Shankar Vedantam

A note that this story includes a discussion of suicide.

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Call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

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We live in a culture that prizes strength and confidence and that celebrates happiness and high mood.

So when those things slip away, when our energy disappears, when joy goes missing, we naturally assume that something must have gone very wrong.

We look for a problem to fix, a disease to cure.

At Cornell University, psychologist Jonathan Rottenberg has long asked if this is the right way to think about depression.

John Rottenberg, welcome to Hidden Brain.

Thirty years ago, John, you were a confident, self-assured college graduate preparing to get married and to start a career.

What was your life like at the time, and what were your plans for the future?

Tell me what happened.

In many ways, you had all of your life before you.

You had graduated from an Ivy League school.

You were about to get married.

You were doing this PhD and you thought you were the smartest person in the room.

It felt like everything was going your way.

At what point did this clarify itself?

At what point did doctors come up with a diagnosis, John?

Well, for someone who was so proud of his own mind and how his mind worked, I'm wondering if there was an element of shame that you felt as you were experiencing this.