Depression is one of the most urgent mental health challenges facing modern society. Jonathan Rottenberg, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University, discusses his research on mood disorders and his video series on life after depression.
While scientists have generally assumed that the prognosis for well-being is poor among those with depression, Cornell-led research is now challenging this assumption: In national datasets, a substantial group of people who had a diagnosis of depression go on to report well-being, including lives rich with positive emotion, purpose and meaning.
Join us to explore the possibilities of life after depression with Jonathan Rottenberg, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. Rottenberg shares his research on mood disorders, his personal experience with depression and his video series on the challenges and opportunities of life after depression.
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Chris Wofford: Today on Cornell Keynotes, we explore the possibilities of life after depression, and we're joined by Jonathan Rottenberg, who is Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Better Outcomes Lab at Cornell. John and I delve into his research, we learn a little bit about his personal experience as a depressed person, we discuss disability and disclosure of depression at work, and are introduced to his Ever After video series on understanding the challenges and opportunities of life after depression.
Chris Wofford: Roughly one in five people are clinically diagnosed with depression. And to kick off this live keynote that we recorded last week, we opened by polling our live audience and learned that 65 percent of them were either living with depression or had a family member who is directly impacted, which made our discussion that much more urgent and personal.
Chris Wofford: So let's open with that poll question, John, before you and I get going.
Chris Wofford: To kind of take the temperature of our audience gauge the level of experience with depression among our audience. So here's how this works. Please answer this question. One, two or three. Have you or someone close to you been clinically diagnosed with depression? Number one, I've been diagnosed.
Chris Wofford: Yes. Someone close to me has been diagnosed or no. So in the meantime, while we wait for that to populate, John, I want to ask you, what is depression? How do you define it?
Jonathan Rottenberg: So, depression is a mood disorder, and it's a profound state involving symptoms like feeling sad, losing interest or pleasure in things, and then a number of other associated symptoms.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So it's a syndrome. So these symptoms come together, and unfortunately depression tends to be disabling, and also is accompanied by a lot of distress of people who feel, feel quite bad, and in severe cases people might actually become suicidal.
Chris Wofford: here's where our audience, how, how we've tuned in.
Chris Wofford: Right? So yes, I've been diagnosed about 65 percent of our audience. So, which is really helpful, right? It helps us maybe tune our conversation as we go through it. It does. Knowing that most people have a clinical diagnosis of depression. So,
Jonathan Rottenberg: in the population at large about one out of every five adults has been diagnosed.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So, our, our viewership here are quite a bit higher than the background rate
Chris Wofford: So what do we know generally about the prognosis of, of depression? Typically, what do, what do people encounter in a clinical setting? That is, what are your chances of getting through this or how are you going to manage it?
Chris Wofford: That kind of thing. How do people talk about it in the clinical?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Yeah, so you know for those of you who have had that experience of being diagnosed I I think this is a really important question probably if you were in a treatment setting This is a question that came up. What can I expect? And for better or worse, our epidemiology you know, decades of epidemiology has come to the conclusion that typically depression is recurrent.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So meaning if you had one episode, you're likely to have another, and that In addition to that, it's likely that you'll have some degree of continuing symptoms. So even during better periods, there's some still burden of depression with you. That's the conventional epidemiology. It's based largely on samples of people who were either inpatient or in treatment, and that ends up being very important.
Jonathan Rottenberg: In that picture though it is accurate for that group may not be accurate for all depressed people because not all depressed people are inpatients or in treatment. So, the, the truth is that your mileage may vary. You've probably heard that phrase, right? So, For about half of people who have depression, it is recurrent.
Jonathan Rottenberg: But for the other half, it is not. And in fact benign forms, you could call benign forms, are to people who have only one single lifetime episode of depression. That's very common, and we don't actually know so much about that very large group of people.
Chris Wofford: Good to know. So, I'm going to ask our audience's second question, which is I think a useful follow up as well.
Chris Wofford: since we have all have aspirations for life after mental health problems, what would you value the most in recovery from depression? So again, we're going to, you know, 65 percent of our audience having been clinically diagnosed.
Chris Wofford: A, being able to function well again. B, the return of my old self. A reduction in symptoms is the third choice. And experiencing happiness. So can you tell me, you provided those answers for me, why you chose that framework? I had asked you, should we do a word cloud? Yeah. And multiple choices where we landed.
