Clinical Depression - A Real Physical Ailment

Depression is a very real physical disease. It's caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain and can result in a life-alternating situation like the birth of a child or a traumatic event in your life. It's the kind of depression where you literally cannot function in the real world. You can't eat, sleep, laugh, or enjoy life as you did before. You have feelings of guilt, inadequacies and complete sadness. You may sleep a lot or perhaps you're not able to sleep at all because you are awakened with anxiety and panic. Your mind works overtime and your thought processes are completely twisted and incomprehensible to you or anyone else.

There are thousands upon thousands of people that suffer from clinical depression and for some, it becomes so unbearable that they take their own lives because they are ashamed to ask for help or feel they have no one to turn to. Society doesn't help when a person can be scrutinized for becoming lazy, unsocial and housebound. Depression is seen as a weakness, especially for men. Men are far more less likely to seek help for a depressive condition then women because they feel as though they will be judged and looked upon as less than a man.

I had a conversation with someone today, a female, who felt it necessary to say that had I sought out the Lord to heal my wounded psyche and "re-train" my brain to gain a positive and happy outlook on life through the law of attraction, that perhaps I could have prevented the severe depression that I experienced after the birth of my son 24 years. She explained that she had suffered from clinical depression all of her life and with the good Lord above and the Law of Attraction, she was able to turn her life around and avoid the whole treatment route. This woman actually believed that what I experienced was in my control and that I basically could have willed it away had I gotten the skills to re-train my thought processes. This woman has never gone through a true clinical, chemical depression because if she had, she would have understood that everything she said to me was pure crap.

A true chemical imbalance in the brain is a disease that is no different than diabetes or asthma. Sometimes, it cannot be treated by therapy or positive thinking alone. For some, medication is a necessity and for many, it's a life-long treatment that should never be seen as a weakness or a crutch. Sometimes severe depression is only a physical flaw in the brain and doesn't require years of intense therapy to get to the root of a troubled soul. I know, because I deal with it on a day to day bases by way of medication to keep my physical brain working at its optimum levels. I'm just as normal as anyone else. I just need to take a pill every day to keep me that way. Would you deny a diabetic his insulin or an epileptic his anti-seizure medication? Clinical depression is no different than any other disease out there where there is no cure. It saddens me to know that there a lot of people like this woman I spoke to today that believe this disease can be "cured" by a little religion, positive thinking, and the law of attraction. Stop the madness!