Posted by bulldog2 on May 11, 2010, at 13:49:55
In reply to Re: Interesting article? What do you think? » bulldog2, posted by Iansf on May 11, 2010, at 11:31:22
> Literature tells us very clearly that long-term depression has been common throughout history - and that mostly it did not get better but in fact often led to disastrous results. Hamlet was pretty obviously a suicidal depressive - and hardly anybody remains alive at the end of that play. If Prozac had been available, Anna Karenina wouldn't have thrown herself under a train and Mme Bovary wouldn't have taken poison. So much of our common cultural heritage is based in the inability of people to control their moods; their passions, whether love or hate, and obsessions got the better of them. While artists were able to point this out and identify both emotional excess and emotional vacancy as serious issues, few were able to point to viable solutions. The notion that depression is a modern illness is pure propaganda. Novelists, poets, playwrights and lyricists wouldn't have written about (and readers wouldn't have wanted to read about) so many sad and disturbed people if depression and other mood disorders had not been widespread.
Excellent post and could not have put my feelings about this issue better than this. Mercola I believe made a reference to most depressed people in the old days just went into remission without any intervention. Wounder who was keeping stats back than. I believe I've read that opiate products were used by doctors for depressed patients. So there apparently was intervention and I wonder if some of these depressed patients were chronically ill and kept behind doors and hidden from the world.I think depression is used to liberally these days and that muddies the waters. Tcas and maois were used for severely and chronically depressed patients who were not just going to snap out of it, as Mercola seems to imply will happen with most depressed people. I am using the word depressed for biological and/or gentically based mood disorders. This is for life and people do not snap out of it. This chronic depression disease as opposed to millions of people besieging their doctors for ssris because of a sad mood possibly because of life events.
So when the ssris were invented the pharmaceutical companies had to broaden their market so the definition of depression was also broadened to include millions of people who were unhappy about how things were going. Yes these people may not have needed meds and would eventually snap out of it. But now everyone has been lumped together and meaningless stats and assertions have been made.This diet and exercise assertion is absurd. Not that diet and exercise are bad things. But again back in the old days I would think most people worked hard and ate a very traditional and standard diet.
Today these ssris are handed out like candy and whole families are on some type of psychotropic med.
So maybe we have to go back to the pre ssri era as far as looking for the real depressed and use them for our studies.Chronic biological illness is a severe disease that probably needs some type of med intervention. Yes diet and exercise is something we all should be doing but that is at best just a
piece of the puzzle.
poster:bulldog2
thread:946874
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20100504/msgs/947103.html