Link List - Alternative Treatment for Depression

I haven't done one of these for a while, so here's a list of informative links:

Dietary Decisions May Effect Depression

Some Mom's Decide on Homeopathic Remedies for ADHD

A Mental Health Professional Recommends Alternative Methods to Drugs in Treating Depression

Psychologists Reject Science when Treating Patients

Anti-Depressants Raise Birth Risks

I hope you find these links helpful!

Alternative Ways to Help Depression

This is a continuation of my last post about ways to handle depression without using drugs.

One of these ways was discovered using animal studies - which I am personally opposed to since I rather like animals and have a dog and a hamster. Nevertheless, it's interesting. Basically, this article talks about a process that was done to mice. The process shows that going to a place associated with happiness, or hearing music that was associated with happiness made the mice regain their will to live just as anti-depressants do. It seems to me that playing a little music that makes you happy or going to the park instead of taking anti-depressants would probably save a lot of money during these rough economic times.

Another article talks about the uses of St. John's Wort to battle depression. It has been proved effective, so that's another natural remedy to depression. I actually went to school with a girl who was getting over an eating disorder. She took St. John's Wort to handle her depression and it really worked.

If you read the article referred to in the previous post about zinc deficiency being a cause of depression, that's three natural tools to battle depression.

I think that's pretty darn neat! What about you?

Alternative Resources for Dealing with ADHD and Depression

My brother works for Novus Detox, which is a clinic that deals specifically with medical drug addiction. They wrote an article on a wonderful resource for handling ADHD and/or depression. Check it out, it's very informative.

News Link Roundup

I get various yahoo alerts about psychiatric drugs, FDA situations and drugs with suicidal side effects. Because of these and stuff people send me, I end up with way to many links to way to many interesting or horrifying stories. So, here's a big ol' round up.

Psychiatrist accused of tax evasion

Curbs sought on certain psychiatric drugs - in Kentucky

Eli Lilly settles with 33 states on Zyprexa fiasco

Anti-psychotics boost risk of stroke in patients with dementia

The omega-3 fatty acids you are eating for your heart may work for depression too

Food and it's correlation with suicide

Love and paying attention to children works better than pills

A ton of articles about over prescribing Ritalin

CCHR Public Service Announcements

New radio show about the mental health industry

Adults with ADHD or Way for Drug Companies to Make Money?

I just read an article which states that adults suffering from depression, anxiety, alcoholism, drug addiction and more may have ADHD. Of course, Professor Phillip Asherson at the Institute of Psychiatry gives us the nebulous, "We don't know if this is the problem - but hey, let's throw some drugs at it and see what that does."

I'm sorry if I sound rather jaded, ladies and gents, but I see this as a simple plan to make the drug companies and psychiatrists more money. All they are doing is prescribing something to cover up the problem - like giving someone with a broken back some Xanax. Sure he feels great, but he still can't walk. Plus, when it wears off, he still has a broken back!

What do you think? Do you think their supposition may be valid, or that this is just another plan to make drug companies richer?

Shooting - Prozac Induced?

Decide for yourself, check out this article with the following in mind - Prozac is an SSRI with side effects of suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. SSRI withdrawl symptoms include the above two side effects as well.

Why do we have people on such destructive drugs? Aren't mental health experts supposed to be protecting society against those who would be dangerous to themselves and others - not causing depressed people to become dangerous to themselves or others via drugs?

What do you think?

Schoolboy Suffers from Suicidal Side Effect of Ritalin

This article reports the tragic death of 15 year old Anthony Cole, who hung himself after being on Ritalin for 6 years. From the report, it seems like it was a premeditated suicide - days before his suicide he had asked about how to write a will and about life insurance, an hour before he was found dead he had cuddled his parents and told them that he loved them.

My heart goes out to his parents, his brother and sisters, his friends and extended family. I don't understand why parents are still allowing their children to take these drugs, I can only guess that it's because the side effects are not being taken seriously. They are very real and very serious.

If you know someone on Ritalin, please make sure they know the side effects and have fully evaluated their decision to take it.

