How to beat depression without drugs

Article taken from : “ The Guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 July 2010

The clinical phycologist Dr Steve Ilardi is against using drugs to cure depression. In this article, he explains the six-step programme to beat depression without drugs.
First of all, he argues that in the depression cure, the brain mistakenly interprets the pain of drepression as an infection. As a cosequence, the sufferer tends to crawl into a hole and wait for it all to go away thinking that isolation is needed. On the contrary, what depressed people really need is “ more human contact.” So, the first step to cure depression is:

• Social contact.
The other five steps are:
• Meaningful activity( to prevent “ruminating” on negative thoughts)
• Regular exercise
• A diet rich in Omega-3 fatty acids
• Restorative sleep.

The reasons which Ilardi focuses on to set this six-step programme are the aspects of primitive life style. “ Hunter- gatherer tribes still exist today in some parts of the world.”, he says, “ and their level of depression is almost zero. The reasons? They are too busy to sit around brooding; they get lots of physical activity and sunlight; their diet is rich in Omega -3; their level of social connection is extraordinary; and they have as much as ten hours of sleep.”

The only omission this programme has is anti-depressant medication because according to Dr Ilardi, drugs don´t work. They have only 50% success rate. Moreover, of the people who do improve, half experience a relapse. This lowers the recovery rate to only 25%. To make matters worse, the negative effects after taking drugs include: emotional numbing, sexual dysfunction and weight gain.

In my opinion, this programme to beat depression is very useful because it helps to cure without depending on drugs.

Bryana.