DEPRESSION + LEADERSHIP

SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION

• Fatigue and decreased energy
• Loss of interest in favorite activities
• Feeling hopeless, anxious, and worried
• Sadness or irritability
• Suicidal and/or self destructive thoughts

Research on Depression and Leadership

WAYS DEPRESSION AFFECTS THE WAY YOU THINK

• See things as they are.
• Considered realists
• Inverse Law of Sanity
• A tendency to be empathetic
• Good at managing change

Abraham Lincoln

HOW LINCOLN'S DEPRESSION HELPED

• Depression helped him be a realist
• When the civil war started Lincoln was a strategist
• He had to learn how to adapt to all the change
• He was able to change according to the circumstances
• Lincoln proved to be extremely flexible

Empathy comes almost hand and hand with Depression.

Depression seems to prepare the mind for a long-term habit of appreciating others' point of view.

MLK & GANDHI THOUGHT THIS WAY

• Neither wanted to defeat the opposition.
• They focused on changing people's false beliefs.
• MLK considered nonviolent resistance to be psychiatry for the american soul.
• Both made suicide attempts when they were in adolescence.
• Empathy was the key to their social change.

Leaders who are mildly depressed are needed in time of change because they see things differently than someone who is "sane". Mental illness allowed some of our greatest leaders in history to make actual social change by using radical empathy, realism, and the ability to adapt under constantly changing circumstances.

"When traditional approaches begin to fail, however, great crisis leaders see new opportunities. When the past no longer guides the future, they invent a new future. When old questions are unanswerable and new questions unrecognized, they create new solutions. They are realistic enough to see painful truths, and when calamity occurs, they can lift up the rest of us."

THANK YOU