Treatment for Depression
Non Drug DepressionTreatments Long Proven Effective
Before the days of pharmaceutical drugging, bouts of emotional depression were resolved with empathic, non-drug, non electroshock therapies such as offered by Soteria House and Quaker Hospitals. Thorough physical examinations were mandatory. In addition, stress management support groups operated front and centre, as did guidance for lifestyle changes. The healing took time – from a few weeks to a few months depending upon the severity of the symptoms — but was usually permanent and profound.
Empathic therapies, such as clinical hypnotherapy offered highly successful humane approaches to resolving crises of belief that strike most of us at some time in life and which are usually provoked by job loss, death of loved ones, marriage breakups, war and other personally catastrophic events. Physical examinations ensured physical issues such as hormonal imbalances and infectious diseases were addressed. In the early 1900’s to about 1960 before drugs came into vogue, ethical doctors realized that malnutrition and toxins from industrial activities often caused depression-like symptoms.
It is a fact that most bouts of depression will resolve without treatment and especially without drug treatment once issues of joblessness, poverty, homelessness, relationship dysfunction, addictions, hormonal imbalance and life-style issues are addressed.
Depression Hurts but Drug Treatments Ensure Depression Worsens to Permanent Disability
Once Big Pharma hoodwinked the public and the medical profession into a ‘pill for everything’ mindset through slick marketing starting in the 1960s, it was not long before the ‘Depression’ net was cast far and wide. Today, even menstrual pain, menopause and sleeplessness are considered ‘mental illnesses’ and treated with addictive, brain-damaging drugs. The government went along with this ‘treatment for depression’ not because it was effective, but because it allowed for cost-cutting out-patient treatment.
Many military service personnel and veterans have been drugged as ‘mentally ill’ when in fact, the problem was undiagnosed head trauma. Now we hear of tens of thousands of newborns being psychiatrically drugged! Indeed, the act of being born or of experiencing life and death is now considered a mental illness.
As Margaret Wente, award-winning columnist for the Globe and Mail once put it to drive home the point that all normal human emotion and reaction is now medicalized as ‘mental illness’: “Are you horny, older women? There’ll be a pill for that!”
Symptoms of Depression
While there is no definition of depression, just as there is no definition or scientific support for the existence of schizophrenia as a brain disorder, the diagnosis is made on the basis of the symptoms of depression reported by the patient.
Symptoms of depression run along a continuum from ‘the blues’ to a state of low mood and dislike for activity that use to be pleasurable, such as sex. The moods can increase to levels that can affect thoughts, behavior, feelings and senses of safety and wellbeing. As symptoms move toward the major depression end of the range, symptoms of depression can include sadness, anxiousness, empty and hopeless feelings, feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness. It is not unusual to hear of symptoms of guilt, irritability, intense hurt and persistent worry and restlessness.
Many people with eating disorders (including overeating, binge eating, emotional eating, anorexia and bulima) typically suffer depressive feelings. Most people suffering depression will report problems with concentration, remembering details, learning new tasks or concepts, and issues with self-doubt, making decisions, lethargy, fatigue, excessive sleep, various aches and pains and digestive problems.
Anxiety is to depression what fur is to a cat. It seems that once a person has endured persistent anxiety and/or long periods of exposure to significant stressors, various symptoms of depression start to surface. Naturally, the addition of agitation and depression-inducing psychiatric drugs can only worsen already existing anxiety and depression. However, few patients are ever warned of this deadly feature of drug treatment for depression and anxiety.
Causes of Depression
Know the Difference Between Physiologically-induced and Emotionally-induced Depression
There are many reasons a person may feel ‘depressed’ and these days, that word is used extremely loosely despite the fact that the ramifications of being treated for depressive feelings are profound – the mental illness label sticks for life, as does the brain-dysfunction caused by conventional medical treatments for depression. In addition, the physical causes of the depressive feelings go untreated.
This is when clinical hypnotherapy, such as offered by Grace Joubarne is your best choice when considering stress management support and treatment for depression and anxiety. We can help you tease out the issues at the root of your symptoms, refer you to an ethical doctor if the issue seems physical and provide effective treatment if the issue is psycho-spiritual and emotional.
