Is Marketing Good or Bad For Depression?

More people than ever keep a close eye on their health and their weight. Pause and think about it. Did the folks who grew up between the 1940s and the 1970s worry about whether the corner grocery carried organic produce? Were they tallying calories at dinner? Not really. And yet depression was about as common then as it is now. So what changed? My answer is marketing.

Better treatment has taught us a lot about where depression comes from, and good therapy has helped a growing number of people cope with it. Lately some researchers and psychologists have begun suggesting less conventional options alongside medication and behavioral work, while admitting that more study is needed. Yoga is the current favorite. Groups like the American Yoga Association put real effort into linking the practice to relief from depression. I am not a yoga person, and alternative medicine does not win me over. I have doubts about how well something like yoga actually treats depression, partly because the research so far is thin.

Keep in mind that plenty of associations and private studios exist to sell what they offer, so a growth-minded slant is baked in. The marketing side of such an organization has to assemble data and research and then turn it into a reason for people to buy into whatever is next, which is a different job from asking honest scientific questions. A peer-reviewed meta-analysis of yoga and depression (see PubMed) found that yoga could work as an ancillary practice. It did not find yoga to be a standalone cure. Compare that to a yoga website piece that presents the practice as something that might stand in for ordinary medical care, while never mentioning the meta-analysis I just described (see the pro-yoga article). The slant shows. Weighing all the evidence was never the goal; talking the reader into adopting yoga was.

Maybe yoga will turn out to be tremendously helpful for depression on its own. My point is narrower: marketing and science are separate fields chasing separate ends. Marketing pushes sales through a biased read of the research. Science tries to surface what is true, whether or not the truth is convenient.

Some organizations hire researchers for the specific purpose of producing data that fits the company's goals and strategic plans, and that data can carry claims the science has not yet earned. Research itself deserves respect. Still, a handful of people in any field will bend numbers to make a fast dollar. Psychology covers more than behavior and the brain. It also feeds into organizational management and marketing, which is how McDonald's, one of the worst food providers around, can pay psychologists north of $100,000 a year to sharpen sales tactics and keep the world eating poorly.

How does any of that connect to yoga and depression? Marketing tactics are the thread. A depressed person is emotionally unsteady, and one safe bet is that someone in pain wants the fastest relief they can find. That makes a well-promoted but poorly studied method an easy first stop.

If yoga helps you manage depression, then keep going to class. The trouble starts when an organization keeps pushing its product onto people who are not emotionally stable, because it can pull them away from approaches with firmer scientific backing. What a psychologist or counselor can do best is listen, get to know the person, and bring scientific inquiry to the roots of the depression.

That advice matters most for newly licensed professionals. Feeling good about your credentials is fine, but do not let those credentials cloud your read on a client, and resist the urge to keep reciting every coping method you have studied. People come to you for help and often just want to be heard. Skip the judgment. Listening is how you learn what set off the depression or whether a traumatic event played a part, and that is what points you toward the right treatment.

Before my father passed away I wrote short stories and poetry, because putting my imagination on paper gave it somewhere to go. I only picked it up again recently. To get back to writing I first had to find some peace, accept that he is gone, and trust that he is somewhere better. That was my way through. I also started going to the gym to work off stress, finished my MBA, and learned how to prepare tax returns after leaving a violent relationship. What I understood was that doing the things I actually wanted to do made me happy, and no one gets to stop me.

Dr. David Williams' piece, 7 Hobbies that Help with Depression and Anxiety, is a decent starting point. He lists writing, hitting the gym, and gardening (2014). Gardening, yes. It suits older people and anyone who likes working with their hands. Tending a garden teaches a depressed person to concentrate and stay focused, shutting out distractions while they work toward a finished result. Yoga may well be a fine coping tool for some people with depression. The licensed professional is still the one responsible for steering each client toward whatever fits their particular situation.

- Heather Browning, MBA, BA

References: Williams, D. (14 April 2014). 7 Hobbies that Help with Depression and Anxiety. Retrieved January 29, 2015.