About a year ago, my friend told me he had political depression. I didn't take it seriously at the time because I didn't think political depression was a formal medical term, and my friend was quite strong-willed. But over the past year, he kept talking about it. He said he spent about seven or eight hours a day scrolling through news that made him very unhappy, suffered from insomnia at night, and slowly lost interest in work, life, and even his entire existence. When he started talking about death, I became very worried. So I started to investigate this issue, but there were very few Chinese and English documents I could find. The most widely spread article in the Chinese world was written by an American psychologist named Robert Rosen. So I contacted him. This was not an academic interview; this was just a conversation between an ordinary person who cares about his friend and a doctor. Today I broadcast it, hoping to help my friend and someone who has similar difficulties like him.

"Is political depression real? Is political depression real?" "What a good question. If you come into the room with me and you start talking about something and you could say to me, 'Well, this makes no sense, but I'm feeling it.' Oh, go home. Well, of course it makes sense and it's for real because if you're feeling it, it's real. At least in America where I was seeing these people was... that we felt free under democratic agreement to question everything, but to still treat people civilly. And now we don't feel that anymore. And I am they, or they would say, 'I'm super depressed about all this.'"

"What is the difference between political depression and regular depression?" "Political depression is depression with this added political aspect to it. That is a major feature. It's become a major feature. I want to know the core of depression there could be: I have a total loss of hope that this is ever going to change my soul, my spirit, my career, my relationships. All of them are not going to be—I'm not going to be allowed to grow and evolve with them to the best of me. And that leaves me feeling hopeless." "So you mean the core is kind of feeling like powerlessness?"

"Yes, there's a powerlessness that comes with feeling that there's a total loss of any control. There's a loss of power. Yeah, I think that's a very good point that you're saying. Yeah, it's a powerless feeling. It doesn't matter what I do; it's not going to be seen. It's not going to be heard. That's a piece of regular depression too. There's a loss of connection. There's an isolation that's built into regular depression." (Chai Jing's narration continues): "So you can see these are all common things, but you can see that under the term 'political pressure,' everything will still be accompanied by depressive emotions that ordinary people might also experience due to political factors. But whether it is clinical depression, there is a clinical diagnostic standard. This is the standard Dr. Rosen sent me, and I have posted it in the description. You can open the link later for self-diagnosis reference. A reminder: among these symptoms, such as depressed mood, insomnia, and feelings of worthlessness, these symptoms need to appear almost every day and for most of the day. And at the same time, five or more symptoms need to appear simultaneously within a short period to meet the clinical diagnostic criteria for depression."

Dr. Rosen said that political depression may be in line with all these standards, but it has an extra dimension, which is the kind of thought and feeling that has lost control of one's own fate. And he believes that the driving force behind this feeling is fear. He mentioned two types of fear: one is real harm, the other is social discrimination.

(Chai Jing): "You mentioned fear as the main drive actually behind political depression. And I'm asking you this question, material harm. If I walked out with a sign in downtown, where? Beijing. Beijing. And what would be the consequences of that?" (Robert Rosen): "Yeah, you would be arrested." (Chai Jing): "And would your family be arrested too?" (Robert Rosen): "It depends. The societal fear part is I'm excluded from society. Either people think I'm crazy or they're worried that something would happen to them if they communicate with me. So that'd be a societal fear. And that's where, again, depression comes in because if you don't find you're being an authentic person, that you're being authentic in your own life and being able to show up in your own life."

"For my friend, he used to be the type of people that you mentioned is an active doer. And those are the people that are the most passionate people. They're on the front lines, and it's easy to see materially how they could be squashed down, and societally how they could be squashed down, and personally, all three. Because they keep running into that wall, and they want it so bad, and they're leading the charge, that it just crushes their heart. It's a heart-crushing affair. It really worries me when you start talking about death. Hopelessness would be, 'Well, this is the way it is, and it's not going to change. There's nothing I can do about it, and I'm just going to go. Go to sleep.'"

He used a metaphor that gave me a bit of a chill to describe such a state. He said it's like a person sailing on a dark ocean; you can't see land, there are no landmarks, and you can't even see the sun, moon, or stars.

