The Kidnapping Question

When assessing someone with depression, one of the things that psychologists look at is the person's daily schedule and routine. Often this gives some significant hints about why the person might be feeling as they do.

When I finish up an assessment like this, I often invite the person to imagine that we gave their own life to a dozen strangers. Twenty four hours a day, they would live exactly as the client lives. After a month, we would see how they were feeling. The usual answer is that they would be depressed.

Huh. But that would mean that the depressive reaction was normal, not disordered...

Here's a post on the topic from my new VLog on YouTube, How to be Miserable. Consider subscribing to it within YouTube if seeing these posts on depression, anxiety, failure to launch, and psychotherapy might be of interest to you.