Principles

Our five core principles are:

1. Depth

Depression demands intellectual and emotional depth.

We believe that depression is not a problem to be flattened into soundbites, slogans, or simple formulas. It is a condition that touches the deepest aspects of selfhood. To treat it seriously is to resist premature resolution, to allow space for ambiguity, and to pursue understanding across levels—biological, existential, cultural, and symbolic. Shallow thinking may comfort, but it does not resolve. We are committed to slow thought, careful inquiry, and conceptual seriousness in all we do.

2. Complexity

Depression is neither simple nor singular.

Depression is not reducible to neurochemistry, trauma histories, or social stressors. It is often all of these at once, and more. Its expressions range from numbness to anguish, despair to rage, inertia to compulsion. We are committed to frameworks that can hold contradiction, accommodate multiplicity, and make space for the varieties of depressive experience. Complexity is not confusion; it is honesty in the face of reality.

3. Interdisciplinarity

No single field owns the truth.

We believe no single discipline, profession, or perspective can claim monopoly on understanding depression. Biological research explains many things, but not everything. So does philosophy, history, and literature. We build bridges between institutions, fields, and forms of knowledge because only through this interdisciplinary action can a fuller picture emerge.

4. Integrity

We speak honestly without sentimentality, sensationalism, or simplification.

Our language avoids euphemism and exaggeration alike. Integrity means telling the truth about treatment, about suffering, and about death. But integrity also means resisting unnecessary despair.

5. History

Depression has a cultural and personal lineage.

Depression is not a modern invention. It has been examined by poets, doctors, saints, and philosophers for millennia. We believe that the history of depression matters for how we understand and respond to it today. Likewise, each person’s individual history matters and deserves recognition.