate with your life,

484

1165896

2826

19:40

and it doesn't occur to you to think,

485

1168722

1724

19:42

"Maybe this is treatable."

486

1170446

1783

19:44

And so we have an epidemic in this country

487

1172229

3136

19:47

of depression among impoverished people

488

1175365

2913

19:50

that's not being picked up
and that's not being treated

489

1178278

2512

19:52

and that's not being addressed,

490

1180790

2056

19:54

and it's a tragedy of a grand order.

491

1182846

2200

19:57

And so I found an academic

492

1185046

1488

19:58

who was doing a research project

493

1186534

1817

20:00

in slums outside of D.C.,

494

1188351

1741

20:02

where she picked up women who had
come in for other health problems

495

1190092

2997

20:05

and diagnosed them with depression,

496

1193089

1779

20:06

and then provided six months
of the experimental protocol.

497

1194868

3266

20:10

One of them, Lolly, came in,

498

1198134

2329

20:12

and this is what she said the day she came in.

499

1200463

2297

20:14

She said, and she was a woman, by the way,

500

1202760

3395

20:18

who had seven children. She said,

501

1206155

2092

20:20

"I used to have a job but I had to give it up because

502

1208247

2651

20:22

I couldn't go out of the house.

503

1210898

2060

20:24

I have nothing to say to my children.

504

1212958

2228

20:27

In the morning, I can't wait for them to leave,

505

1215186

2767

20:29

and then I climb in bed and
pull the covers over my head,

506

1217953

2990

20:32

and three o'clock when they come home,

507

1220943

1646

20:34

it just comes so fast."

508

1222589

1801

20:36

She said, "I've been taking a lot of Tylenol,

509

1224390

2240

20:38

anything I can take so that I can sleep more.

510

1226630

2759

20:41

My husband has been telling me I'm stupid, I'm ugly.

511

1229389

3770

20:45

I wish I could stop the pain."

512

1233159

3505

20:48

Well, she was brought into
this experimental protocol,

513

1236664

2640

20:51

and when I interviewed her six months later,

514

1239304

2308

20:53

she had taken a job working in childcare

515

1241612

4407

20:58

for the U.S. Navy, she had left the abusive husband,

516

1246019

3805

21:01

and she said to me,

517

1249824

2082

21:03

"My kids are so much happier now."

518

1251906

2369

21:06

She said, "There's one room in my new place

519

1254275

1977

21:08

for the boys and one room for the girls,

520

1256252

2608

21:10

but at night, they're just all up on my bed,

521

1258860

2539

21:13

and we're doing homework
all together and everything.

522

1261399

2612

21:16

One of them wants to be a preacher,

523

1264011

1673

21:17

one of them wants to be a firefighter,

524

1265684

1700

21:19

and one of the girls says she's going to be a lawyer.

525

1267384

2966

21:22

They don't cry like they used to,

526

1270350

2005

21:24

and they don't fight like they did.

527

1272355

2558

21:26

That's all I need now is my kids.

528

1274913

3780

21:30

Things keep on changing,

529

1278693

1912

21:32

the way I dress, the way I feel, the way I act.

530

1280605

5193

21:37

I can go outside not being afraid anymore,

531

1285798

3687

21:41

and I don't think those bad feelings are coming back,

532

1289485

3409

21:44

and if it weren't for Dr. Miranda and that,

533

1292894

3035

21:47

I would still be at home with
the covers pulled over my head,

534

1295929

3617

21:51

if I were still alive at all.

535

1299546

2349

21:53

I asked the Lord to send me an angel,

536

1301895

3732

21:57

and he heard my prayers."

537

1305627

4330

22:01

I was really moved by these experiences,

538

1309959

3353

22:05

and I decided that I wanted to write about them

539

1313312

2539

22:07

not only in a book I was working on,

540

1315851

1379

22:09

but also in an article,

541

1317230

1311

22:10

and so I got a commission from
The New York Times Magazine

542

1318541

2321

22:12

to write about depression among the indigent.

543

1320862

2016

22:14

And I turned in my story,

544

1322878

1616

22:16

and my editor called me and said,

545

1324494

1596

22:18

"We really can't publish this."

546

1326090

1710

22:19

And I said, "Why not?"

547

1327800

1750

22:21

And she said, "It just is too far-fetched.

548

1329550

2305

22:23

These people who are sort of at
the very bottom rung of society

549

1331855

3778

22:27

and then they get a few months of treatment

550

1335633

1704

22:29

and they're virtually ready to run Morgan Stanley?

551

1337337

2632

22:31

It's just too implausible."

