Before I begin, please let me apologise for the reduced and sporadic nature of my posts recently. In the past this has often been linked to a low spell in my life – happily, on this occasion, it is not my low mood squashing my musings, but various commitments linked to a possible new venture the NTV and I are considering for us a family. 

Returning to the matter in hand….

I recently published a post entitled: ‘Post Depression?’

This sat nicely with me as a handle for a blog post given previous references to post natal depression and post primary depression – but is there more to it than a nifty link?

Is there really such a thing as life post depression? Mental illness is nothing if it isn’t complicated, multifaceted and a bit of a mystery – even to the people with really big brains. Can you really recover from it as you would pneumonia or a broken leg? Come to think of it even physical injuries and diseases often leave their mark, a risk of return, a vulnerability – how much less confident can we be that someone’s depression can be ‘all better’?

Part of the difficulty, as I mentioned above, is that because we don’t really understand the various dynamics at play it is hard to know if they have all been dealt with, and if so how permanent, how resilient that ‘dealing with’ will be. It puts me in mind of the phrase ‘herding cats’.

It’s like trying to track down and imprison a vast criminal gang of brain villains without knowing exactly how big the gang is, and who the master mind behind it all is.

Let’s start with the usual suspects – brain chemicals and hormones – and send a highly effective task force with an excellent success rate to bring them to justice.

In that task force we have anti-depressants, beta blockers, vitamins, light therapy, even good sleep and diet……and they do their job well. Thanks to them the physical elements of my struggles are in the main part safely behind bars.

They are not beyond the need for surveillance – I imagine they are pretty handy with a lock pick, rather talented at conning the guards and will almost definitely still have some links and influence with the rest of the gang – but that arm of the gang has basically been neutralised.

But that alone doesn’t make me eligible for a sticker.

Sadly this gang of brain villains is much bigger than the likes of hormones, chemicals and heart rates. In fact I am pretty convinced that while they are well known to the law they are neither the scariest members of the gang, nor the master criminals behind it all.

And it is the other members of this criminal gang who have proved far more slippery. For one thing they are much harder to identify, they are master of disguises and brilliant at camouflage, disappearing into the shadows.

This makes the wanted posters all too vague!

So who are these villains, and who can possibly hope to track them down? Well stay tuned…..