I am sorry I did not find this post before as I would have said then what I am saying now, but I will leave this post in case it benefits another...
...studies in germany and other european countries have found that for mild to moderate depression, a short course of St Johns Wort works a treat... I have also tried it myself, and can confidently say it elevated my mood a little, and that was all I needed, although I did experience mild photophobia (light senstitivity-bright sunlight hurt my eyes...)
if u have liver problems, pregnant, already sensitive to light or naturally aggressive it might harm you, (if u are naturally aggressive it might make u more so..) but beyond that... u can buy it in the healthfood store... its cheap (around seven GB pounds a bottle), and they reccommend u take it for a course- which is around three months...
if you feel u would rather trust conventional medicine, then there are many options for the treatment of depression- although they are usually medicines, rather than other kinds of treatment...
...it is difficult in the UK to get access to most types of psychological therapies, such as CBT, difficult to get anything like Rogerian therapy, or any of the fringe types, such as Gesalt, although you will be able to see a psychiatrist, it will take a while unless you are so severely screwed up you present yourself to casualty or cause a scene in a public place... if you are employed by a large company, or at university, or if you are in certain trade unions, you might be able to seek psychological therapies via their systems, and if you think the waiting time is excessive, and a person needs more urgent treatment you can complain, but not everyone is able to do these things.
A GP in your local practise can prescribe you anti-depressants, and if you are feeling so low you really cannot function then, no shame in taking a few pills...
however; creating psychiatric drugs, especially for "common" "illnesses" such as depression is a lucrative market...
...anti-depressants come and go on the market- not all of them stay, because sometimes they makes things worse... Prozac, the most popular antidepressant in the 1990's was given to a lot of ppl. Some of those ppl went on to commit suicide. It was discovered that it was, in fact, the drug, and not the depression, which had caused this, and there is now in most cases a world wide ban on the prescribing of Prozac...
In the UK Prozac is still available, but it is not available to young depressed people- as they are already more at risk of suicide than older ppl, and it has been found that young depressed ppl who take Prozac are more likely to commit suicide than young depressed ppl without Prozac...
so...for some ppl, some drugs work, and some drugs make things worse. If you are aware a friend or family member is taking drugs with the intention of positively affecting their psychological functioning and they appear to be getting worse after about 4-6 weeks, then contact their prescriber, just in case...
..other things which help are: watching ur diet and making sure u eat well, keeping in touch with positive friends and family members, getting regular exersise, making sure u sleep enough, and try to keep going...
Conventional medicine dictates that there's two types of depression-endogenous, and reactive...
reactive depression is, as the name suggests, depression which comes on as a reaction to something else- a bad relationship, a traumatic death, a bad birth or a serious life complication, say, a series of knockbacks which create apathy and despondency, etc, and then we have endogenous depression, which they say is a genetic predisposition reaching potentiality, but personally I think is often instead related to a specific hormone imbalance- too much estrogen in women, for instance, or too little testosterone in men, or related to cortisol reuptake (and therefore stress related), or due to a thyroid dysfunction, etc, and the manifestation of the syptoms are the result of a maladaptive coping strategy, but not everyone would agree with that...
Often depression is considered an illness, but personally I do not feel it is an illness in the true sense, as in, the body is invaded with bacteria, or a virus, or has some organ or blood defect, but is instead a psychological disorder brought about by some kind of maladaptive coping strategy which is being played out due to some kind of trauma or existential crisis, or series of small traumas, which a person has not been able to deal with...
A cold mother, the death of a loved one, losing a good job... things like this happen to everyone... we hurt, then we eventually grow again, and start to get on with things... but sometimes we can't- the fight is knocked out of us, the wind has gone from our sails, we are not just disappointed, but despondent, so low that we feel great affinity with anything which allows us to lie upon the floor, prostrate... it goes beyond just revelling in your own misery like a literary gothic romanticist, bemoaning your fate while dazzling the crowd...
you have to be careful though, as an observer, that you do not make things worse... yes, it would be great if ppl could just pull themselves together, take a few pills and everything would be back to normal- but it's sometimes not that easy...
sometimes what u see, this abnormal lack of drive, is actually quite normal... sometimes we need to retreat, lick our wounds, try to adjust to situations and circumstances...
everyone is different...
