A chara, – If any branch of medicine thinks it can medicate its way out of a “problem”, it is psychiatry. Irrespective of attacks on human and constitutional rights (letters, passim) the idea of putting lithium into drinking water is flippant and fanciful.
While depressive symptoms arising out of adverse social conditions might be “managed” this way, the causes – unemployment, poverty, deprivation, negative equity – remain untouched. However, if psychiatrists could prescribe money in the way the Government “prescribed” it for the banks and bondholders . . . – Is mise,
Sir, – Regarding the recent article and letters about depression, I feel (not for the first time) I’d like to share my experiences about the condition.
For many years I suffered from depression. I was prescribed medication and I also attended several different psychotherapists over the years. Ultimately, I decided to stop the medication, and eventually the psychotherapy and to look for the root cause of my depression. In other words, I wanted to find out “who am I”. Neither psychotherapy nor medication, alone, were of any real help. They simply masked a greater and more profound underlying issue.This issue, in my experience, was only addressed by the synthesis of psychotherapy but ultimately, meditation.
Psychotherapy is concerned with mind space. Our mind is manmade, conditioned. Meditation is about heart space, which is pure and true space. The only thing required to explore this space is to look inward. To “go in” has in my experience brought me on an incredible inner journey, which is simply beyond words and by definition, beyond mind.
An alternative approach to depression by the Department of Health and the various support groups, I feel, may in the long term be of far greater benefit to those who suffer, than the traditional approaches of medication and psychotherapy.
“Nowhere to go, but in”. With Love. – Yours, etc,