Insightful observations about depression and dealing with it. Also applicable IMO to anxiety.

[snagglepuss]

As I can't copy and paste all 63 points, I'll just quote several.

snip

37. You think you're depressed because of your problems. This is a mind trick. You're always depressed because of your depression. It's the chemistry! Anxious thoughts trigger the fight-or-flight response that produces stress chemicals, causing a chemical imbalance in your brain.

38. It seems your whole self is depressed. This is a mind trick. Depression only occurs in the subcortex. There's never any depression in the thinking part of the brain.

snip

39. Depression seems like present reality. This is a mind trick. Depression is a feeling, already past, which you must then replay (rethink) in memory 'as if' it is present reality. This is due to the instantaneous process of 'pain perception.' To experience any feeling of physical pain or emotion (which is always produced in the subcortex) we must first think (acknowledge) the feeling in the neocortex-after we have it.

Cases are recorded of athletes who break a bone during a game and don't experience any pain until the game is over. Neocortical concentration on the game blocked pain signals sent to the neocortex that should have alerted them to the pain of their injury.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3841190

[Lionessa]

1. I totally disagree with the areas you posted...

If I have 10 reasons to be depressed, then it is situational depression, not clinical as described above. Additionally if those situational issues are currently occurring, then it IS present reality. For example, if one is financially broke, homeless, and wondering where their next job or home might be after having been gainfully employed for 40 years and now has nothing and sees no future, well that's pretty damn present reality, isn't it? According to your #39, it wouldn't be. And the explanation about it being remembrance of past, the past that was just fine in my example, doesn't wash, it would be current and future anxiety/depression.

From what little you posted (I won't waste time reading the whole thing), it looks like propaganda to get more people on anti-depressants. Complete BS.

[snagglepuss]

3. You have totally misunderstood the article if you believe it is hawking

pharmaceuticals. The author herself has battled depression since a teenager which btw delayed her getting a degree till her 50s and she advocates behavioral therapy as a means to cope with depression as opposed to drugs.

snip

I was one of those who went into the psychology field to help myself after I was diagnosed more than 25 years ago (along with my father and brother) with manic depression (they call it bipolar now)... But I'm no longer bipolar, or manic depressive, and I am horrified at the pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists (I went to them for 20 years and they couldn't tell me how to stop the pain except to take pills) who are forcing their drugs and learned helplessness on younger and younger people. And more and more research is emerging that says a full 70% of people are not helped by taking anti-depressants. And some of the research that says anti-depressants are helpful is necessarily all on the up and up.

For instance, a while ago an article came out saying anti depressants were okay for teenagers after there had been a flurry of suicides. Oh, really? If you investigated the source of the article, it was the NIH, National Institute of Health. Okay, that seems credible, until you check deeper and find the study was funded at NIH by the Johnson Family. Wonderful of the Johnson family to contribute to society, right? That's the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson. This $ milllion dollar contribution will come back to the Johnson Family 100 fold in terms of the greater amount of pills they can now peddle thanks to the article. You can already see I'm on a mission to get people out of depression without years of therapy and drugs--by learning how their brain works so they can control where their brain takes them instead of just riding along, willy nilly, wherever the old habitual neural patterns want to take them.


http://mobyjane.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=2

[laconicsax]

2. Total bullshit. n/t

[Justina For Justice]

4. No, Distracting Your Mind From Negative Thoughts Works.

I have been using this method for several months and it works. I've discovered that while my "self-talk" is telling me how bad I am about something, I don't have to allow it to keep repeating its litany of abuse. I can divert my thoughts to some neutral, positive or even nonsensical alternative. This seems to have an almost immediate biochemical reaction in my body, reducing the stress chemicals which can be so debilitating. We can choose to think a negative thought or a positive or neutral one, and it makes a huge difference in how we then feel.

[laconicsax]

5. Not when the underlying problem is chemical.

I have never been not been depressed. My family first noticed when I was a toddler, and I was diagnosed around age 3. 'Normal' for me is 'down' or 'glum' for most people. Without medication, the only times I can feel even remotely happy are times when I should be exuberant.

I have used different CBTs and REBT (which I still use today) but aside from helping me clarify my thinking, they are useless for managing depression. The only thing that has ever worked for me are those "useless" SSRIs.

I'm sure you mean well, but please don't tell me that it's just as easy as talking yourself down. If it were, I probably wouldn't have dealt with depression since the early 90s.

[Confusious]

6. +10000

Me too. same case.

behavioral therapy will work for people who get into bad habits.

If your brain chemistry is askew, it ain't gonna help worth crap.

