Depression Community

Do you ever wonder what makes for healthy, strong, happy people? Or why some people face stressful and challenging events in life and seem to rise above them, while other people implode in the face of what seem like routine stressors?

The vast majority of research into depression has focused on the pathologies within people that presumably give rise to the disorder, such as character defects, anger-turned-inward, unresolved childhood issues, distorted thinking, and chemical imbalances in the brain. Only recently has there emerged a different paradigm for thinking about human experience. Known as positive psychology, its focus is on what is right with people rather than on what is wrong. Instead of studying people who suffer, positive psychologists study people who have overcome adversity and thrived, who became happy, competent, and fulfilled. Positive psychology strives to identify their strengths in order to better help those who are suffering.

One of the first tasks positive psychologists attempted was the development of a new manual that would catalogue and define many of the best aspects of human experience. Unlike the well-known psychiatric manual listing various forms of psychopathology (called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, now in its revised fourth edition, DSM-IV-R) used by the mental health profession to diagnose patients, a new manual called Character Strengths and Virtues was developed by psychologists Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman to identify and describe some of the best human attributes. These include the courage to speak the truth, kindness, love, fairness, leadership, teamwork, forgiveness, modesty, gratitude, and many other such positive characteristics. If you re-read these attributes, you cannot help but notice that these are wonderful human potentials that can only be expressed in the context of human relationships. Simply put, how people develop their best selves is largely, though not entirely, achieved in the context of positive relationships with other people.

Other people provide support and alternative points of view. When I read some of the postings on WebMD, I am really heartened by how much sensitivity and compassion there can be in someone's reply, even as they offer a different point of view. That's wonderful! And, it's essential as a first step to begin recognizing that sometimes we think and feel things that are so subjective that, from within those thoughts and feelings, we trap ourselves. In the scientific literature, this is known as an internal orientation; People use their own feelings and experiences to interpret and react to the world around them, and don't realize their perceptions of what's going on are "off the mark."

Your experience will necessarily be different from that of others. A great question, one Positive Psychology strives to answer, is, "How can we learn from the people who do this (whatever "this" might be) well? For me, it has been about striving to better understand how some people recover from depression, how they bounce back from trauma and adversity, and how they build increasingly satisfying lives despite having suffered. The awareness is growing that there are specific skills - learnable skills- that go into living well.

What do YOU think allows people to overcome adversity? You might want to reply to the poll question below if you have time to do so.