Melancholy and finance   

 

Victor Hugo said of melancholy that it was "the pleasure of being sad". Poets have described it as ‘that sweet melancholy'. Minstrels sang sad songs to appreciative aristocrats and peasants alike. Plays have been written which have achingly sad endings, such as ‘The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet', a play which has enthralled audiences for hundreds of years and spawned many copies, such as West Side Story. I would guess that at least half the music in the Classic FM ‘Hall of Fame' is written in the melancholic minor key. We like to wallow in sadness from time to time.

Ordinary unhappiness is not, though, the same as melancholy.  It does not give us the underlying sense of pleasure in pain which can accompany melancholy.  Unhappiness is plain and ordinary. It is prosaic. But, it seems, unhappiness is gradually becoming a thing of the past and with it is going melancholy.  Why? Because of the all-embracing term, ‘depression'. Depression is a general term when used by lay people but, for psychiatrists, it has a very precise meaning.  There are specific indicators set out, the presence of which give a diagnosis of depression: the patient should have displayed over a two-week period a depressed mood and/or a lack of interest in activities together with at least four other signs, such as a change in appetite, insomnia, loss of energy, feelings of worthlessness, or an inability to make decisions. For many years, drug companies tried to find antidotes to these symptoms and now people take pills to alleviate them. But psychiatrists have recently realised that the list is incomplete, for it does not ask the crucial question: "Is there any good reason for these symptoms?".  Unhappiness is, after all, something which affects us all, from the time when we are babies until we are old and grey.  We experience it quite normally in response to the very real difficulties we encounter in life.  But finally the psychiatrist who originally set out the criteria has now accepted that depression is only to be diagnosed where there is also no apparent normal reason for the misery or its duration.

But if sadness is a normal emotion, rather than a disease, then we have to presume that there is a good evolutionary reason for it. After all, disgust means you will avoid eating rotting food (and worse), and fear persuades you to avoid wild animals, heights (in my case) and the dark. The purpose of sadness, however, is more difficult to fathom. Its like pain - we don't like it. But if we start with babies, we will perhaps have some idea where to look. Babies call attention to their plight by displaying sadness - by crying. The parents try to give them what they want, even if only so that the crying will come to an end: the baby's survival probably depends upon it.  But what benefit comes of sadness in adults?  After all, we can articulate our needs.  One possible benefit is that it makes you stop and think about what you've done, so that it's a way of preventing mistakes in the future - albeit one which is not perfect, as sad people often don't think very rationally.  Maybe though it is a useful hangover from being a baby - appearing to be sad usually elicits support from other people and people who cry are usually quickly surrounded by sympathetic individuals willing to help, although not indefinitely!

But we may soon find that we have an explanation, because for some years without knowing it, we have, been taking part in a big experiment.  So many pills are being handed out to combat this naturally evolved state of sadness, that we should see some changes in society as a consequence.  We may soon begin to tease out what evolutionary benefit it actually brings.
 
In fact, we may already have seen a completely unintended consequence of the medicalisation of unhappiness.  It seems that dissociation from normal emotional reactions and a consequent lack of caution are often associated with the taking of antidepressants - and this may have affected the financial markets. The huge amounts paid for the amazingly complex and, therefore, absurdly risky financial instruments by which sub-prime mortgages were sold to financial institutions, may be a result of the fact that so many of the people running the markets are on anti-depressants because they are ‘stressed-out'.  It may indeed be that the bank caught in the cross-fire, Northern Rock, should have proudly written all the way through it - "Sponsored by Prozac".

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