[laconicsax]

9. But don't you know? Generic 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' ideas are "insightful."

:grr:

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[CanSocDem]

8. Good post.

7. Switch your Thoughts! To get rid of any depressive thoughts, simply switch out of thinking them. Since the brain is basically a 'yes brain,' it's hard to not think something. The way to not think a negative or depressive thought is to think another thought instead of it.

Works for me.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3841190

[SheilaT]

10. First of all, while I occasionally get depressed,

I don't think I've ever suffered from clinical depression. But from what I have experienced, and more importantly from what I've observed in others, I think there may well be very different kinds of depression, some of which are amenable to therapy, others which really do need some kind of chemical help.

Maybe the most important thing is not to assume that all depression is the same and can be "cured" by the same means -- which is actually the underlying assumption of most modern medicine, that all manifestations of some specific illness or condition is exactly like every other manifestation of that illness or condition, and can therefore be treated exactly the same way. One of the things I've learned in my time on this planet is that we really are all truly unique. That doesn't mean that there aren't medicines or treatments that will work for most people, but that we should be paying just a little more attention to our unique differences.

[ellenrr]

11. There is no evidence of a "chemical imbalance" in the brain.

"You’ve seen it in television ads, read it in newspaper articles, maybe even heard it from your doctor: depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain that medication can correct. According to the chemical imbalance theory, low levels of the brain chemical serotonin lead to depression and depression medication works by bringing serotonin levels back to normal.

However, the truth is that researchers know very little about how antidepressants work. There is no test that can measure the amount of serotonin in the living brain—no way to even know what a low or normal level of serotonin is, let alone show that depression medication fixes these levels.
While antidepressant drugs such as Prozac increase serotonin levels in the brain, this doesn’t mean that depression is caused by a serotonin shortage. After all, aspirin may cure a headache, but it doesn’t mean that headaches are caused by an aspirin deficiency. Furthermore, many studies contradict the chemical imbalance theory of depression.

Experiments have shown that lowering people’s serotonin levels doesn’t always lower mood, nor does it worsen symptoms in people who are already depressed. And while antidepressants raise serotonin levels within hours, it takes weeks before medication is able to relieve depression. If low serotonin caused depression, there wouldn’t be this antidepressant medication"
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/medications_depression.htm

Read Jeffrey Lacasse in the journal published by the Public Library of Science:
"Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the Advertisements and the Scientific Literature
Many ads for SSRI antidepressants claim that the drugs boost brain serotonin levels. Lacasse and Leo argue there is little scientific evidence to support this claim."
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020392

or watch them on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWE3UGl7KFk

Read Peter Breggin:
"As earlier noted, the public has been subjected to a high-power selling campaign for psychiatric drugs. This campaign, conducted by drug companies and organized psychiatry, has convinced most people that psychiatric drugs are much safer and more valuable than they really are."

"Psychiatric drugs do not work by correcting anything wrong in the brain. We can be sure of this because such drugs affect animals and humans, as well as healthy people and diagnosed patients, in exactly the same way. There are no known biochemical imbalances and no tests for them. That's why psychiatrists do not draw blood or perform spinal taps to determine the presence of a biochemical imbalance in patients. They merely observe the patients and announce the existence of the imbalances. The purpose is to encourage patients to take drugs."

"Ironically, psychiatric drugs cause rather than cure biochemical imbalances in the brain. In fact, the only known biochemical imbalances in the brains of patients routinely seen by psychiatrists are brought about by the psychiatrists themselves through the prescription of mind-altering drugs."

Most especially read Eliot Valenstein, Blaming the Brain. He explains exactly how this "theory" was created and spun and forced upon the public.

Or read my paper which I'll send to anyone interested.

[ellenrr]

12. also see these:

Newsweek:
"The Depressing News About Antidepressants
Studies suggest that the popular drugs are no more effective than a placebo. In fact, they may be worse.
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/01/28/the-depressing-news-about-antidepressants.html
---
The Antidepressant Era by David Healy
Healy's trilogy is a major achievement: its importance goes beyond psychiatry and psychopharmacology to embrace the whole of medicine. These books represent a quantum leap in understanding the processes that shape therapeutic innovation in clinical practice.

and Richard DeGrandpre
who documents the effects of akathasia caused by anti-psychotics and antidepressants and how they cause healthy people to want to kill themselves. His book is entitled: "The Cult of Pharmacology: How American became the World's most troubled drug culture".

He also wrote a great book on Ritalin and the drugging of our children, "Ritalin Nation"

Here you can listen to Ethan Watters, author of Crazy like us.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122490928
"Author Ethan Watters thinks that America is "homogenizing the way the world goes mad." In Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, he describes how American definitions and treatments of mental illness have spread to other cultures around the world"