Excuse me but I said nothing at all like, "just get over it" or "buck up". I said it was treatable. There are three kinds of treatment. The first is talk therapy, the second is drug therapy, the third is bibliotherapy or reading books about the causes and effects of depression. All three of those methods are known to work. Any two of those methods of treatment in combinations are proven to work twice as well as anyo one alone. All three used together are three times as effective as any one of them on its own. After many years of treatment, I'm not sure I know what situational depression is as I have come to believe that depression isn't about what happens to us, depression is about how we think about what happens to us.

Awful things happened to human beings and they make us sad, things break our hearts, we experience extreme loss. Being made sad or worse by situations is not necessarily depression. Sadness is a normal state of being when we lose people or we lose a job or maybe we lose a friend. Any number of things can happen to us to darken our mood and leave us wounded. This may turn into depression which needs to be treated but we don't need to experience loss or injury to become depressed. Depression runs in families. Depression can be learned behavior. Depression can be based on a person's brain chemistry, their diet, their lack of exercise or any other combination of poor life skills or poor life experiences .

I'm not speaking about manic depressive disorders, those are completely different and don't respond to the same drugs that we take for depression without mania.

From my observations of friends and fellow artists, manic depression seems to be a much more serious condition with a much bleaker out look for treatment.

I'm not playing down the seriousness of depression either. Left untreated, depression is a terminal disease. It can affect our general health, our longevity, our relationship with other people, our ability to hold jobs. It also affects our ability to heal, to recover from illnesses. For patients with chronic pain both depression and anxiety can greatly worsen our situation. It increases our experience of pain and by that I mean what hurts really bad when I'm depressed doesn't hurt quite as much when I'm happy. This presents serious pitfalls for some patients who say I don't need talk therapy, I don't need drugs, it's normal to feel this way when you're in that much pain. I am not depressed, depression is not my problem. Too many people look at depression as a character weakness or a flaw and refuse to admit they are depressed and refuse to seek for accept treatment. This is very frustrating to watch in another person, especially a loved one. I know this to be true because in the beginning I refuse to admit that I was depressed and didn't seek help until I was in a great deal of pain and perhaps it risk for ending my life. When I began treatment, I used all three methods at the same time which is what I would encourage anybody else to do. You can take too many pills and you can take have too many operations but you cannot have too much bibliotherapy, or too much talk therapy. You can't have bad talk therapy but that's another story.

The two best books I read were "Feeling Good" and sadly. I can't remember the author. I also loved "The Four Agreements", by Miguel Ruiz.

If you are depressed, please get help. If your doctor or your family tell you they think you might be depressed, please listen to them. If you get the impression from someone that they think depression is a character flaw put as much distance between them and you as is possible. Love & blessings.