Great Links About Psychiatry

Here's some great links I found this week:

Scientology Lives reports connections between school shooters and psychiatric drugs

DBunker reports that the FDA is cracking down on neighborhood pharmacies

Alliance for Human Research Project reports about Eli Lilly concealing information

Pharmalot reports that Eli Lilly should have warned the American people about Zyprexa back in 1998

Grahame reports about a new anti-depressant (called Placebozac) that has just come on the market *This one deserves a warning for excessive sarcasm*

Attention Deficit Disorder reports some interesting statistics about ADHD kids

PsychWatch reports 8 reasons to run from Anti-Depressants

When it Comes to Depression - Does Anyone Really Know What They Are Talking About?

I started reading up on the condition that psychiatrists call depression and it was frankly, depressing.

I started my hunt by looking at my trusty Encarta dictionary, which said:
Depression - psychiatric disorder: a psychiatric disorder showing symptoms such as persistent feelings of hopelessness, dejection, poor concentration, lack of energy, inability to sleep, and, sometimes, suicidal tendencies.

Okay, that sounds pretty severe, right?

So, I started delving more into it and looked up depression on the Internet. It seems that some of the symptoms of depression are:

Sleeping too much, sleeping too little or a change in sleeping patterns; feeling irritable, sad or tense; loss of energy; decreased interest in things; restlessness or feeling slowed down; feeling worthless, hopeless or guilty; weight loss or weight gain...
Wow..it really sounds as if they are covering every possible ground here. "Hey, you lose some weight, you might be depressed! Oh, wait, you gained weight? Well, you could be depressed!"
I mean, half of the symptoms above could be explained by lack of sleep alone (haven't you ever felt irritable, exhausted, restless and uninterested when you don't have enough sleep?).

It seemed that trying to find symptoms that made depression easy to figure out was impossible, so I searched more into depression and conversely, into happiness, and this is what I found:

a) There is no consistent definition of depression out there. It's more like, if you're not happy, your depressed, and only your doctor can delineate when that happens.

b) Even a few weeks of sadness can be considered depression! What's with that craziness? If your mom died, are you supposed to be "okay" with it in a couple of weeks? I don't know how long it would take me to bounce back - but it certainly wouldn't be weeks.

c) Reading up on depression and how to "get happy" is actually depressing. If a person is just moderately happy and wants to attain higher states of happiness, and they read up on it, it seems as if everyone on planet earth falls short of the standards of happiness now required.

d) For some reason or another you are supposed to "live with depression". That's more depressing than being diagnosed with depression. No one should have to "live with" anything in their life.

I think I can officially say that there seems to be no finite information on depression available. This makes me wonder, if doctors and psychiatrists don’t understand this condition, how could they possible come up with a plausible cure for it?

The Lobotomist

There's a new PBS American Experience called "The Lobotomist" out. It's about Walter Freeman who is considered the father of the lobotomy. For those of you who don't know what a lobotomy is, it's basically a barbaric practice with very serious side effects in which the "doctor" (I'm sorry, but I can't bring myself to call someone a doctor who does this) takes an ice-pick like instrument and a mallet, and after knocking the victim out - usually by using electroshock treatment - inserts the ice-pick through the bone of your eye and slashes the lobes of the front of your brain. It's really disgusting and it's actually making my stomach turn just writing about it. Anyway, the PBS special is very interesting, check it out if you have the stomach for it.

Falling Out of Love - Yet Another Side Effect of Anti-Depressants

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (or SSRIs) are drugs like Zoloft and Prozac. These drugs have many side effects - they've had black box warnings put on them as these drugs have shown to increase suicidal tendencies in kids and teens. Now it's been found that it can cause people to no longer be in love with their significant other. This makes me wonder - if these anti-depressants make someone no longer in love with another person - what is there to prevent the drug from making the user fall out of love with other things? In my opinion, the opposite of being depressed is being happy. Would you be happy if a drug made you no longer love your significant other? Wouldn't that make you wonder if the drug was making you no longer love other things or activities that you used to enjoy? How does that make someone less depressed?

FoxNews Speaks Up Against Psychiatric Drugging of Children

FoxNews has a show called Hannity's America that aired about two weeks ago about teens and anti-depressants. Check it out.

Hate to say I told you so

Currently there is an article by Dr. Ira Lesser out called Ethnicity/Race and Outcome in the Treatment of Depression. This article says that poor people - specifically blacks and Latinos - are more depressed then whites. How is that not racist? How is that not using eugenics?