Suffering isn't ennobling, recovery is.

Natural Cures for DepressionChristiaan Baarnard sait that. He's a medical doctor. I'm not. I don't pretend to be one or even play one on TV. In fact, although I'm not some a anti-medicine fanatic, I have spent my life noticing the almost inherent arrogance of doctors who don't seem to notice how very much of their science is art. Or opinion. Or guessing. Or magic. Or just plain wrong.

In 1998 — after months of seeing doctors and specialists and being tested for everything under the sun (including tuberculosis) — it was my 11-year-old daughter, Jessica, who (correctly!) diagnosed me with chronic sinusitis. Rather than years of medical school, she did it with a Consumer Reports article under her belt.

For years now, I've been interested in depression. Like ADHD, it seems everyone has it these days. I have multiple friends (some very close) and a handful of family members who have been diagnosed with depression and many are on long-term medication. It's not so much that I doubt people are sad — even incredibly so — it's that the epidemic numbers of diagnosis makes me think there's more to it than a sudden rash of sever mental illness.

Seeing the debilitating affects depression has on good people and their entire families, has led me to study it off and on for the past seven years or so. Yesterday, an adult friend (and mother) shared how some nutritional changes had helped ease her depression greatly the past few months. This renewed my interest in the topic and I ended up at home with every book on depression written in the past six years housed in my local library.

Not only am I not a doctor, but I'm not a psychotherapist either. Action has always worked better to solve problem in my life than talking about the problems. In future posts, I'd like to share things that stand out as the most helpful, practical, and easily applicable things. Perhaps some readers will benefit from doing some of the things suggested in the books I'm reading.

Here are my favorites (so far):

The Mood Cure   Lifting Depression   Depression-Free Naturally