[di meliora]

Nancy Schimelpfening:

Answer: Right now there is no cure. Antidepressants correct the chemical imbalance only for the time you are taking them. As we come to understand it more, I think there will be a cure, or at least treatments that are more tolerable and more targeted to the actual problem. Right now, treating depression is a bit like trying to perform a delicate surgery with a butcher knife. It works, but you get a lot of unpleasant side-effects. I envision that future treatments will become more like scalpels than butcher knives. http://depression.about.com/cs/treat...essioncure.htm

Schimelpfening is the Depression Guide at About.com. I never thought to ask my therapists if the use of a butcher knife had been part of their training. It also concerns me that a depression guide seems stuck on the medical model that has at least to some extent been discredited.

Psychiatry’s New Brain-Mind and the Legend of the “Chemical Imbalance”
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blog.../10168/1902106

Doctor, Is My Mood Disorder Due to a Chemical Imbalance?

Now, this notion of the “chemical imbalance” has been much in the news lately, and a lot of misinformation has been written about it—including by some doctors who ought to know better 2. In the article I referenced, I argued that “…the “chemical imbalance” notion was always a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.”1 Some readers felt I was trying to “re-write history”, and I can understand their reaction—but I stand by my statement.

I have taken a lot of antidepressants based on the thought the proper medications would make my malaise a distant memory. The more I look, the more I see. That said, what I truly understand obviously is very little.

My tale in Bamboozled, hornswoggled and hoodwinked? was written in frustration. I am still frustrated.