Gary Null, author of The Hidden Side of Psychiatry, commented on overcoming depression without drugs: “ At the core of the problem are psychiatric theories that limit the range of acceptable human behavior. So emotional upsets are considered diseases. When a child is anxious or can’t concentrate in school, it is called a disease. If someone is sad or depressed, it’s called a disease. Breggin [referring to Dr.Peter Breggin] says that counter to current dogma, there are real reasons for emotional pain, and ways of becoming healthy that do not involve drugs.”
Emotional and psychological depression is the result, not of brain dysfunction, but of a situation that causes one to feel profoundly unsafe, mentally paralyzed and powerless. It can also be the result of long-standing, unresolved grief, such as over a loved one, a career or a business.
Depression is a signal that something is wrong and/or misunderstood and important values are not being fulfilled. Poverty, homelessness, job loss, severe and prolonged financial hardships, loss of loved ones through death or breakup, domestic abuse and a multitude of other situations that make a person feel unsafe can evolve into a profound hopelessness and sense of helplessness. There is no pill that can fix poverty, job loss or financial hardships. Only empathic and practical assistance can help restore a belief in one’s ability to survive life’s crises.
Another excellent point from Gary Null’s book: “While there are some diseases, on occasion, that can make a person anxious, afraid, or depressed, it’s far, far more likely that the sources of human suffering at any given moment come from something other than a psychiatric disease…. Most people become depressed because of their life experiences. Life is very difficult. Life is full of tragedy. From childhood on, people are exposed to a great many stresses. Women, in particular, become depressed more often than men and have good reason. It’s harder for them to get many of their desires fulfilled. It’s often harder for them to make a relationship feel satisfying. It’s harder for them to have the same achievements in the career arena. Almost anyone I talk with about being depressed has a reason somewhere along the line for why their view of life is filled with hopelessness.”
Physiological and drug-induced depression would appear to be an after-effect of severe and prolonged anxiety (excess cortisol production by the adrenal glands during stressful events resulting in adrenal fatigue) and/or by hormonal and chemical imbalances caused by toxic food and substances such as illicit and psychiatric drugs. The end result is that the body becomes seriously devitalized and unable to maintain homeostasis (internal equilibrium obtained by adjusting physiological processes). The brain perceives all loss of physical vitally as a threat to survival, which in turn causes physiological reactions that further tax the very ability of the physical body to heal itself. Once the health issue is resolved and the body is once again vital and strong, the physical depression and sense of vulnerability lifts.
Few people are told that hormonal disorders, hypothyroidism, Cushings, Lyme Disease, birth control pills, antibiotics, vaccines, brain tumors chronic viral infections and liver disease cause extreme fatigue and mental disabilities. Anytime a psychiatric drug is given to a person whose depression is caused by a genuine hormonal or biochemical issue, the biochemical balance of the brain will be worsened. Sleep aids and sedatives significantly increase the risk of death. Conventional therapists seen for management of depression symptoms rarely rule out physical issues before a patient is prescribed psychiatric drugs. (Dr. P. Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry, pg 145)
Persistent and catastrophic physical ailments can eventually cause emotional despair. But long before the despair settles in, other signs of impending psycho-spiritual and emotional are evident, but rarely investigated or considered. The effects of chemical toxicity, malnutrition, hormonal imbalances, GMO toxicity, heavy metal poisoning, fluoride poisoning, adrenal fatigue and other culprits such as pharmaceutical drug side-effects, diabetes, Candida, antibiotic over-use and substance abuse (including sugar) that cause the body to become ‘run down’ and vulnerable often remain unrecognized in the haste to drug psychiatrically. If emotional issues start in childhood, they will certainly become severe and exacerbated by toxic eating habits, unhealthy lifestyles and pharmaceutical drugs.
Recently, researchers have found that head injuries in childhood can eventually cause inflammation of the brain decades later, with the symptoms suggesting ‘depression’. Often these head traumas (in sports, car accidents, war) are not obvious and since the mental health professions rarely, if ever, check for signs of physical trauma to the head, most cases are treated with further brain-damaging psychiatric medications. In fact, it is estimated that concussions in the military and in sports are rarely diagnosed unless the circumstances are clearly traumatic.
