Clearly, your husband has a mental disorder. It may be neurological. I don't know. If taking medication helps it, then he does well to get his prescription and use the med. I take amitriptyline, a tricyclic antidepressant, which markedly improves my functioning. I also take hydrocodone, which keeps me more active than I'ld be without it. So I'm in no way opposed to seeing doctors and trying medication.

Often, while folding clothes, I get a back spasm from degenerative spine changes that makes me unable to continue. Thirty minutes after taking hydrocodone, I can resume folding the laundry. The pain I experienced was not due to anything wrong with my nervous system. (Pain is usually a sign that your nervous system is working appropriately.) The hydrocodone does not fix anything that's damaged in my back. Yet, it does help me to function better. I don't know why the amitriptyline helps me. No one knows. (Yes, we have theories about neurotransmitters and what goes on within the neural synapses, but no one has figured out exactly why some depressed persons experience improved well-being, while taking an antidepressant . . . and some don't.) The effectiveness of neither of those meds should be seen as evidence that my physical or emotional discomforts are the result of me having a neurological disease. The drugs do alter my physiology in a way that improves my functioning. All the same, the arthritis in my back will get worse as I continue to age. Now that I've retired and lost my significant other, I'm finding my problem with depression has gotten worse. Taking a bigger daily dosage of amitriptyline isn't going to remedy that. (I've know because I've tried that, along with everything else in the pharmacy.)

What drives my recent increase in depression is not something diseased inside my brain. It is my longstanding tendency to socially isolate, which started in childhood. Without a job to go to and a loving companion to interact with, I tend to spend my days in my recliner - reading, listening to music and watching what's on a screen. That is guaranteed to make anyone depressed, regardless of how healthy their brain might actually be. I don't need more medical intervention. I need to get out of my apartment and volunteer for a worthy cause and join some group whose members share one of my interests. Humans need satisfying social connectedness as much as they need food, water and oxygen. I was seeing a psychologist for awhile this summer. His encouragement felt good, but he wasn't telling me anything I didn't already know. I'm either going to get off the recliner and join the world around me, or I'm going to stay depressed.

Just because a medical intervention helps, that does not prove that the problem is essentially a medical problem. A person plagued with anxiety will definitely feel better, if they take enough of an anxiolytic drug, like Valium. That doesn't mean that taking Valium is a good way to help "manage" their anxiety. Believing that it is has gotten some people into an awful lot of trouble. I don't oppose the judicious use of drugs like Valium. Five years ago, I found Xanax helpful for a while. This was right after my boyfriend died, and I was left with a huge void in my life. It had me on the verge of hysteria for a while. Time passing simmered that down. I'm still working on filling that void . . . and I need to do better than I'm doing.

I say - take whatever help helps. Try everything. Medical intervention may prove supportive, even when the problem is not fundamentally a medical problem. I also think that conceptualizing problems-of-living as "brain disease" is misleading and may cause us to not focus on what we really need to be doing. I think we've become over-invested in the notion that the "the right chemical cocktail" can "stabilize" us into improved well-being. Maybe. Maybe not. Often we have maladaptive habits that need to be destabilized.