It’s ironic. When you’ve lost your job or are struggling financially, as many people are these days, you need depression treatment more than ever. But depression treatment isn’t cheap, even if you have insurance. If you’re worrying about how to pay the rent or mortgage, buy food and pay the electric bill, medical treatment tends to end up way down the list of priorities.
If you have clinical depression, however, neglecting your treatment will be counterproductive. The more severe your depression, the less capable you are of managing your finances, finding ways to cut costs and looking for a job if necessary. It’s crucial that you find a way to continue treatment.
via Depression – Cost -Effective Depression Treatment.
I’m perusing the shelves of the bookstore, in the psychology section, looking for new books about depression and depression treatment. I know that I really shouldn’t be doing this, because it inevitably raises by blood pressure and puts me in danger of choking on my decaf mocha. The problem is, this activity exposes me to all the ways in which someone is trying to sell us a book that will cure/heal/or treat your depression – without doctors or drugs! Let’s see, there’s:
The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs
Happiness is a Choice
Dealing with Depression Naturally
Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way
The Mindful Way through Depression
Let me just mention first that Happiness is a Choice has always made me froth at the mouth. I mean, seriously, maybe there are some people like beat poets and goths who think being depressed is preferable to being happy, but the rest of us disagree. We’re not choosing to be depressed, which is what the book implies, any more than someone chooses to be diabetic. I mean, come on, I was seven when I started suffering from depression. Can the author seriously think that a child of that age just was choosing to be depressed?
Read on
Over the years, since I started my depression site, I’ve heard (read) many people say that they want to treat their depression “but without antidepressants.” I always think, “Why?” It’s just incomprehensible to me that some people have that knee-jerk reaction to medication.
Oddly enough, I have to include myself in this group. At least initially, I refused to take medication for my depression. Nearly twenty years ago, when I was first diagnosed with depression, I was in a pretty bad way. I had had two major depressive episodes in the past, without knowing what they were, but this third one was the worst, and so far, of the longest duration. By chance I read a book that helped me to recognize that what I was going through, and I promptly made an appointment with a doctor at the mental health clinic attached to the local hospital.
Read on
