Hi everyone,

The following is what I personally think is the best plan is for dealing with
depression. I'm putting it here so I don't lose it in the forum.

1. Deal with any physical/nutritional issues

There are a surprisingly large number of common medical or nutritional
issues that can cause depression including Vitamin B12 or D deficiency,
hypothyroidism, heavy metal toxicity, pre-diabetes, infection, gluten
allergy and omega 3 fat deficiency. If you have any issues like this,
antidepressants aren't really going to help and you need to get to the root
of the problem with a Medical Doctor. For references see this talk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOPRp_K6QQY

and the book "The Ultramind Solution" both by Mark Hyman. For inspiration
about what this step can do for you, see the following post from the
"depression success stories section"

http://forums.psychcentral.com/depre...r-give-up.html

2. Try all of the safe healthy ways to overcome depression first.

Often the first thing that happens to a person if they complain that they
are depressed is that they are given a prescription for antidepressant
medication. However, antidepressant drugs are toxic substances, have
potentially serious short and long term side effects, lead to dependence
and can be very difficult to withdraw from. Also, antidepressants usually
don't work:

Why Antidepressants Don?t Work for Treating Depression - Dr. Mark Hyman

Because of that, it seems much better to first try all of the safe, easy and/or healthy
ways to overcome depression. This would include exercise (always great for you), SNAP CLUB
as described here (easy and fun to try), improving your diet (always great for you),
meditation (always great for you), talk therapy including CBT, light therapy, mind training,
being more social and others. I particularly think that SNAP CLUB is good to try
because it is, I believe, really directly getting to the psychological root
cause of depression.

3. If ALL of the above fails and you are desperate, go to the next steps with
a Medical Doctor. I suspect that in almost all cases of depression, some
combination of 1 and 2 above will work. However, this is only a guess on
my part. There are cases that I believe (on this forum and elsewhere)
where antidepressant drugs work dramatically well and cases where they
work dramatically well, but only after years of trying to find the right
drug or drug combination. If nothing really works in steps 1 and 2, you may have to try this.
I have heard similar testimonials from people for who ONLY Electroconvulsive
Therapy worked. The TED talk by Solomon describes a case where nothing worked
except for a cyngulotomy (a brain operation).

- vital