If something hurts us, we should avoid it, right? If you put your hand on a hot stove, it physically harms you, you experience pain, and you pull away instinctively. If someone is physically abusive in a relationship, the best course of action is likely to seek support and exit the relationship. It seems commonsense enough. But what happens when the pain we are trying to avoid is the internal kind? When it is psychological and emotional pain? So much of contemporary culture t

What causes depression? The simple medical answer given is often something along the lines of "a chemical imbalance in the brain's neurotransmitters." While this might seem common sense enough, the issue isn't quite so simple. We know that antidepressants work well for some of the people that take them, but the effects are often limited, insufficient, or even completely lacking for a very large portion of people who do take them. The truth is, the scientific jury is still out