Views on depression and its proper treatment
24111/05 Filed in: Health
The cover story of Time Magazine (Nov 21, 2005)
Is our treatment of depression all wrong?
featured a woman from Australia who was "driven to
the brink of suicide by the drugs prescribed to cure
her". In this article, the practice of prescribing
antidepressants like candy is criticised, mainly
because the information on the severity of
side-effects is often withheld from the patients.
However, the assumption that drugs by themselves are a useful way of treating depression is questioned only very gingerly.
Basically, there are several basic ideas about depression going around:
First there's the assumption that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. It is a fact that different states of mind and emotion occur simultaneously with different chemical processes in different areas of the brain. But, it's not clear which comes first, the brain chemistry or out thought processes - and that's a very comforting thought in my opinion, because we can direct our thoughts ourselves. Changing the chemistry of the brain is probably much trickier.
Another approach on depression is voiced by many from the huge field of so-called alternative medicine: That people with bad coping mechanisms and thinking habits are much more likely to develop depression than those who are not. And - thinking patterns and your outlook on life are things you can and should choose consciously. Just think about how the assumption "I am a victim of depression, I can't do anything about it" will make you react to feeling down, blue, lethargic or simply "urgh", and then think how an outlook of "How can I get through this? What and who can help me to get through this?" would make you react.
Thought patterns or thinking habits can be un-learned. The first step to that is recognising them. One good way to un-learn is meditation (see: my former post Meditation increases happiness and helps with pain and depression). As in mediation, all thoughts are simply recognised as thoughts ("Here's another thought") without paying attention to their content, the recurring patterns of one's thinking start to emerge quite rapidly. Also, the perceived "reality" of our thoughts becomes a lot more relative, as we find that "that's just a thought" instead of the assumption "this is how it really is".
However, the assumption that drugs by themselves are a useful way of treating depression is questioned only very gingerly.
Basically, there are several basic ideas about depression going around:
First there's the assumption that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. It is a fact that different states of mind and emotion occur simultaneously with different chemical processes in different areas of the brain. But, it's not clear which comes first, the brain chemistry or out thought processes - and that's a very comforting thought in my opinion, because we can direct our thoughts ourselves. Changing the chemistry of the brain is probably much trickier.
Another approach on depression is voiced by many from the huge field of so-called alternative medicine: That people with bad coping mechanisms and thinking habits are much more likely to develop depression than those who are not. And - thinking patterns and your outlook on life are things you can and should choose consciously. Just think about how the assumption "I am a victim of depression, I can't do anything about it" will make you react to feeling down, blue, lethargic or simply "urgh", and then think how an outlook of "How can I get through this? What and who can help me to get through this?" would make you react.
Thought patterns or thinking habits can be un-learned. The first step to that is recognising them. One good way to un-learn is meditation (see: my former post Meditation increases happiness and helps with pain and depression). As in mediation, all thoughts are simply recognised as thoughts ("Here's another thought") without paying attention to their content, the recurring patterns of one's thinking start to emerge quite rapidly. Also, the perceived "reality" of our thoughts becomes a lot more relative, as we find that "that's just a thought" instead of the assumption "this is how it really is".
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