(Chai Jing): "Your friend is not balanced right now; he's only on the side of helplessness. For China over the past 20 years, who can assume they know what China will be like? Do any of us know?" (Robert Rosen): "He has a prediction. Yes, he has a prediction. It's in the future about a possible disaster." (Chai Jing): "And I would say back to that, 'Well, who are you to presume that your prediction is any more than a prediction?' Well, it's a very direct question. But it's still a prediction. I don't know. And I don't care." (Robert Rosen): "Okay. Can you explain more about this? I know in my heart, I believe in my heart, and from the people, the normal people I speak to, regular people, the regular people in the street, that we want this other thing. And this is the 'I don't care' part. I don't care if it takes a thousand years to get there. That's the difference between depression and hope." (Chai Jing): "So you've just changed the time frame." (Robert Rosen): "Yeah, I'm changing, but it's not only that. When you say it, put it that way, when it becomes that literal. I also have the option, because I really do believe this, things could change tomorrow. And I'm going to show up at the door doing whatever I can to help make that change."

(Chai Jing): "What can I do at this point to prevent the worst from happening to my friend? Can he leave the country?" (Robert Rosen): "He did, actually. He moved to a foreign country. The fear was gone, but the depression was still there." (Robert Rosen, smiling): "The world, the world is a chaotic mess. Life is messy. Life is messy. The world is chaotic. The other part is a more deep-seated thing. It's going to take longer. It's part of him, right? He's been carrying that around maybe since he was three years old. And he's lost the hope, and he's got to come back to it. And he's lost, and he's coming back to it. So if I was working with somebody like that, it would be a little bit of... have a little bit of peacefulness with yourself. I would hand them a sheet that says, 'Here, take a holiday from yourself today and go ride on the roller coaster.' It'd be something like that. So that's why I've gone over to this bit of conversation about there are some understandings. Once you have that, you're in the room with me, and once you have that conversation, you might have a little more peacefulness about it." (Chai Jing): "So maybe the point is about regaining the power and the meaning of life to cure yourself, to heal yourself."

(Robert Rosen): "Well, it's not a cure. There is no cure for you, Chai. I'm sorry. There's no cure for him either. There are these other choices about that. It's very easy to stay depressed. This is the past. I'm in the past. I'm depressed. I know what my day is going to be like, and I know how it's going to end. So that's the routine. So I'm kind of in the comfort of my discomfort. I know what that routine is. The other side of that is the future. Now, in the future, I might not be depressed because I don't know how that story is going to end. But you make people anxious. When you come into the present, into the unknown world, because you don't know where it's going to end, it comes with a little added anxiety. It's just, that's what it comes with. How could it not? It would be unnatural if it didn't, because you don't know, you don't know where that's going from. And that's part of these choices. He wouldn't be depressed anymore, but he would be a little more anxious about it. Yeah. But this is the side where is it a fear-filled anxiety, or is it a scary, exciting anxiety because I don't know what's going to happen now? So maybe your friend is having a combination of, 'I don't know him, you know, I'm already, you know, he's gonna have to, I'm gonna have to bill him for this pretty soon.' I think the problem for him is how to stop. They have to move into the present. I'm in the past with some of the thought, and I just, it's like, 'Okay, I just have to wake up again.' I might go through that process a thousand times in that day. Okay. While you're going through it, you're being in the present. You're waking up each time you go back to there. You wake up and you come back into the present. This is what that commitment is."

(Chai Jing): "But how can you focus on the moment?" (Robert Rosen): "Well, by looking, something's always changing in the present. If you were to turn around and look out your window now, I bet there's, for one minute, is that a real outside there or is that just, is that the real outside?" (Chai Jing's narration continues): "I guess in that minute, you might see a branch moving, or something crawling on a branch. This is our current state. My conversation with Dr. Rosen was half a year ago. I originally had no intention of broadcasting it, but during this period, I continuously receive letters from many people mentioning that they are suffering from political depression. Political depression is a proposition that has not yet received an accurate definition and widespread research. This is because psychological counselors are strictly required to avoid talking about politics during their training, which has a certain rationality. They believe that talking about politics will strengthen a powerful pressure from social structures and increase the patient's sense of powerlessness. But there is also another voice that says if they keep avoiding and remaining silent, this will exacerbate the patient's guilt. This is why Dr. Rosen's article has been widely circulated in the Chinese world, because he is one of the very few people who directly face the public to talk about these topics. So, before we said goodbye, he reminded that he hopes there can be broader and richer discussions in this field, because patients are knocking on the doors of clinical doctors with pain, right here, right now. I also want to say, I am currently..."