Depression is historically noted all the way back to biblical times. Judas after his betrayal of Christ killed himself. There are other biblical notes on famous figures who committed suicide.
Contrary to modern belief feeling depressed due to hard times, prolonged medical treatment and various other reasons is completely normal. We all have had times of feeling terribly down.
During the first five months of cancer treatment our seven-year-old-daughter, Kayla became very depressed. After all she was very sick, could not go to school or any public place and was on heavy medications such as chemotherapy and steroids as well as pain killers. My husband and I were pulling our hair out in frustration trying to get our little girl to laugh.
In April, four months into treatment her Uncle Paul did a video call through his and our Macintosh computers. Since he knew the system well, he was able to put on quite a show. Our daughter, refused to come out of her room until she was forced to hear us laughing for half and hour. She suddenly demanded her dad pick her up (she had a broken leg with a full cast) and bring her into our office where the computer was.
Her uncle was able to do such funny stuff on the computer that Kayla started to laugh. It was music to our ears. The gates locking her into depression had finally broken open and from that day forward she was cheerful despite the rigors of her treatment.
I am using this example because it is normal for a patient who is under extended care to fall into a depression. Give me a break, their body is not cooperating with them, taking medications is hard with lots of side effects and being house bound or hospital bound compounds the situation.
Are more drugs an answer? In my humble opinion they further complicate matters. Its astounding how powerful the pharmaceutical industry has become. In recent times I have counted sixteen drug commercial in one hour of TV watching. Yet, if a person were to look up these anti-depressants they would find terrible warnings about these drugs such as Suicidal Ideation and Homicidal tendencies or thoughts. One of the greatest secrets regarding these drugs is that they are almost impossible to get off of. Meaning if a person tries to just stop taking these pills it could cause a heart attack or cause the person to go into complete psychosis. For more information look at this article. The safest way to get off these drugs is a very slow step down as per this medical article and while under medical supervision.
Here is another very valid point to understand. Stress eats up a bodies reserves. This means that prolonged treatment of any kind will eat up and use more than normal amounts of nutrients leading to deficiencies and when a person is deficient of essential B vitamins they will, invariably become depressed.
While my daughter was depressed we did everything we could think of to get her laughing. We also had her doing things like art projects, listening to classical music while doing art, friends came over to visit and play, and most of all fed her an incredibly healthy diet to try and mitigate the astounding amount of physical stress she was under.
It took months but eventually paid off with her finally becoming cheerful and staying cheerful for the remaining two years of treatment. That’s right her total time on treatment was a total of thirty months with the first twelve being the roughest.
A friend of mine attended a lecture regarding antidepressants. The speaker was a pig farmer whose son had been in and out of institutions with a very long list of drugs he had taken. Eventually they would have to start again because the psychosis would return. The father began to think about this and realized that his pigs had episodes of psychosis which would stop when dietary changes were made. This made him think that maybe his son had something going on underneath the symptoms. In other words what were these obvious symptoms trying to tell him? He teamed up with a doctor and they developed a nutritional program for his son. Low and behold it worked. Eventually they set up a medical team and were able to manufacture a supplement for depression, bipolar disease and many other mental maladies. Not only do these supplements work they have kept several patients out of institutions. Here is the link where you can watch incredible testimonials from previous patients.
With my daughter, I did not want her drugged up more. She went through a series of eighteen different chemotherapy drugs plus various pain killers due to complications with her bones. The last thing I wanted to do was to add more to this already complicated scenario. Yes, we went through some rough times and she did say she did not want to live during the worst of pain but these were not lasting and she did eventually win her fight against cancer.
I’m just trying to tell you that depression is normal especially during prolonged illness and that there are other answers that do not require taking Class II narcotics which is what antidepressants are.
For thorough information on alternatives for depression go to the link below.
Title: More about Treatment for Depression
URL: http://depressionandtreatment.
May this be a step in the right direction for you with health and peace in your future.