552

1339969

1854

22:33

She said, I've never even heard of anything like it."

553

1341823

2205

22:36

And I said, "The fact that you've never heard of it

554

1344028

2534

22:38

is an indication that it is news."

555

1346562

3000

22:41

(Laughter) (Applause)

556

1349562

6134

22:49

"And you are a news magazine."

557

1357317

2494

22:51

So after a certain amount of negotiation,

558

1359811

1982

22:53

they agreed to it.

559

1361793

1241

22:55

But I think a lot of what they said

560

1363034

1615

22:56

was connected in some strange way

561

1364649

2295

22:58

to this distaste that people still have

562

1366944

2142

23:01

for the idea of treatment,

563

1369086

1463

23:02

the notion that somehow if we went out

564

1370549

1882

23:04

and treated a lot of people in indigent communities,

565

1372431

2696

23:07

that would be an exploitative thing to do,

566

1375127

1898

23:09

because we would be changing them.

567

1377025

1642

23:10

There is this false moral imperative

568

1378667

2033

23:12

that seems to be all around us

569

1380700

1789

23:14

that treatment of depression,

570

1382489

2354

23:16

the medications and so on, are an artifice,

571

1384843

2299

23:19

and that it's not natural.

572

1387142

2172

23:21

And I think that's very misguided.

573

1389314

2849

23:24

It would be natural for people's teeth to fall out,

574

1392163

3532

23:27

but there is nobody militating against toothpaste,

575

1395695

3330

23:31

at least not in my circles.

576

1399025

2128

23:33

And people then say, "Well, but isn't depression

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part of what people are supposed to experience?

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23:37

Didn't we evolve to have depression?

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23:39

Isn't it part of your personality?"

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To which I would say, mood is adaptive.

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23:44

Being able to have sadness and fear

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and joy and pleasure

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and all of the other moods that we have,

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that's incredibly valuable.

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23:53

And major depression is something that happens

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23:56

when that system gets broken.

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2012

23:58

It's maladaptive.

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24:00

People will come to me and say,

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"I think, though, if I just stick it out for another year,

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24:04

I think I can just get through this."

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24:06

And I always say to them, "You may get through it,

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24:08

but you'll never be 37 again.

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24:11

Life is short, and that's a whole year

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24:14

you're talking about giving up.

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24:15

Think it through."

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It's a strange poverty of the English language,

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24:20

and indeed of many other languages,

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24:22

that we use this same word, depression,

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24:24

to describe how a kid feels

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24:26

when it rains on his birthday,

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24:28

and to describe how somebody feels

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24:30

the minute before they commit suicide.

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24:33

People say to me, "Well, is it
continuous with normal sadness?"

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24:36

And I say, in a way it's continuous
with normal sadness.

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24:39

There is a certain amount of continuity,

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24:41

but it's the same way there's continuity

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24:43

between having an iron fence outside your house

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24:45

that gets a little rust spot

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24:47

that you have to sand off and do a little repainting,

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24:50

and what happens if you leave
the house for 100 years

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24:52

and it rusts through until it's only a pile

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24:55

of orange dust.

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1234

24:56

And it's that orange dust spot,

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24:58

that orange dust problem,

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25:00

that's the one we're setting out to address.

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25:03

So now people say,

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25:05

"You take these happy pills, and do you feel happy?"

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2731

25:08

And I don't.

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1886

25:10

But I don't feel sad about having to eat lunch,

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2822

25:13

and I don't feel sad about my answering machine,

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2836

25:16

and I don't feel sad about taking a shower.

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2845

25:19

I feel more, in fact, I think,

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2854

25:21

because I can feel sadness without nullity.

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2430

25:24

I feel sad about professional disappointments,

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4347

25:28

about damaged relationships,

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2347

25:31

about global warming.

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2039

25:33

Those are the things that I feel sad about now.

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2725

25:35

And I said to myself, well, what is the conclusion?

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2734

25:38

How did those people who have better lives

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25:41

even with bigger depression manage to get through?

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25:43

What is the mechanism of resilience?

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25:46

And what I came up with over time

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25:48

was that the people who deny their experience,

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2916

25:51

the ones who say, "I was depressed a long time ago

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2032

25:53

and I never want to think about it again

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1737

25:55

and I'm not going to look at it

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1242

25:56

and I'm just going to get on with my life,"

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1890

25:58

ironically, those are the people

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1959

26:00

who are most enslaved by what they have.

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26:03

Shutting out the depression strengthens it.

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26:05

While you hide from it, it grows.

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3280

26:08

And the people who do better

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26:11

are the ones who are able to tolerate the fact

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2599

26:14

that they have this condition.

