FACT SHEETS

DEPRESSION

You'd never want to make to make light of the black dog of depression. Being clinically depressed is a major body system dysfunction in our society. It's effects are widespread and cause great distress to the individuals who have it and their families.

However, the fact that it is rapidly increasing suggests that as a society we're doing something wrong; there are some things we used to do that we don't do now.

Like all dysfunctions depression has a cause. And as Lao Tzu said, every big problem starts off as a small problem which wasn't fixed.

This fact sheet focuses on the small problems and not on clinical depression.

There are a lot of people on anti-depression tablets. When questioned as to the reason they started taking tablets they often say they had a recent bereavement in the family, or a particularly stressful time at work or at home ... They've gone to the doctor feeling miserable, cried and been diagnosed a depressed, without a blood chemistry analysis, psychological analysis to confirm whether that is true or not, or an aerobic fitness assessment.

Whilst it would be fair to say that depression is not caused by a lack of Zoloft, some of these people have been on tablets for a long time and have no goals for getting off them.

The treatment is not effecting a cure. It is rarely accompanied by regular counselling, or a personal development program, vigorous exercise or a change of diet, or a total body tune-up.

There is a continuum which goes from feeling absolutely fantastic through to feeling absolutely miserable.

Clinically depressed		Absolutely miserable		Not bad		Absolutely fantastic

If you go past the miserable stage you can become clinically depressed, but you'd want to have a serious confirmation that it was clinical depression and not just a bad mood swing before you took a medically inspired prescription.

The Causes are Legion

1.	Lack of certain chemicals in the brain.

2.	Lack of personal development. This country is backward when it comes to personal development. People haven't read the books, haven't been to the courses.

3.	Lack of physical activity. If you are not regularly vigorously active, if you're not getting enough oxygen into your body you're setting yourself up to feel miserable.

4.	Lack of essential vitamins, minerals and fats This includes B group vitamins and omega 3 fats.

5.	Sugar induced hypoglycemia. Most people have a high sugar, high refined starch diet (which amounts to the same thing as a high sugar diet.) After each time they eat, blood glucose level is quickly elevated drawing a response from the pancreas to produce insulin and drop the glucose level down. However, the blood glucose level drops too far and that is when people feel tired, depressed and hungry.

6.	Stress of life — whether at home or at work. If you're not living the life you'd like to live, if life is sucking life out of you rather than giving you life then you're on the way to feeling miserable.

7.	A meaningless and purposeless life. Viktor Frankl called it the existential vacuum. Just as we've got to satisfy the inner hunger with more than food, so we need to satisfy the emptiness of life with meaningful and purposeful thoughts and activities. Each of us has to decide what is meaningful and purposeful.

8.	Stress at home and at work If we have no home or work goals and/or if we are not achieving our home and work goals we can become frustrated, angry, anxious and miserable. In the end it all gets too much. The crying and anger are symptoms of our anxiety, telling us to do something, something more than trot off to the doctor and take a tablet!

Treatment

The usual treatment is to take a tablet to redress chemical imbalance, and in many cases this is the correct initial treatment. However it doesn't treat the causes of your misery or clean them up.

What You Can Do For Yourself

Actually there's quite a lot you can do for yourself.

If you do what unstressed people do there is a good chance you'll end up being unstressed yourself.

1.	Take stock. Establish the direction you'd like your life to take. Set goals in the major areas of your life and develop a plan to achieve them. Include in the things you set goals for: health and fitness career and work family other people hobbies, distractions, holidays meaning and purpose-type considerations things and possessions finances ...

2.	Engage a life coach or counselor, someone who is as committed to the achievement of your personal well being as you are. Be prepared to pay them a fair and reasonable fee. You want the best advice and support. Be prepared to be challenged. (Maybe you feel miserable because you need a bigger challenge!)

3.	Hang around inspired and motivated people. Some of it will rub off. If you want more energy mix with energetic people. Learn what their secrets of a high energy lifestyle are.

4.	Enrol in some high powered personal development programs to kick start you back into life.

5.	Read some of the great personal development books.

6.	Adopt a high density exercise routine. You'll burn off stress chemicals. You'll experience the exercise-led recovery where the exercise stimulated the brains natural endorphins to give you a lift. The mind I just another body system. Exercise is an excellent way to give it a tune up.

7.	Eat well. Stop eating the high sugar and highly refined starch diet. Eat the low density, high fibre carbohydrates (fruit and vegetables) with lean protein and your blood sugar won't drop to the point where you feet tired and depressed.

8.	Stop drinking alcohol and caffeine.

9.	Set aside a day each week when you'll go out and enjoy yourself in the great outdoors.

10.	Go out mid week once a week. Go to the pictures or the theatre.

11.	Stop working so many hours. maximum, 50 hours a week.

12.	Get away from your office at lunch time. Get some physical activity and some fresh air.

13.	If you have accrued annual leave take it immediately. Go away for at least 21 days. If you can't afford to go away, stay at home but go out and do something interesting every day. Catch up with friends. Do things you've been putting off doing because you 'didn't have the time'.

14.	Stop watching television. Television is a drug robbing you of your time and your vitality. If you've nothing better to do at night crawl into bed and read a book.

15.	Invite friends over for cards.

16.	Have a party. A week later have another one, twice as big.

17.	Do some gardening. Gurdjieff said that the best thing you can do when you feel depressed is get out into the garden.

18.	Pay attention to the completion of small things. Clean up. Clean up your house. Clean up your office at work. Make you bed every day before going to work ...

Books

Find these useful books at our Health and Fitness Bookstore:

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankel
Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Miller Health

7 Salvado Place, Stirling (Canberra) ACT 2611 Australia

(02) 6288 7703