Depression Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Depression is one of the most common psychological diseases, and as it happens for many other, the most widely used form of therapy is drugs: about one in every 10 Americans takes an antidepressant and the percent is more than double among women, especially in their 40s and 50s. Although the most widespread this treatment is not at all the better, for both its side effects and the fact it acts only on the symptoms, without in any way solving the causes, thereby forcing the patient to become drug-dependent for years, and sometimes for life. Counseling and psychotherapy treatment can lead instead to the identification and resolution of the causes but have limitations as well, including an apparently higher cost than drugs and a level of effectiveness not always optimal regarding the traditional psychological treatments but significantly increasing if integrative (or better holistic) approaches are applied.
From a holistic perspective every disease, especially if chronic, is a message whose purpose is to inform our consciousness that something in our life is not going in the right direction. Depending on the type of disease, this "something" can relate to diet, lifestyle, relationships, work, identity etc. Depression is an emotional disease and as such is not about feeding the body but the soul; in fact, it can be considered a form of chronic sorrow, informing us that something in our lives makes us sad. In some cases this " something " is a traumatic event (job loss, death of a loved one, a serious chronic disease, etc.) and the main goal of the therapy is to help the patient to overcome the event and move on. In much more cases depression is not related to a specific event but to an unsatisfactory way of life: a work not enough rewarding, an excess of duties with respect to the pleasures, the lack of a life purpose, loneliness, poor relationship with the partner (or with yourself) etc. In this article I will focus on this second kind of depression, whose purpose, although in a painful way, is to encourage our evolution, making us aware of what in our lives should be changed, improved or
reduced, and pushing us to do so.