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1622

26:15

Those who can tolerate their depression

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26:18

are the ones who achieve resilience.

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1782

26:20

So Frank Russakoff said to me,

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26:22

"If I had it again to do over,

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1516

26:23

I suppose I wouldn't do it this way,

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2137

26:25

but in a strange way, I'm grateful

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1964

26:27

for what I've experienced.

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1503

26:29

I'm glad to have been in the hospital 40 times.

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3817

26:32

It taught me so much about love,

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2603

26:35

and my relationship with my parents and my doctors

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2840

26:38

has been so precious to me, and will be always."

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4389

26:42

And Maggie Robbins said,

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1926

26:44

"I used to volunteer in an AIDS clinic,

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2989

26:47

and I would just talk and talk and talk,

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3014

26:50

and the people I was dealing with

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1813

26:52

weren't very responsive, and I thought,

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2067

26:54

'That's not very friendly or helpful of them.'

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3961

26:58

And then I realized,

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27:00

I realized that they weren't going to do more

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27:02

than make those first few minutes of small talk.

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2387

27:04

It was simply going to be an occasion

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2057

27:06

where I didn't have AIDS and I wasn't dying,

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27:09

but could tolerate the fact that they did

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27:12

and they were.

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27:14

Our needs are our greatest assets.

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27:17

It turns out I've learned to give

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27:20

all the things I need."

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4025

27:24

Valuing one's depression

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1691

27:25

does not prevent a relapse,

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2194

27:28

but it may make the prospect of relapse

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2661

27:30

and even relapse itself easier to tolerate.

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4218

27:34

The question is not so much

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2045

27:36

of finding great meaning and deciding

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27:39

your depression has been very meaningful.

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2027

27:41

It's of seeking that meaning

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2171

27:43

and thinking, when it comes again,

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1804

27:45

"This will be hellish,

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27:46

but I will learn something from it."

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27:49

I have learned in my own depression

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27:51

how big an emotion can be,

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2013

27:53

how it can be more real than facts,

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27:56

and I have found that that experience

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27:59

has allowed me to experience positive emotion

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2892

28:02

in a more intense and more focused way.

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28:06

The opposite of depression is not happiness,

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28:09

but vitality,

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28:11

and these days, my life is vital,

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2741

28:13

even on the days when I'm sad.

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2745

28:16

I felt that funeral in my brain,

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28:19

and I sat next to the colossus

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2024

28:21

at the edge of the world,

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28:24

and I have discovered

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2089

28:26

something inside of myself

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1851

28:28

that I would have to call a soul

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28:30

that I had never formulated
until that day 20 years ago

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28:34

when hell came to pay me a surprise visit.

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28:38

I think that while I hated being depressed

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4098

28:42

and would hate to be depressed again,

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2334

28:45

I've found a way to love my depression.

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28:47

I love it because it has forced me

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28:49

to find and cling to joy.

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28:52

I love it because each day I decide,

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28:56

sometimes gamely,

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28:57

and sometimes against the moment's reason,

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29:00

to cleave to the reasons for living.

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29:02

And that, I think, is a highly privileged rapture.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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3136

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Andrew Solomon - Writer
Andrew Solomon writes about politics, culture and psychology.

Why you should listen

Andrew Solomon is a writer, lecturer and Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University. He is president of PEN American Center. He writes regularly for The New Yorker and the New York Times.

Solomon's newest book, Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change, Seven Continents, Twenty-Five Years was published in April, 2016. His previous book, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity won the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction, the Wellcome Prize and 22 other national awards. It tells the stories of parents who not only learn to deal with their exceptional children but also find profound meaning in doing so. It was a New York Times bestseller in both hardcover and paperback editions. Solomon's previous book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, won the 2001 National Book Award for Nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize and was included in The Times of London's list of one hundred best books of the decade. It has been published in twenty-four languages. Solomon is also the author of the novel A Stone Boat and of The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost.

Solomon is an activist in LGBT rights, mental health, education and the arts. He is a member of the boards of directors of the National LGBTQ Force and Trans Youth Family Allies. He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Columbia University Medical Center, serves on the National Advisory Board of the Depression Center at the University of Michigan, is a director of Columbia Psychiatry and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. Solomon also serves on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yaddo and The Alex Fund, which supports the education of Romani children. He is also a fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University and a member of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Solomon lives with his husband and son in New York and London and is a dual national. He also has a daughter with a college friend; mother and daughter live in Texas but visit often.

More profile about the speaker
Andrew Solomon | Speaker | TED.com

THE ORIGINAL VIDEO ON TED.COM

Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share | TED Talk | TED.com