Sadness is the normal reaction to unfortunate events. It resolves in time and with new ways of seeing things. Depression is an involutional melancholia: a sense of inner emptiness that has no external cause. It comes from nowhere. It simply exists and won't go away. It is important to distinguish between sadness and depression. Sadness does not need treatment; depression does. Doctors who fail to make this distinction will tend to prescribe antidepressants for everything. How else can we account for 31m prescriptions for Prozac and similar pharmaceutical drugs being given out each year? There may sometimes be an unthinking exchange between doctor and patient: 'I am depressed.' 'You suffer from depression. Here is an antidepressant.' The intention on both sides is that the patient will feel better and function more effectively. Yet vast numbers of controlled studies reveal that antidepressants are only 20% more effective than placebo - dummy tablets that have no active chemical ingredient. Even so, antidepressants can lead to a dependency, they are dangerous in overdose and they can be used in suicide. Paradoxically, they may even lead to suicide by distorting reality, rather than by helping them to face it appropriately, with non-chemical support. Clinical depression, due to chemical imbalance in neuro-transmission systems in …show more content…
Just like there are many different types of cancer there are many different types of depression the most serious of which is bipolar depression. Unlike less severe forms of depression bipolar depression normally cannot be treated with just one antidepressant. One of the symptoms of this type of depression can be violent mood swings without explanation which is why many patients suffering from bipolar depression will be prescribed both an antidepressant and a mood stabilizer. One without the other may do no