Depression and Our Need for Entertainment

Depression pulls us toward media that mirrors whatever we're feeling. A sad song seems like proof that someone out there gets it, that our pain has a witness. We put on bleak films and feel a strange relief watching characters carry their own grief, as if our sorrow connects to something larger. Anger has its own outlet too. Violent movies and aggressive video games can seem appealing when frustration needs somewhere to go. And then the thing afterward: we usually feel worse, not better.

The reverse is also true. A cheerful song or an upbeat movie is often the last thing a depressed person can stand. Happiness on screen can sharpen the sense of being cut off from everyone else. Picture a contented family in a film seen by someone who never had one. What was meant to warm the room instead reminds them of exactly what's missing.

Pay attention to what runs through your head and a pattern surfaces. The gloomy material we absorb tends to feed the low mood rather than drain it. The reason is that it doesn't leave when the credits roll. It lingers. Those images and lines sit in memory for a long time and keep nudging our thoughts further down.

Consider how songs work on us. Most of us hum or replay tunes in our heads throughout the day, often with nothing playing at all. Something in an ordinary moment triggers it: a passing feeling, an event, sometimes just an odd word or phrase that happens to live in a lyric. The tracks we play most are usually the ones that surface, though a song from a decade ago can arrive unannounced too. When those songs carry bleak messages, they go on affecting us long after the three minutes of playback are done.

Fill your mind with depressive material and the depression starts to look less like a mystery. People struggling with it are often told to spend less time around negative company. We may not know the musicians we love or the people on our screens personally, but they are still people, and keeping their company does something to us.

With music, steer away from artists whose words broadcast low self-worth, self-hatred, self-harm, and hopelessness. The same goes for anything glorifying harm toward others or self-destructive living. Someone wrestling with how they look might do well to skip music videos built around sex appeal and surface beauty. A lot of rap traffics in exactly this kind of damage: messages organized around money, disposable sex, and violence. In its place, there are artists working the other direction, among them Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar, Akala, Lauryn Hill, Common, A Tribe Called Quest, and K'Naan. On the rock side you have P.O.D., Owl City, The Postal Service, All American Rejects, and Skillet. For lyrics that build you up rather than hollow you out, there's India Arie, Bob Marley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Stevie Wonder.

The feeds matter as much as the playlists. A Facebook or Twitter timeline soaked in negativity quietly works against any effort to build a steadier, more positive frame of mind. Plenty of people use the same platforms to pass along encouragement, good stories, images, and quotes. Mute or drop the accounts that leave you flat and follow the ones that give you a lift.

On the film side, look for stories with inspirational or redemptive weight. Dead Poets Society, A Beautiful Mind, A Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Billy Elliot, Schindler's List, Erin Brockovich: that's a short sample. Some of them wade into heavy material and can look depressing from the outside. The point is what they do with the darkness. However bad things get, they insist there's hope worth reaching for, and they tend to end in some kind of hard-won victory. The themes run deep and touch anyone, and they reach people carrying depression with particular force. These films can move you somewhere beneath the surface and leave you with a reason to expect something better.

Balance keeps this from tipping into its own kind of heaviness. Alongside the weighty stuff, make room for lighter fare: feel-good music, a comedy that asks nothing of you. That mix holds the line between deep thinking and plain enjoyment.

Sometimes you overhaul everything you watch and listen to and the depression stays put anyway. There are many reasons it's stubborn, and one of them is uncomfortable: part of us wants it. Depression can work as a signal that we've drifted from our purpose and have inner work waiting. The trap is that a mind clogged with negative thought can't make out what that purpose even is, let alone turn toward it. So the depression is carrying a message, and reading it requires stepping out of the old thought patterns and putting effort into actual growth.

Breaking loose starts with goals. A good first one is making sure every media influence around you carries worth and value rather than the opposite. Start there because it's concrete. You can see it, measure it, and change it on your own. Shield the mind from the constant stream of negative input and it gets room to heal and to start locating what it's for. Fixing your entertainment diet won't cure depression by itself. It can be the first real move toward self-development and growth. - Iman Mohiki