Chris Wofford: Why do you, why do you say that?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Well, part of it is that so much of the field, and I hope that some people do endorse a reduction of symptoms because I think that is important that people have, you know, the sadness or the inability to concentrate or the feelings of worthlessness, all these, or sleep disturbance, all these really quite troubling symptoms and they want to have less of those symptoms.
Jonathan Rottenberg: But the field clinical research, In treatment research is 100 percent geared towards symptom reduction as the main outcome. In what I, my intuition in our research and the research of other people suggests that actually depressed people have a wide variety of aspirations for their life. And reduction in symptoms is just one piece of this.
Jonathan Rottenberg: And so actually that's very interesting. Is this, I'm looking at this,
Chris Wofford: this is 43 of our percent of our audience.
Jonathan Rottenberg: I mean, I think it's wild that the um, so again, I'll, I'll just give you the the gap between current practice and research and these results. So there was a review in clinical psychology review, one of the main review journals in clinical psychology of depression outcome studies.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Decades of research. So these are people who looked at long term follow up and all the studies measured symptoms But only five to ten percent of the studies measured the most popular answer here being able to function Well again, it's generally not measured. So there's this huge Uh, I see in these results what, what, what I was, I guess, hoping to see because I think it's really true that there's this big gap between what people want or what people aspire to and what our research has focused on.
Jonathan Rottenberg: And again, I don't mean to minimize symptoms. Symptoms are important. Symptoms can be disabling and, and in fact, about 10 percent of people said the most important thing for me is to have reduction of symptoms. But when we, for example, evaluate treatments. Like, for example, I have a new medication that is the only end point by and large is reducing symptoms.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So they're leaving out the other 90 percent of people who had other things that they thought were more important.
Chris Wofford: And then, you know, we, we were talking a little bit before the show about a higher, a higher sort of philosophical view of this kind of thing. We're very much accustomed to, to managing symptoms.
Chris Wofford: And for many people, from what I understand, I'll ask you, that's been the experience with people in a clinical setting, you know, at best we can hope to manage your symptoms and that's the way it's going to go down.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Yeah, I think it's It's obviously important to develop treatments to help people manage their symptoms, completely agree with that.
Jonathan Rottenberg: And I think that we have developed treatments that can, on average, reduce people's symptoms. But it's also clear that people want more than that, whether it's returning to their usual self, which a lot of people don't want. endorsed functioning well. A lot of people endorse that and we should apply the same in being happy as well.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Uh, We should apply the same amount of effort in and kind of know how to those other outcomes.
Chris Wofford: I want to revisit those results just a moment ago. how does uh, the field of mental health, outcomes. You know, you had, you had alluded to the fact that, you know, symptoms usually number one, but let's talk about couple of the other ones there.
Chris Wofford: How is it talked about within the field of mental health?
Jonathan Rottenberg: I mean, I think that If there's practitioners out there practitioners will have discussed with their clients these other themes, because in part these are things, things that the, the clients will themselves bring up. So for example, returning to your usual self.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Part of the nature of depression is, And I talked about the symptoms, but the symptoms are very imprisoning. People feel desperately cut off, for example, from their past. They have trouble even imagining times when I wasn't depressed. And so they desperately want this recontact with my former self.
Jonathan Rottenberg: That said, researchers really haven't studied this nearly as much. So there's in clinical practice in, in, in real people this is very important. But our researchers have kind of not caught up to the reality of what the consumer, the people on the ground, really care about.
Chris Wofford: why do you, yourself, John, think that it's important to research even a, even a broader range of good outcomes?
Chris Wofford: what's the utility in that?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Well, what's What's the point of doing research in depression if we're not making people's better, lives better? And if we're not addressing the things that are the highest priority for them? It seems to me that then the research community is just talking to itself.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Part of it is that symptoms are easier to measure. So, and part of it is that researchers are imitative, so, you know, we have decades of research and that's the benchmark. That's the standard by which we evaluate whether or not treatments are working, is whether symptoms have reduced, have been reduced.
Jonathan Rottenberg: But depression is a profound experience. Part of it, yes, involves symptoms, but part of it also involves these other changes, including changes in how you experience yourself or think about your future and so forth.
Chris Wofford: What do we know about good outcomes both historically and maybe present day state of the art research into this?
