|  If
we view depression as a prison rather than a mental
illness, we can fashion our own escape route. That's
the unorthodox view of a clinical psychologist nominated
in Britain last year as a "living genius".
She speaks with Rosamund Burton.
A woman with short white hair walks slightly stiffly
towards me. Dorothy Rowe was born in 1930, so is 78
this year, which is the same age as my mother. But my
mother is now in an old people's home suffering severe
depression and no longer able to function on a day-to-day
basis without a lot of help.
Dorothy Rowe, on the other hand, has a great zest for
life and, as she talks, her keen sense of humour can
be seen in her eyes and the slight curl of her lips.
She is still a working woman, and admits she has no
intention of retiring because most of the enjoyable
aspects of her life are in connection with her work.
Although Australian-born, this psychologist and author
has been based in England for many years, but is in
Sydney over the summer staying with her son. It may
sound like a holiday, but she explains she is currently
writing three articles, and has also just signed contracts
to write two books.
Having grown up in Newcastle, Dorothy studied psychology
at Sydney University. She followed this up with a Diploma
of Education and taught for a while, before getting
married and having a child. She went back to teaching
when her son was two and, because her degree was in
psychology, was invited to become a school counsellor.
Later, while completing her Diploma in Clinical Psychology,
she became a specialist counsellor for emotionally disturbed
children.
It was only when she went to England that she realised
the North Ryde Children's Unit where she worked was
run along what were then revolutionary lines. "The
head of the unit thought you should get to know the
child, and you should consider the child's environment,
and not just spend your time trying to stick a label
on the child," she explains.
When Dorothy's marriage broke up, she was completing
her Master's at the University of NSW, and corresponding
with one of the leading psychologists in England, Monte
Shapiro. He suggested that she come to England because
of the employment opportunities, so she cashed in her
superannuation and long service leave, and left with
her son, Edward.
Based in Sheffield, she did a PhD on the psychological
aspects of regular mood change while working as a clinical
psychologist. She found a strong correlation between
her work and her study as most of her patients were
suffering from depression.
"What I found talking to people, and what I have
subsequently been shown in research studies," she
explains, "is that you don't become depressed and
psychotic, manic or obsessional, or phobic out of the
blue. What always happens is that there has been a crisis,
a disaster in your life, which shows you there is a
serious discrepancy between what you thought your life
was, and what it actually is. Sometimes, the disaster
is something which observers would agree is a disaster,
but as often as not it's a private disaster."
Dorothy Rowe has observed that the commonest discovery
for depressed people is that no amount of goodness prevents
disaster. She also finds that deeply depressed people
who would say they had no particular religious beliefs,
often experience all the religious education they received
in childhood, including sermons on hell and damnation,
coming back to them. Often, they have grown up believing,
because of what religion has taught them, that if they
were good nothing bad would happen to them or those
they loved. When something bad does happen it totally
throws them. It means either they are more wicked than
they thought and this is their punishment for their
wickedness, or that the adults who taught them they
live in a just world are wrong. And that's often even
harder to accept.
So what does Dorothy Rowe recommend with regard to
depression? "To recognise that it is a human response,
it is not a mental illness, and it is something you
can learn from. What depression is teaching you, if
you are prepared to learn it, is that you haven't been
living wisely, and that you need to change."
Depressed people usually don't want to acknowledge
what has happened in their lives, and psychoanalyst
Alice Miller describes it as a refusal to mourn. This
makes huge sense to me because my mother plummeted into
her depression when my father was diagnosed with and,
shortly afterwards, died from lung cancer four and a
half years ago.
If you suffer a loss and spend all your time blaming
yourself, telling yourself how wicked you are, explains
Dorothy, you are putting off the fact that you have
suffered a loss in your life and need to work through
the stages of recognising that loss.
When she talks about living wisely she says it means
realising that you can't force reality to be what you
want it to be, you can't turn the world into what you
want it to be, and that you are not a terribly wicked
person. Neither are you a perfect person, you are just
ordinary. But, she admits, a lot of depressed people
don't want to be ordinary.
"Depression can give you a breathing space to
work things out. But if you make it your first and only
choice in responding to a situation, you are not going
to solve any situation, because what you are doing is
putting yourself in the centre of the stage."
Dorothy grew up with a mother who suffered depression,
although no one in the family circles ever said so.
Instead, it was "don't upset Ella".
"That was the family rule, and that made her a
very powerful person. Nobody in the extended family
wanted to upset her." Dorothy goes onto to recount
how she received no acknowledgement from her mother
when she sent her a copy of her first book, which she
had dedicated to her parents. Later, her sister told
her that she'd had to point out the dedication to their
mother, and it made her realise that Ella hadn't even
opened the book.
"She didn't give me any support in my career,"
Dorothy adds. "She always let it be known she was
disappointed that I didn't get a job in a bank, which
is so stupid as I couldn't add up. But that was the
height of her ambition."
When I ask her how she dealt with her own mother's
depression, she confesses one of the advantages of being
a psychologist is that "people tell you all sorts
of stories that you would otherwise never hear. They
might be totally useless in helping the client, but
you learn an awful lot about yourself." She also
admits hearing other people talk about their mothers
put things in perspective for her, and made her think
more kindly towards her own mother.
In 1971, Dorothy completed her PhD and the following
year set up the Lincolnshire Department of Clinical
Psychology. Her research there established the basis
of her first book, "The Experience of Depression"
which is now called "Choosing Not Losing"
and she has followed it up with 11 others.
Her third book, "Depression: the Way Out of Your
Prison" was first published in 1983, and, the following
year won the Mind Book of the Year Award. Twenty five
years later it is now in its third edition, and its
author casually mentions that, a very rare occurrence
in the world of book publishing, its sales have actually
increased over the years.
According to Beyond Blue, the national, not-for-profit
organisation working to address issues associated with
depression, one in five people experiences depression
at some stage in their lives. A report by pharmacist
Gail Bell documents that over 12 million prescriptions
were written in 2005 in Australia for antidepressants,
and today that figure is probably slightly higher. Fully
aware of the agony of mental pain, Dorothy believes
that drugs can help dull the pain so that people have
an opportunity to work things out for themselves. But,
she adds, some people will not enter into any area of
thinking about their lives and themselves.
She firmly believes that governments should stop regarding
depression as a mental illness and, instead, look at
it with regard to certain aspects of life. Marital status
throws up an interesting conundrum - in this category,
the biggest group of depressed people is married women,
while the smallest group is married men. In terms of
financial status, it mostly affects those less well
off, who have limited options to seek other alternatives
in a difficult situation. "So, if politicians look
at depression in regard to certain aspects of life they
have to do something about poverty, and they'd have
to do something more than they do about education."
In 2007, Dorothy Rowe was nominated as one of 100 living
geniuses after a survey was sent to 4,000 Britons asking
them to list 10 living people they considered exceptional
thinkers. In her work, not only does she acknowledge
the pain and anguish that individuals are experiencing,
but also empowers them. She has shown us that depression
is not an illness over which there is no control but,
rather, an intolerable prison we build for ourselves
out of how we see ourselves and our world, and that
we can escape this prison by choosing to change the
way we interpret our lives.
The difference she has made to the way both clinicians
and their patients regard mental disorders is invaluable
and her insights are profound, not only for those suffering
from depression, but also for their loved ones. She
has certainly given me a far greater understanding of
my mother's depression and some of the factors that
have caused it.
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