Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy

By Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D.

Summarized with permission of Chelsea Green.
All rights reserved.

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This process allows people to claim their power to create and strengthen their communities. He shares the story of a low-income Chicago neighborhood that improved its conditions by decreasing the number of wild dogs on the streets, changing the dangerous traffic flow into a shopping area, and building a rooftop greenhouse to grow healthy food.

In the 1800s, large corporations were considered suspect and the government kept an eye on them so they couldn't overtake the "little guys". Since the mid-1900s, however, the government switched sides to ally with the "big guys." The current large transnational corporations actually dominate national governments as well as their employees and their customers. Choosing to spend our money in local, independent businesses is one way to take our power back from the mega-businesses.

The fact that more Americans -- and other nationalities as well -- are depressed means that it is easier for transnational corporations to take over. They have learned the appropriate rewards and punishments to get what they want. This observation led social critic and historian Lewis Mumford (1951) to write: "In the end [modern] civilization can produce only a mass man: incapable of choice, incapable of spontaneous, self-directed activities: at best patient, docile, disciplined to monotonous work to an almost pathetic degree, but increasingly irresponsible as his choices become fewer and fewer." This scary picture sounds all too familiar now.

In 2001, the highly respected British medical journal Lancet wrote about the close ties between drug companies and FDA staff. Drugs are approved by the FDA through the evaluation of research done by the drug companies, so these ties are a clear conflict of interest. USA Today, in a 2000 article, noted that over half of FDA advisers have ties to drug companies. Drug approval does not seem to be an unbiased process.

People are beginning to fight back against this big business control. Informal Internet groups share information on alternative health options while seniors organize bus trips to Canada to buy cheaper prescription drugs. Finding the passion to take power and participate in changing a situation provides community for many with health issues.

This passion has sometimes evolved into organizations as well. MindFreedom International is a coalition of groups and members who advocate human rights and democracy for those diagnosed with psychiatric challenges. The International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP) is a group of mental health professionals who are unhappy with the current field and strive to make changes that improve their work and the options they can provide to the people who consult them.

For more than 50 years, public figures such as political candidates and psychologists have been warning against the dulling of peoples' lives. Today, with more than 20 percent of Americans on psychiatric drugs, this is a reality. The "good life," according to one poll, now consists of making lots of money, even more so in the 1990s (63 percent) than in the 1970s (38 percent). Being in a happy marriage is less important now than in earlier decades.

Dr. Levine did not start out to be a dissident and community organizer but his frustration with the mental health field evolved into that. His public speaking engagements and book tours all over the country allowed him to meet and connect with many others who shared his dissatisfaction and his ideas for change.

"The striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man," wrote Viktor Frankl. Finding meaning and purpose in life is now more important than ever in order to stay healthy and connected. Moving toward wholeness and community can resolve depression and provide the support people need during times of challenge.

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