Quote:
Originally Posted by cheerfulgreek
Close to 10% of men and women in America are now taking drugs to combat depression. At one time this was a rare condition, but now it's become so common. I subscribe to "Scientific American Mind" magazine and I was reading this article on depression. It was saying that in the past three generations, increasing numbers of Americans have been prescribed antidepressants. In many cases, such prescriptions are the only mental health care the patients receive. One cause of the rise in antidepressant use is that many doctors combine conventional sadness as from the loss of a loved one or a life changing event such as a divorce with the more serious condition of clinical depression. Also, a second contributing factor, is a change in the standard diagnostic guide which caused many milder mental ailments to fall under "disorder" which I think would be considered kind of a neutral label. That could be anything. It was saying that a clinically depressed person may not be able to drag her/himself out of bed. I just wonder why it has gotten so bad, and how does medication really stop this problem?
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I agree with what was said before. Also the issue is what neurotransmitter systems are active during times of stress. The issue is some clinical depressions are due to chemical imbalances. I would say ~25%, roughly 75% have environmental cues due to circumstances. The combination of both: chemical imbalances with stressful environments causes the misjudgments of healthy responses to conflicts.
I don't think depression has gotten worse or situations for depression are worse, I think there is increased reporting. Moreover, most depressive episodes are considered reason to arrest, making the treatment absent and worse.
Medication used solely alone does not treat depression. Dr. David Burns one of the foremost psychiatrists on depression and bipolar disorders states it MUST be in combination with various talk therapies and/or mindfulness trainings. Cognitive is the best therapy with medication treatment. Mindfulness with yoga breath and exercises seems to have good preliminary responses at this time.
40 years ago, most people attended church to get that meditative experience. However, now, there are a variety of practices and quite a few people are cynical. That does not negate the importance of some "spiritual/soul" work to ease the neurohormones involved in the stress response.