What do you do if you are depressed?

I read some advice in article just published: Head Case: Can psychiatry be a science? Louis Menand, The New Yorker, March 2010

For a start the article suggests that you “…do not read the psychiatric literature. Everything in it, from the science (do the meds really work?) to the metaphysics (is depression really a disease?), will confuse you. There is little agreement about what causes depression and no consensus about what cures it.”

Do seek advice from a trusted source, try the recommended remedies and actions and if there is no relief please try something else, talk to someone else.

Mottsu must have been ravaged by depression by the time he sought support. He was not sleeping, had dropped in weight. I don’t know why but he was determined not to take medication. He did take natural sleep remedies, to little effect. He started exercising more, stopped drinking alcohol. He saw a psychologist twice and pretended to go another two times. He kept working, kept functioning and fooled many about his state including the psychologist, me, and probably himself.

In other posts, I have noted that depression is treatable if not curable, so is sadness, and sleep disorders. I am sorry I didn’t know more back when I needed to know more. I trusted Mottsu and his decisions, he was strong in tackling his depression. He did find his own answer, I might have taken him in another direction, had I known more.

Again from The New Yorker: “Some people feel an instinctive aversion to treating psychological states with pills, but no one would think it inappropriate to advise a depressed or anxious person to try exercise or meditation.

The recommendation from people who have written about their own depression is, overwhelmingly, Take the meds! It’s the position of Andrew Solomon, in “The Noonday Demon” (2001), a wise and humane book. It’s the position of many of the contributors to “Unholy Ghost” (2001) and “Poets on Prozac” (2008), anthologies of essays by writers about depression. The ones who took medication say that they write much better than they did when they were depressed. William Styron, in his widely read memoir “Darkness Visible” (1990), says that his experience in talk therapy was a damaging waste of time, and that he wishes he had gone straight to the hospital when his depression became severe.”