All too often, instead of conventional medicine searching for and correcting an underlying but unrecognized head trauma such as concussion, toxicity, malnutrition, physiological dysfunction, or a deep emotional root issue first, they jump to the self-serving diagnosis of ‘mental illness”, add more toxic drugs to an already dire situation and make the situation permanent. A great part of the problem is that all interest in ‘healing’ has left the medical profession, along with all interest in nutrition in favor of illness management.
The holistic approach allows a person to look at every aspect of their lives, to determine what needs correcting and to assist in implementation of that correction. This is why a clinical hypnotherapist, trained in medical and dental hypnotherapy and natural nutrition is your best choice when seeking treatment for depression, assistance with stress management and resources to wean off damaging pharmaceutical drugs safely.
Drug Treatment of Depression Worsens Outcomes
Drugs, while they might sometimes appear to jerk one out of ‘depression’ for a short time, utterly fail to help people learn to deal with life and all the stresses, hardships and disappointments that is part of normal life, and in fact, due to their brain-disabling effects, make it even more difficult for a patient to reason their way through crisis. Further, depression support groups are far less effective due to the increasing forgetfulness, irritability, hostility, lethargy and fatigue caused by drug side-effects.
Claims of Genetic Role in Depression Discredited
After 75 years of drugging people as a treatment for depression with a breathtaking failure rate to show for it, psychiatrists are now marketing the idea of a genetic role. Repeated, independent, peer-reviewed studies have shown there is no correlation whatever between depression and genetics. (Dr. P. Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry, pg 147-148) Despite the multiple study results, people conditioned to respond positively to slick pharmaceutical marketing are now heard claiming they ‘got it from their mother or…’.
Despite the many studies showing there are no biological (chemical) links to depression and no genetic roles involved, psychiatry, the front organization for Big Pharma, holds on tightly to the bio-depression link, in what can only be in a just world, deemed gross false advertising.
Dr. Peter Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry, pg 148: “The biology of depression is based less on science than on politics – the wish of psychiatry to maintain a medical image, to uphold its dictatorial authority, to garner federal funds and to convince patients to seek psychiatric help. Psychiatry has tried to make depression into a political issue in American, much like poverty, unemployment or AIDS. Because nearly everyone has some experience with depression as a part of living, it’s easy to make claims about the prevalence of the ‘disease’ and to inflate the statistics on prevalence at will.” This same behavior is what we are seeing in Canada.
Mid page 152 Toxic Psy about antidepressants being used for all sorts of non-psych reasons
In summary, all depression, both emotional and physically-induced can be overcome safely and effectively without drugs. The new epidemic of previously rare ‘disorders’ is testament to the fact that drugs make matters worse and that conventional medicine is a one-trick pony. The trick of course is to subtly create new diseases and disorders from mere opinion, sell it to the public as fact and prescribe drugs to enrich the medical/pharmaceutical cartels.
The majority of antidepressant prescriptions are written by non-psychiatric doctors and heavily promoted by non-medical health workers, educators and the media. But, it is the psychiatrists who set the tone and agenda for the wide-spread use of these agents of death and disability. The fact that these drugs are now being prescribed for non-psychiatric issues, such as eating problems, premenstrual tension, phobias and obsessions should be warning not to trust the claims being made about conventional drug treatments for depression or for any other mental illness for that matter.
Brain-damage and the pill-for-everything approach to resolving the normal reactions to life should be avoided at all costs. An empathic clinical hypnotherapist can help you get to the root issues, figure out what part of your view of life is not serving you well and help you to learn techniques to create more productive, life-building and self-loving thoughts and behaviors.
Grace Joubarne, GracePlace Wellness with offices in Ottawa and Belleville, Ontario offers stress management support, natural therapy for depression, guidance and resources to help you to manage withdrawal symptoms typically associated with weaning from psychiatric medications, and counseling to return to vibrancy and peacefulness naturally and safely.
Grace Joubarne, Clinical Hypnotherapist, GracePlace Wellness, Ottawa and Belleville Ontario 1-888-390-3553 email: graceplacewellness@gmail.com www.graceplacewellness.ca Blog: www.AskGrace.ca