Chris Wofford: tell me a little bit about that.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Yeah, I mean, that's a deep question. I mean we could start with the epidemiology that I alluded to at the beginning. I think it scared a lot of people off in the sense that we had all this research that suggested rather strongly that we could say not so good outcomes were the norm.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So typically if one had an episode of depression that one could experience another have a recurrence and that there would be continuing symptoms. So even during better times, there would be some burden of symptoms. And so I think that is part of why people maybe didn't have the imagination to wonder whether or not.
Jonathan Rottenberg: In addition to those not so good outcomes, there would not only be some people who recovered, so we've always known that some people recover, meaning that they no longer have their symptoms, which is great, but we didn't imagine that people might actually be flourishing in some way. That is doing really well in whatever domain it might be.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So doing really well in relationships, doing really well in their job, doing really well spiritually or doing really well emotionally. And if you don't imagine that something is very likely, you might not research it. And that's kind of how it was until, you know, like a decade ago. There was virtually no research, I would say virtually no research on good outcomes, other than recovery, which is, of course, important and good, but that is one symptomatic, so the symptoms are gone.
Jonathan Rottenberg: That is one kind of good, good outcome, and we know that, that many people fully recover from depression.
Chris Wofford: How is the research that you're doing at Cornell how does it challenge these historical assumptions, or rather the the trend to kind of envision bleak outcomes, and let's make the best of that, kind of.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Yeah.
Chris Wofford: Yeah, tell me a little bit about the research.
Jonathan Rottenberg: I wanted to do hard headed science, so many of these outcomes, you could say, would be tricky to measure, like, are you doing well spiritually? Are you doing well even on your job? We all have different jobs, and we might have different ideas about who's doing well.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So I wanted to start with a good outcome that most people think is important in the survey data. Actually a lot of people Indicated that happiness was important an important good outcome. So we started with psychological well being. And that had the dual good quality of A, being important to a lot of people who experience mental health problems, and B, being readily measurable.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So there's a whole research on what is psychological well being, what are its components, what are scales that we can use to measure it. And so, Armed with knowing that this was an important outcome that we could measure, we took advantage of some very large data sets, national data sets, both in the United States and in Canada, and we asked the question, if you have depression, diagnosed depression, real depression, what is the probability that at a future point in time you will report experiencing very high levels of well being?
Jonathan Rottenberg: High, as high as, say, the top quartile or top quartile of Even fifth of a non depressed population.
Chris Wofford: And that's an individual self assessing say yes saying I imagine an outcome of well Well, this is
Jonathan Rottenberg: saying that right now I'm experiencing positive emotions. I understand lack of negative emotions My relationships are of high quality.
Jonathan Rottenberg: I feel that my life is purposeful and meaningful I feel like I'm in control of my life all these sort of elements of well being and again, the conventional wisdom would say that This is going to be pretty rare, right? So you had, these people had serious diagnosed depression and now you're following them up.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So it should be like 1%, right? Who are really flourishing and reporting these very high levels of wellbeing. I mean, I knew we knew it would be some people wouldn't be zero. It, the, what we found was that Depression cut the chances of reporting high levels of wellbeing about in half. In about 10 percent of depressed people went on to report these very high levels of wellbeing as opposed to about 20, 21 percent of the non depressed population.
Jonathan Rottenberg: And I'm a, you know, I'm a glass half full kind of person, but I think that this was a real eye opener. This was far from rare.
Chris Wofford: How long ago did you, did you encounter this data or interpret the data in this kind of way? How long ago was it?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Just a few years ago these okay, these were reported in the 2021, 2022, you know, just a few years ago.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Okay. Some of the data had were longitudinal datasets, said that they may have been collected for some other purpose. These were just lying around for reanalysis. Right. So I didn't. I didn't enroll a sample and then wait 10 years. I just took advantage of already collected data and asking a new question that no one had asked before.
Jonathan Rottenberg: But I think this really challenges the conventional wisdom that this kind of good outcome is rare and that it'd be very unlikely. In fact, you know, you could imagine that you know, if you think of other bad outcomes and we have some data on other bad outcomes. Other, I'm sorry, other very serious health challenges, we looked at adolescents who had reported a suicide attempt.
