Yet another thread inspired by the Sociopathy Thread
"Clinical Depression" is different from being 'depressed'.
It is unfortunate that we don't have another name for "Clinical Depression"
They are not the same thing at all.
Clinical Depression is totally life debilitating.
Ask anyone who has been through it and they will tell you it was the worst time of their lives.
The pain is real, severe, and often leads to suicide to escape the pain. It can last for weeks days or years.
Isolating the person socially, mentally, intellectually and ruining family and work life. It is usually accompanied by huge, uncontrollable, pluralising, anxiety
It is unfortunate that the word 'depressed' has to be used at all when talking about "Clinical Depression"
"Clinical Depression" is not "over-diagnosed" it more often is not diagnosed at all. It is a very serious psychiatric disorder that we don't fully understand.
Walking is one of the best things depressed people can do.
You can't tell a "Clinically Depressed" person to think positively.
They can't think. Their mind just goes around and around in obsessive-compulsive circles.
Don't give advice like "Pick yourself up etc.
Nor can they smell the roses they only see threatening horrible, frightening thorns. Gratuitous advice does not help.
If someone is "Clinically Depressed"
Hospitalisation may be necessry .
If that help involves anti-depressants for a time, then so be it.
Powerful pills worry me too
If herbs are your deal St.John's Wort (Hypericum perforatum) is helpful for mild depression.
Is depression caused by a virus?more here:-
http://www.psycom.net/depression.central.borna.html
this is from:-
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/gmis9745.htm
""
You've probably heard the old joke that the difference between herpes and love, is that herpes is forever.
The herpes virus jumps onto you, burrows along your nerves until it finds a comfortable little home in your central nervous system, and then at some future date (usually when your resistance is down) comes raging out - and you get the dreaded cold sores again. But imagine if there was another virus that also invaded your nervous system, but gave you the psychiatric disease called "depression".
Some scientists think that this is the case with a virus called the Borna virus. Now right at the beginning, I should tell you that this is still a controversial story, and that not all scientists agree.
The effects of Borna virus were first noticed in Saxony in Germany in 1766 in horses - first they got sad, and then hyperactive, and then most of them died. But the virus got its name about a century ago, when it killed some 2,000 cavalry horses in the town of Borna in Germany.
But only recently, in the 1990s, have we found a link between this virus and depression. Depression is a disorder of your mood or emotions. It affects some 5% of the population at any given time.
There's actually a bunch of diseases that go under the single name of "depression", and they tend to come and go during your life. They do more than just make you a little bit unhappy. They can cause severe disability, greater than is caused by heart disease, diabetes or even arthritis. In fact, it's thought that 70% of suicides happen in people suffering from depression. But what's the evidence that this strange new virus called Borna virus can cause depression?
Well, much of this research has been done by two virologists, Hanns Ludwig from the Free University of Berlin, and Liv Bode from the Robert Koch Institute (also in Berlin). In 1994, they found that clinically depressed people were more likely to have some of the proteins associated with Borna virus in their blood.
The next year, they found traces of the actual RNA of the Borna virus as well. In 1996, these virologists took some Borna virus from clinically depressed patients, and when they injected this Borna virus into rabbits, the rabbits became apathetic, sluggish, withdrawn and stopped their normal grooming - in other words, the rabbits started suffering depression. And in January 1997, they found that if they used the anti-virus drug amantadine in depressed patients, as the virus disappeared from the blood stream, so did the symptoms of depression.
However, other scientists are more sceptical. For example they say amantadine is already well known for its anti-depressive effect, and they claim that it works by binding to some receptors in the brain, not by killing the virus. They also claim that the technique used to detect the virus is so sensitive that it can find a few virus particles floating in the air in the laboratories - in other words, that if you look hard enough, you'll find this virus everywhere. ""
