Psychologist Bruce Levine: Surviving America's Depression Epidemic

Clinical psychologist Bruce Levine is the author of Common Sense Rebellion and Surviving America's Depression Epidemic. He regularly deals with "anti-authoritarian" clients who would be diagnosed by the health care authorities as suffering from "oppositional defiant disorder" or ADHD, and helps them to deal with adjusting to their societal, work or school environment without rebelling in a self-destructive manner.

In a psychiatric context, Levine explains how successful political movements like the American Revolution and the more recent populist uprising are historically led by people who have individual self-respect, something very much lacking in today's society, as well as collective confidence and trust in one another. "When you're living in a society that breaks people's self-respect and breaks their bonds of trust with one another, it makes it very difficult to have any kind of democratic revolutionary movement," remarks Levine.

Levine identifies the process of "learned helplessness" as one of the primary factors that has led to society feeling broken, demoralized, hopeless and defeated. He cites an experiment involving dogs where both groups of animals were subjected to electro-shocks, wherein one group of dogs was able to stop the electro-shocks and the other was not. The dogs not able to stop the shocks moved into passivity and depression, and even when presented with the opportunity to escape did not even try to take it because they had learned helplessness. Levine compares this to national elections, where people vote for either Democrats or Republicans but still end up with the same consequences, or don't vote whatsoever but still end up with the same consequences. "That's learned helplessness," explains Levine, "No matter what you do you're going to get that same degree of pain."

Levine compares the apathy and the lack of demonstrations against the 2000 election fraud controversy in the U.S. to similar examples in Mexico in Iran, where millions of people protest even though in doing so they are risking their lives. He identifies debt as a central contributor to people's apathy and how populations are broken. Unlike previous generations, every young person who leaves education is now saddled with an average of $20,000 of debt, and so are petrified of losing their job or having their benefits taken away, thus are far less likely to go out and protest against the system that holds them in bondage.
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Education

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• Psychologist
• Bruce
• Levine
• Surviving
• America's
• Depression
• Epidemic

[ilovegoth]

I think every effort should be made for careful listening by Docs and prescribing of excercises, supplements, accepting your feeling blah, making new friends or rejoining old ones BEFORE a person is allowed to go on antidepressants. I think it would bring down the rate of them being given out excessively by 50-75%.

[ilovegoth]

Yes I agree anti depressants are overly prescribed. I say this as someone who is on them. Before I ever needed them they were prescribed to me 4 times when I did not. Finally it matched up and they were a lifesaver for me.

[ilovegoth]

So the DSM is flawed and lists mostly mental problems that cause society problems, a good example was putting in homosexuality and taking it back out again. Bruce is on the money there.

[ilovegoth]

Here is what I noticed: he mentions schools do not really teach kids to like learning, that is true but many conservatives, not all by any means but some, approve of this. They feel education should only fulfill getting a job and being part of the system. I am all for people learning and for learning ssake not just to ace tests and get a job and be a cog in the machine. So how do we make it happen? Some in the US wants to cancel the national school system.

[ilovegoth]

This was very interesting, I decided to watch the whole thing to make a fair assessment. One thing no solutions are really given only wrongdoings. So, there is some good info here but what to do with it?

[ilovegoth]

What year & date was this recorded? I see it was uploaded Jan. 7, 2011 but when was it shot? thx

[ilovegoth]

@nabuco00 i haven't seen the video yet but I have to say this is just not true. To say "Depression is a form of mental cowardess." is so backwards. I have it and I fight it and dang if only it was just cowardice.

[mj6387]

Tested on dogs?? Animal....test on yourself!!!

[hollywoodjokerpicalo]

wait you sic fuck you shocked dogs. where watching always watching uncle sam is looking at You.

[Blondie267267]

There are more and more of us - Americans who have awoken. We need to be well organized and have a plan. How can we help our fellow Americans wake up? Then what? We need to vote the corrupt big business politicians out! We need to vote in every election. We need to take our country back! Who are the new candidates, besides Ron Paul? Where are they? Where are the meetings? What is the plan?