"Why Do Some People Never Get Depressed?"

I was reading an article with that title on the BBC website today. There's basically these doctors in Manchester who are doing a study to pin down the factors that allow some people to overcome the most incredible hardships without falling into depression, something that in medical terms is known as "resilience". In contrast, there are 121 million people in the world today that, trauma or not, are suffering from depression. It seems most everyone else is somewhere on a continuum between these two extremes.

Basically, the doctors want to see how much resilience is determined by innate characteristics of our brains and how much by our experiences or education.

The part i found most interesting about the article was a quote by a certain Aeron, one of the subjects of the study. He is a middle aged guy (quite handsome, judging from his pic!) who lost his business, his income and his home not too long ago. This is what he said:

"I'm generally a happy person. Everybody has stressful moments but there would be something wrong with you if you were happy all the time. But I haven't ever had an episode of depression.

In my childhood, when I first realised I was gay, I didn't come out to my parents or friends, not until I was much older. I think, perhaps, it resulted in me building up a strong defence mechanism and helped me deal with situations better later on in life.

I think that if there's a problem there's always a remedy. It's not that I don't think about stressful issues in my life, but I always think you can find a solution."

And there, RESONANCE! I can totally get what Aeron means.

In these last 20 years or so, i have always felt i have this kind of impenetrable shield with me, this sense that since i was able to overcome all the angst of growing up gay in a homophobic environment and with a homophobic education, there is now no situation that could ever make me loose the will to live.

It's not a sense of invincibility, or of self-confidence, even. Guh knows how insecure i can still feel, and i am also quite aware of all the uncertainties and downright hideousnesses that surround us. It's just that i already met the blackest thoughts, at a very young age. We lived together for a few years, but then we divorced. Not amicably. So we won't be seeing each other again.

Perhaps that is one way of resilience, then, for later life: to have suffered young, and to have survived.

On the other hand, i do worry sometimes. Resilience may have many flavors. One might be strength, but another might be callousness. One might be perseverance, but others might be pessimism, fear, closedness, emotional detachment. An unwillingness to take risks.

I am very unwilling to take risks at the romantic level. I don't want to get hurt. I am comfortable.