Jonathan Rottenberg: It survived and we found actually a pretty similar pattern you know, and suicide again is something that people understandably find very frightening and imagine would be associated with all manner of bad outcomes, and they don't associate well being with it, but the idea that in that group, Not only depression, but in that group of adolescents who had survived a suicide attempt, that there was a substantial segment, again, who's reporting very high levels of well being.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So, this is what I would call An element of realistic hope. So, you know, we always want to be hopeful, want to tell people, you know, that they have a chance, but this is actual data. So this convinced me that this is real. These good outcomes are real, and this is not an insignificant group of people. And, it could also be the case, right, in our study, we were looking at a snapshot in time.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So, in this national data set, it's called the MIDUS study, it was looking at a 10 year follow up. And we could, we could ask the question, what percent of people 10 years out were reporting high levels of well being? That doesn't mean that, you know, for other people it might have been in 15 years, they're not in the, they're not in the study yet.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Or, it could have been that they were reporting this high level of well being. of well being a few years into the study and then it went away. So it, it probably is the case that if anything we're undercounting these, these good outcomes.
Chris Wofford: And is, is this a result because forgive my ignorance, but people simply moving beyond treatment, getting out of the clinical setting.
Chris Wofford: I've gotten through the thing, right? So I'm out of the data pool. How do you, how did you account for that kind of stuff? Do you know what I'm getting at?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Well, they were, this is not a treatment sample. So this is a really important, um, distinction to make. So all of the epidemiological studies I'm talking to you about, with only a few exceptions, it's actually pretty amazing how few studies there are of depression in non diagnosed studies.
Jonathan Rottenberg: non treatment samples where they followed the people for decades. Yeah. Right. So that's real depression too. Not all people who have depression will be inpatients. Not all people who have depression will be outpatients. Some people will get better on their own and they're not represented in the epidemiology of depression.
Jonathan Rottenberg: And so part of the conclusion is that there's in a sense two depressions. There's a a kind of depression that has. relatively speaking, a pretty benign outcome, which includes these periods of well being. And there are the other depression that's probably more associated with recurrence, where you're less likely to see people reporting high levels of well being.
Jonathan Rottenberg: But most of our research is on recurrent depression. So we've really ignored this pretty big, substantial group of people most of them who have single episodes. Many of whom probably get better on their own who do rather well in the long term.
Chris Wofford: I have a question from Tori, viewer Tori, who checks in and asks, Do you think there is a bias of qualitative data or which is why there is a disconnect between what researchers see as the data assessing what patients needs versus what patients say they need?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Ooh, I love that question. Yeah. I think so. You know, I think there's a lot of, you know, you could probably have cynical cynical explanations. I don't know if you share these explanations, Tony, but is it Tori? Tori, Tori, that You know, our process by which we develop medications and treatments we want a kind of a, a very replicable, it's almost like assembly line type process and that's focused on symptoms.
Jonathan Rottenberg: And I think a lot of people, you know, in the, in that kind of assembly line maybe aren't asking the, the deeper questions and aren't as responsive to what, what they What what clients or patients really want, and it's really unfortunate, and I think we can put pressure because ultimately these drugs, these treatments, should be serving the consumer, right?
Jonathan Rottenberg: So if they're not studying the things that people most value, in my eyes, That's a failure. I don't know how else to say it.
Chris Wofford: Yeah, so what are the next steps for this research? What direction do you see yourself going and you know for our viewers? What do we all need to know about the research that you're doing in which direction you're headed?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Yeah, so these initial studies in the US and Canada were kind of a proof that these good outcomes specifically well being after depression is real and happens in surprisingly more often than people might expect. The next step of the research is to begin to understand what explains these good outcomes.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So, what explains how people make transitions between depression and states of well being. And we're gearing up, you know, part of my move to Cornell was to collect these data. So not rely on data that other people have collected, but to collect our own sample, we get to ask the questions about these pathways.
Jonathan Rottenberg: And my, my strong hypothesis or suspicion is that there's not going to be one. Not going to be one single road to well being that there might be. Roads that involve how people think about the world or their, their, their beliefs. There may be behavioral roads what people do in their daily lives.
Jonathan Rottenberg: This won't necessarily be represented in the study, but it may be ultimately pretty important. There could be some biological basis that explains why some people are likely to have good outcomes. And finally I, I suspect that social factors, so who people surround themselves with, what the quality of those relationships are like probably also explains a significant part of why some people end up enjoying these good outcomes.
