Information Related to "Coping With Depression"
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Depression:
Ways to Win the Battle
How widespread is depression? What are its causes? Most important, what
are the weapons in the struggle against depression?
by Noel Hornor
Depression has troubled people everywhere,
in every age. The ancients wrote about it, often calling it melancholia. "Aretaeus,
a physician living in the second century, A.D., described the melancholic patient
as 'sad, dismayed, sleepless . . . They become thin by their agitation
and loss of refreshing sleep . . . At a more advanced state, they complain
of a thousand futilities and desire death' " (Norman Wright, An Answer To
Depression, Harvest House, Irvine, California, 1976, p. 8).
Depression is one of the most prevalent afflictions. Health practitioners encounter
it so often that it has been called the common cold of psychopathology. Psychologists
have estimated that during any month 5 percent of American adults suffer from depressive
illness. Health magazine estimated that one in eight U.S. citizens has been
treated with Prozac, a popular antidepressant.
Americans suffer depression more than residents of most other countries. Research
shows that, as Asian countries adapt Western culture, they show a corresponding increase
in diagnoses of depression.
A Problem Without Bounds
Depression, however, knows no territorial or national bounds. William Manchester
aptly described the outlook of someone who is depressed: "Every day he chisels his
way through time, praying for relief" (The Last Lion, Dell, New York, 1983,
p. 23). Mood fluctuations are normal, but severe melancholia "resembles the passing
sadness of the normal man as a malignancy resembles a canker sore" (ibid.).
The depressed person's perspective alters. He views life through a distorting lens.
He often imagines that he will never be well.
"Pervading everything is hopelessness, an irrational sense that, regardless of effort,
nothing will change or that things will only get worse" (David B. Cohen, Out of
the Blue, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1994, p. 76). The depressive's belief
that his life will never return to normal exacerbates his ailment, casting a pall
over the future. A gloomy outlook leads some to contemplate suicide.
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