Top Ten Reasons Not to Buy Antidepressants, Part 2 of 5

First, the inevitable disclaimer. Reading an article, or even a book, is no substitute for real psychiatric help. People who are seeing a doctor or using medication should consult their mental health care provider about how to use information they read here or elsewhere. Changing medication, or changing your lifestyle and not consulting your doctor about the possible need to change medication, can be dangerous.

Finding the Right Place and People for You

Psychologists are now finding that long-term "chronic" depression can often be caused by conflict between our hereditary temperament and our lifestyle. A hundred years ago, this may have been primarily a problem for successful salesman types who wanted to enter polite society and discovered that the affluent class of that time had very strict rules against saying and doing most of the things extroverts naturally wanted to say and do. Now, it's more likely to be a problem for introverts. When introverts express good will and even good moods in the ways that come naturally to them, extroverts tend to become dissatisfied, distrustful, and resentful.

In the 1950s the job market was at least balanced, with jobs in sales, reception, food service, and the performing arts for extroverts and jobs in industry, technology, education, and the creative arts for introverts. Unfortunately for everyone but Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Jerry Yee, the job market has shrunk disproportionately, with nearly all the industrial jobs vanishing altogether. In the 1950s most people hoped that their children would qualify for white-collar "office jobs." Most of us are now doing "office jobs," but the typical office these days is no longer a suitable place for introverts to use their talents for object-directed work with objectively measured goals.