Chris Wofford: So what do you see, how do you see this data changing for instance, those in our audience, their views about life after depression?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Well, my hope is that, that this really inspires people to think more deeply about the question. So, if you just think that depression ends and you know, hopefully I don't have symptoms anymore.
Jonathan Rottenberg: There isn't really much space, and here we maybe get beyond research studies that I'm doing to talk a little bit more about the philosophical aspects of depression. What a profound experience this is. Depression can make you question everything. question everything about what you're doing in your life, who you are, where you're going, and fortunately, most people get better.
Jonathan Rottenberg: But they may not actually really process this experience very deeply and thinking about it only in terms of symptoms and not about their broad aspirations. So there's really two parts. I think one part is let's think about what depression is and how it affects people more broadly. And then the second part is let's be more maybe giving more credibility to these aspirations.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Like what if, just imagine a world where we took seriously that it was possible for people to lead these full, happy lives after depression. And that, that wasn't rare. Like what would that world look like if we were, if we were talking like this was really possible. So that's my hope that in terms of the broader impacts of the work and what people are thinking, thinking about that, that the audience, if they are thinking about that, More than they were before.
Jonathan Rottenberg: I'm really happy because I feel like it's been, it's been kind of, lurking beneath maybe just kind of a side conversation that people sometimes have, but not, you know, it's all like, is there life after oppression? Ha ha ha, you know, a lot of people really don't necessarily have the most positive aspirations.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So they think of depression as something that could only limit you, could only constrain you, could only damage you. And it makes the future very scary, right? You're like, what is my future? Do I have a future?
Chris Wofford: Would you tell us about your personal experience in life as a, as a person with, with depression?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Sure. Yeah. So, depression really was something that when I was a young person came on all of a sudden and it, it crushed my aspirations. Certainly at the time. Where were you?
Chris Wofford: What were you doing?
Jonathan Rottenberg: I was studying history as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and I very suddenly had these very confusing, they were very physical, the symptoms initially, very physical, and I didn't understand them, I didn't understand that this could be depression, and it was actually a long process to get diagnosed, and a confusing process, and sort of an unpleasant process too and The depression lasted for a very long time and led me to drop history.
Jonathan Rottenberg: And I was so, I mean, I was horrified, you know, that I was having this experience, but there was a parallel part of me that was also fascinated. by this experience. What? What is this? What is this monster that is sort of me? And that really put me on a completely different track to study psychology, change careers and set in motion, you know, my, my desire to understand depression as an emotional state and then ultimately did the research that I've been doing in the last six or seven years on good outcomes.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So it had a big change, big change in my life because of my depression.
Chris Wofford: Now, to what degree or how did that experience, how does it inform the research that you do, your particular approach? You know, you had mentioned kind of, I accept the challenge of, you know, right. So you, you saw it as mission critical to figure this thing out.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Yeah.
Chris Wofford: How does that inform your research?
Jonathan Rottenberg: I think I do think back to my experience a lot. So for example, I remember seeing, seeing psychiatrists and seeing that there was a lot that they didn't understand. And, and, and this was, these were people that you're literally putting your life. Your, your life is in their hands and that there was A, a lot of mystery there and B, that the quality of the information about what can I reasonably expect.
Jonathan Rottenberg: It was, there wasn't a lot of information and it was actually quite terrifying. It was quite terrifying to read this epidemiology that was, that I read on my own and also was conveyed to me I was at one point an inpatient. So, you know, for the most severe mental health problems, their There is inpatient care still, and if you, if you read and hear about, well, what could you expect if you're an inpatient for depression, it would be pretty bleak and so as time wore on, and I've functioned better and I've reflected on this experience, I started to wonder, Is that really true?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Is that really all true? That, you know, that there's no good outcomes or very rare outcomes. And, and so I just had this intuition, like, well, maybe I should study it. Maybe I should be the one to actually put some data on this rather than just, but I do think of myself as a confused young person kind of petrified about the future.
Jonathan Rottenberg: So I think we just need data to fill that void.
Chris Wofford: Speaking of which, so question from Liana, one of our viewers who asked this. How does long term depression, years or decades, fit into that data, into the current research? What do we know about that? Or, shifts from episodic to recurrent depression? Yeah.
