Posted by johnLA on August 24, 2012, at 20:22:14
In reply to Before Maois Was there any Tx for Depression?, posted by Phillipa on August 24, 2012, at 15:50:42
great question phillipa-
as a former history teacher i am interested in what responses you will get.
my random thoughts after 'studying' depression for over 2 years now...
i think ect pre-dates antidepressants? lobotomies too. also some type of insulin shock/coma procedure i think i have read.
cold shower/water therapy i have read about too.
you also had plain old psychotherapy/analysis (freud/jung) for decades before ad's.
'bibliotherapy' (reading books) was often prescribed for 'shell-shocked' ww1 veterans. (what we would call post traumatic stress disorder/depression today.)
you had asylums for the poor and 'nicer' places for the rich. do a google on jfk's sister (forgot her name). she had a lobotomy and spent the rest of her life in a institution. though she had her own home on the grounds and private nurses. she lived a long life there. sad her story is.
last year i read 'lincoln's melancholy' which was all about his bouts with suicidal depression. good food, exercise (hunting, riding a horse or chopping wood) and being out in nature was recommended to him. i mentioned this in another thread; look at a $5 bill. lincoln is only about 51. he looks beat. his depressions started from a early age after several losses. he was on 'suicide watch' a few times as a young man. he was well loved by his community and many reached-out to help him. also, being married to mary todd was no picnic. she ended-up in an asylum herself until she died. i think historians claim she was severely bipolar.
also, look-up the story of mary ellen copeland? i think was her name. she was put in an institution in the 30's and kind of started a cbt type of program on her own in there. today it's known as 'w.r.a.p.' i believe.
as a greek-american! ;) i am curious what hippocrates would have recommended. i'm sure he would apply his famous 'first do no harm' to even his depressed patients. depression is described and i believe named for the first time in ancient greece (melancholia) over 2500 years ago. there is even some ancient greek art work showing depressed persons. (by the way psyche mean 'soul/spirit' in greek.)
morphine of course was used as well as other drugs like cocaine, caffeine (snorted), and i'm sure others to lift one's 'spirits.'
no joke; you ever watch the fim 'the exorcist?' the priest in in was a greek orthodox priest...i have had my parish priest come twice to my home to do a 'blessing' (really a exorcism by traditional terminology). incense burning, centuries old byzantine chanting, the whole deal as i knelt before him. scary, huh? i have four byzantine icons in my room right now. and this personal irony; the patron saint from the island in greece i come from is the patron saint also of the mentally ill for orthodox christians! on his feast day sick people/pilgrims come from all over greece to have his remains/icon pass over their bodies in hopes of being healed.
i'll stop there. i have more...the 'teacher' in me is coming-out. sorry! i was always good at realizing when to stop a lecture. ;)
one final thought though. and, i don't want to come across as anti-med because then the threads turn hostile sometimes. it's hard for us with depression to really know what's best. psychiatry itself is at war with itself in many ways right now. big pharma suppressing studies about antidepressants efficacy/etc. just the explosion of the amount of pills that people are on in the last 25 years is mind-boggling. (and, not just for depression.) we, the usa, are one of the very few countries to advertise medications on tv. sometimes i feel 'played' by the whole biz of psychiatry. today i went to my pdoc and he really wants me to start viibryd. i couldn't help, but see all the sample/starter packets he had in his office. easily the most of any other drug he had samples of. hmmm?
curious as to what others will come-up with. i miss teaching. not because of what i know, but from what i would learn from a classroom of 40 12th graders. especially when one of them would ask such an interesting question as you have...
poster:johnLA
thread:1024135
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120818/msgs/1024149.html