We tend to think of depression as an internal event, and perhaps as a failure of body chemistry. The medicinal approach to depression assumes that fixing your brain chemistry is the answer.
I'm no expert on body chemistry, but I have an increasing impression that body-stuff often involves feedback loops and that simple lines of cause and effect aren't always what's happening. Recently reading around the role of noradrenaline in the body, I ran into a few comments about how supporting the production of this hormone/neurotransmitter depends on experiencing happiness.
We know from psychology that our environments affect us to a significant degree. How we develop, what we feel and even how our genes are expressed is informed by our environments. We aren't separate from what happens to us. If anyone is joining the dots between how the environment impacts psychology, and the treatment of mental illness, I haven't seen it yet.
This leads me to some questions. How much is the experience of happiness, and joy necessary for the healthy functioning of a human body? To what degree is our body chemistry dependent on experience? Can we make the chemicals we need if we don't have the right environmental impact? I think about studies investigating the impact of trees and green spaces on mental health and on human behaviour.
Apparently we need to be happy for our bodies to produce noradrenaline, or produce enough of it, or produce the right balance - some or all of those things. It's just one chemical, with a relationship to dopamine, that impacts on blood pressure and has a role in arousal and attention. Adrenaline, by contrast, is how we respond to demands from our environments. I've read a lot of content about what kinds of activities support healthy brain chemistry, and I'm increasingly convinced that wellbeing is about how we interact with reality and mental health is not something that is all about what happens inside us.
While we all have some degree of choice around how we live, and think, and the environments we spend time in, none of us are separate from the rest of the world. How would political thinking change if we took onboard the idea that being able to function and being happy might be entirely connected? How would we live if we considered joy a necessary thing for health?
On the whole, even if these aren't biological issues, I am inclined to think it's a good way to approach life. In our individual choices, in groups, and communities, and as a political approach, the idea that people need joy in their lives would be a good addition to the mix.
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