Chris Wofford: Two part question.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Yeah, so, I, I, I love the question. I want to say that it's important in talking about these, these good outcomes where people have single episodes that we need to bear in mind, there's this whole other reality of recurrent depression and chronic depression. And I don't think anyone can wave a magic wand and say, oh, it's not so bad because that is, that really can be terribly burdensome.
Jonathan Rottenberg: There's a lot of research on recurrent and chronic depression, but my hope is the research that we're doing on good outcomes. So understanding why some people over the long term do rather well can be used to help more people emerge from these, more painful, longer term chronic depressions. Can we use, can we use knowledge about people who do well to people who are still struggling?
Jonathan Rottenberg: I think that's a really good question. underutilized kind of approach uh, thinking about depression, depressed people in a sense, almost like teaming up and sharing what works. Obviously the researcher has to intercede as the one to, to weigh that because I think that this, this kind of research has hope not only for people who might be experiencing the first episode and saying, Oh, am I going to be one of these people as a more benign outcome?
Jonathan Rottenberg: But can we also apply this to people who have had longer term experience with depression? I mean, my depression was, would be classified as chronic. It went on for, for a number of years. I do think that it's probably something that makes it a little bit less likely to have, to have these extremely good outcomes, but it's clearly not impossible, right?
Jonathan Rottenberg: And it's important, even if something is relatively uncommon, it's really important to study what goes into that, what explains that, even if it's only a few people, but it's probably more than just a few people.
Chris Wofford: Before I met you, I had seen some videos of yours as part of your Ever After series. This is a video series that you can link to through the link tree that we'll share in the chat.
Chris Wofford: You've put this on, on the socials, right? Correct. Instagram, Facebook, etc. Let's talk about this digital outreach project that you're doing. You had talked about to some degree alluded in your last response about building community, let's hang together and figure this thing out. Tell me a little bit about Ever After and what you're trying to accomplish here.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Yeah. So I, I think just, it just in the research community, there hasn't been as much dialogue about life after depression. I would like to spark that conversation outside the research dialogue. So in this In this particular segment, I'm outside talking about my experience with depression, specifically my experience in not talking about depression, not including depression in my life story, and the gap that this left, and the feeling that maybe I wasn't even being completely honest about an important part of myself, and the process by which I gradually reintegrated it.
Jonathan Rottenberg: into my life story and all the benefits that had. So there's a lot to life after depression. There's a lot to talk about the ways that affects how we think about ourselves and our future and even processing the ways that depression may in some ways help us move forward in our lives. Those are all themes that we, we, we want to address in the series.
Chris Wofford: You know, something that really got to me when you talked about talking about your depression with your daughter, right? And other family members. We have viewer Tracy who checks in and asks pretty early on how, how one can assist a loved one. What about those of us in our, in our audience? And otherwise what advice or, you know, what, what do you say to those people who have family members who are struggling with this?
Chris Wofford: Those that are close. The support people
Jonathan Rottenberg: are so important. Yeah. Cause it can be a marathon, not a sprint. Yeah. And you're the, you're the people with the, you know, with the water and the and the bananas, you know, helping the person get through it. You can't do it yourself. But being empathetic and open and nonjudgmental um, you could be amazed how far that can go in helping people keep going.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Is that right? Long as it takes and showing that steadiness That would be my main advice is you don't give up on them And you let them know that you're there to talk about if they won't talk about if they won't talk about other things That's that's okay But you're not going to be one of these fairweather friends or people who are too too afraid to to you know Go to sort of engage with the person's pain.
Jonathan Rottenberg: I think that that's It's a human problem. So being a good human being, a good empathetic human being, there's no magic, you know, you may not have the answers, right? They may not have the answers, but being a support that is, I mean, it literally can be life saving. You know, I have had a spouse who stuck with me.
Jonathan Rottenberg: for a number of years in a really tight spot. And I think she might have wondered, am I doing the right thing here? But you know, it came out the other side and I really owe her a tremendous debt, I think in some ways.
Chris Wofford: From where you sit, what do you think can be done to de stigmatize conversations around depression?
Chris Wofford: Well, we're doing
Jonathan Rottenberg: it right now. So I, I, and I, I'm not kidding. I mean, so. Being matter of fact and really normalizing it as part of the human experience. It's not a part of the human experience that people like to talk about. A lot of people who go through it, a lot of people who go through it actually don't want to talk about it anymore.
