Is Depression the New Drapetomania?

Drapetomania was the supposed mental illness which caused slaves to free captivity. The diagnosis was coined by Cartwright, an American physician in the late 1800s who prescribed  "whipping the devil out of them" as a "preventative measure". Other doctors recommended a cure of surgically removing part of slaves feet so they could not flee. Related diagnoses included Dysaesthesia aethiopica, a mental illness that caused slaves to not work hard enough for their masters
I considered these facts about psychiatry as I sat in my ENT's waiting room to see the results of my hearing tests. I could see in the papers that after the tragic death of the gifted performer Robin Williams has come a parade of "experts" to tell us all about the dangers of depression. I grabbed a medical journal instead, and just happened on an article about the huge uptick in ADHD diagnosis and medication.
Perhaps it is the same misunderstanding of the human psyche that creates diagnoses like drapetomania that would diagnose so many Americans as with depression and or ADHD. From a philosophical point of view we must ask certain questions. For example: why is depression so much more common in women? If over a quarter of the female population experiences depression, anxiety, or dysthymia  is it a pathology of women or the pathology of a society that expects them to shut up, put on some lipstick and smile as they work miserable jobs that don’t pay them enough to live?

Traditionally lower status work has fallen onto women. Contrary to mythology there is nothing traditional about the idea of women outside the labor force. Unfortunately what is traditional- painful, miserable, and mind-numbing  work in small agriculture, is much harder. In our industrialized society the number of people society needs in various roles is not fixed. We can dream of a day when many of the worst jobs are automated. In reality we now often push the most miserable and scary jobs off shore where they are less regulated. Yet there is still a need for the human touch in fields that involve care. To some extent Americans have attempted to offshore the un-offshoreable, importing an army of third world women to change bedpans and bathe their elders and children. But in the end these jobs have not been eliminated but simply disappeared to marginalized populations we pretend do not exist.

An alarming number of Americans are now scrambling out of miserable work by claiming disability. These disability claims often include a psychiatric element.

In the past the diagnosis of depression was statistically associated with being a white. Successful suicide was associated with being male. Some theorized that black’s and women’s lives were protected by a stronger sense of community and/or connection. Others theorized that on an individual level a white man’s life simply was more depressing, as no failure could be blamed on an oppressive system working against them. Not much has changed in America in terms of who tends to get the high status jobs, yet both my experience and statistics confirm disabling depression seems to be tilted towards women. While it is true women live longer than men and slightly outnumber men, even correcting for these phenomena there is still a strange slant towards the feminine in disability claims in a culture where men on average spend more time in potentially disabling work.  A misogynist might claim that women are natural whiners. A misandrist might claim that men are too stupid to figure out how to manage disability and simply die instead. A psychiatrist might see a disconnect between the numbers of such disability claims and reality. Many psychiatrists will tell you women are the psychologically stronger sex but they also know that statistically speaking women have more depression. Perhaps psychiatrists are not less immune to myths than anyone else.

As we as a nation slide into global irrelevance, economic decay and oligarchy let’s do ourselves a favor…let’s embrace some of our feelings as legitimate . Perhaps then we can do something about these problems besides popping Prozac.