Depression is a pandemic plague upon our species. It’s the core disease dynamic that interferes with and diminishes human intelligence and compassion.

Dealing with depression is the greatest challenge our communities must meet since it stops people thinking clearly. As such it is also our greatest opportunity.

Depression is the dynamic that defines our species capacity (or incapacity) to deal with every other challenge that stands before us. Humans can elegantly overcome every difficulty that confronts us. Outside of the depression dynamic human ability is boundless.

To move forward we need to accept the scale of the issue.

Currently statistics state that around 6 % of Australians will experience depression each year. This translates to around 800,000 people caught in depressions cruel claws. I suggest that even this huge number is a profound underestimate of the reality.

These numbers represent the people who have actually presented for help and are the people most seriously suffering. It’s well understood that many, in fact most, simply suffer in alone in silence. Coming to grips with the vast scale of depression’s presence is crucial.

In addition there are a great many people who don’t even understand they have a problem. Their symptoms are not so strong that they’re incapacitated. They think the diminished life they’re living is normal: and in a sad sense it is!

Currently the medical community constructs depression as being “an imbalance in brain chemistry”. The solution this construction implies is a pill that allegedly rebalances said chemistry. This creates a convenient, palatable, yet ultimately ineffective band-aide solution to the problem without coming to grips with depressions real dimensions.

Instead imagine depression as being a semi dormant virus that constantly drains your internal resources and periodically flares to significant, on occasions, epic proportions. I suggest it’s useful to understand that we’re each infected and are accordingly each suffering depressions weight at least to some extent.

The depression “virus” is most usefully and accurately constructed to as being caused by anxiety which, as people struggle to function, is then covered by a layer of exhaustion.

Truth is what’s useful. The truly useful approach to depression is to face its rampant presence and to redefine what it actually is.

Martin Hunter Jones is an honorary member of the Australian Counselling Association.