Jonathan Rottenberg: They feel like that happened, you know, And they never really fully process this, and they never really find ways to use it to their advantage in some ways. Because people can actually learn things during their depression. So I think that talking about depression, thinking about depression, realizing that depression is probably going to be some part of your identity.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Not your whole identity, but part of your identity and creating forums like this for for people to engage, I think, are really important. I think that there's gonna be big changes, particularly in younger people. Younger people are way more comfortable. Talking about mental health problems then, then, I'm not going to say I'm older, but, you know, I'm older than my daughter.
Jonathan Rottenberg: You know, and, and, and I think that there are going to be some sea changes to finally get our society less having attitudes of stigma and people feel shame. around these problems.
Chris Wofford: You know, yeah, I agree with you. In one generation, it seems to be, we're making tremendous progress. We have a viewer anonymous viewer who, who mentioned that depression is taboo at work, right?
Chris Wofford: Oh, how to manage system the symptoms. And that's a huge deal, right? To expose that perceived weakness. As opposed to just, you know, a component of who you are is a big problem. Now, let's back up a little bit and let's, let's remember that you're not a clinician,
Jonathan Rottenberg: right?
Chris Wofford: Right. You're a researcher.
Chris Wofford: But given that let's talk about how to, again, further de stigmatize this kind of stuff, but also for the person that is having symptoms at work.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Well, I mean, Any advice? Because you had symptoms at work, right? Absolutely. Well, I think, first of all, I just have to empathize with the, the, so in terms of like say, Oh, there's all this progress.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Young people have the answer. Yeah, there's two, there's two forums, I think, in particular, where disclosure is extremely difficult. One would be in Workplace settings and it's almost like we really would need to look at changing workplace laws Yes And then the other is in relationships. So People find it very difficult very confusing When do I introduce this part of my history in a relationship knowing that many people have all kinds of negative?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Associations and fear about mental health problems and again not having the answer but really fully empathizing with what this person is going through because that is part of the reality that we cannot happy talk our way out of, that we still live in a society where there's a lot of judgment passed in those particular settings.
Jonathan Rottenberg: I think, you know, now among friends, things might be better in, in, in kind of public dialogue. We're making progress, the younger generation making progress, but there's, there are these Still, these domains where we haven't made as much progress as you would think, and employment is a big one, which is why a lot of people are hiding their symptoms.
Jonathan Rottenberg: You know, they're hiding their symptoms there. You know, I wouldn't advise this person. Oh, just go to your boss and tell them the full story and expect you know that they'll that they will because I don't know the boss. I didn't know the organization.
Chris Wofford: That's right. You know, we've done some past keynotes, and for our viewers, you can check those out on our website, but we've done disabilities at work, and the laws around that, and disclosure, and everything that comes with it.
Chris Wofford: You know, that's, it's an imposing process. involved with. So, for those out there, let's talk about resources a little bit. I want to provide some positive outcomes and work toward positive outcomes. And you know, we had talked a little bit about this before. We're not going to solve it all right now.
Chris Wofford: But what we are going to hopefully do for our audience is to elicit further action. So let's talk about some of the resources that we have available here. Better Outcomes Laboratory. For our viewers who want to visit what's in store. Can you talk a little bit about the research that you have ongoing or in the near future?
Jonathan Rottenberg: Yeah, so the the link tree that will take you to all of the social media that I was talking about with this ever after project in the video that you saw. There, there will also soon be links if you're interested in becoming involved in this research as a participant. We're collecting data on people who have experiences with depression, who are in transition.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Hopefully, hopefully there'll be people who are transitioned and have made it all the way to well being. There are also resources on the website about how to find help. So, for example, how to find a therapist, and for people who might be in crisis, there, there, there's links to CrisisLine as well.
Chris Wofford: Exactly.
Chris Wofford: National Institute of Mental Health, etc. Yes. I really appreciate those resources that you've given us. Thank you, John Rottenberg, for visiting with us today. It's been a, for me, I've learned a ton, and I think our audience hopefully has as well. Thanks. It's been a pleasure.
Jonathan Rottenberg: It was wonderful to be here.
Jonathan Rottenberg: Thank you, Chris. Chris. There are lots of shared resources in this episode, so be sure to check the episode notes for helpful links and next steps.