Stop depression 90 percent or more part 2.....

Today's post:  Tuesday, 2-7-2017

The drugs now given for depression don't work or barely work; they are as addictive as hard drugs; and they have recently found to help cause Alzheimer's disease.  Most doctors still know little else to try.  Some even think these drugs work; but they don’t.

But depression is a hardware and software problem of the brain.  

1.  We now know:  how to use cognitive therapy to fix the software; 

2. We now know how to fix the hardware;

a) We know what drugs directly harm the hardware and reliably cause depression.  So knowing never to take them even once and to stop them as fast as is safe to do so helps.  Knowing what to replace the drugs with instead also helps.

b) We know things that repair or replace nerves and brain cells and their connections. Successful talk therapy changes the part of the brain used and has this effect!  And, when people do the things that grow new brain cells enough to show on a brain scan, most cases of depression and many cases of PTSD ALSO show dramatic improvement

3.  We know a few things that make people feel better right away.  The best two are low tech and people can simply do them.  One high tech treatment and one drug have been shown to work right away but may not be available for many years yet.

So, most people get harmed by treatment when at the same time, we do know safe and effective ways that cure depression for over 90% of the people who use all the parts." 

This post and very likely the post next Tuesday and even the one after that have the details.

In his book, "The Depression Cure: The 6-Step Program to Beat Depression without Drugs," author Stephen Ilardi PhD found that over 75%^ of the people who were depressed who followed each of those 6 steps properly were able to stop their depression.

Because the parts here ensure you do his steps well and turn off the causes of the remaining 25%, doing each of them we believe can stop over 90 percent of depression and even approach 100%.

That said, here’s  a bit more on the first one:

1.  We now know:  how to use cognitive therapy to fix the software in your brain to lift depression.

Martin Seligman, PhD found that if you see bad things as permanent and out of your control and you see good things as rare and unlikely to last, you will reliably be depressed.  Worse the more often you think this, the worse your depression gets.

Our initial post describes ways to stop the inaccurate kind of thinking.  Surprisingly often depressed people think that bad things will keep happening, will always happen, and it’s all their fault when these assumptions can be tested to be false!

And, when there are things that make bad things happen that will continue for a bit or were partly their fault, depressed people assume they cannot deal with this or recover later.  That’s false too!  It may take a bit; but people can and have recovered from such things.

[End of part I.  This part two resumes this Tuesday with the second, very different skill Dr Seligman found that stops depression.]

People who are rarely depressed notice some good things that they DO find lasting.  They notice when good things happen and instead of worrying they won’t last, they tend to notice why they happened.

The other thing is that they think well on their feet and work so hard and try so many things and keep at it so well, they expect they can succeed in making good things happen and even convert bad things to good.

Part of this turns out to be that their hardware is in good shape!  Research shows that such people have dramatically high levels of connective white matter with its wiring together their conscious brain with all the memories in their hippocampus.

They’ve learned that by having access to ALL their memories, when they have to think on their feet, they can always remember a few things that they can try to deal with what they are facing.

Then they are so persistent and are so willing to make an extra effort to try things and truly spend hours and hours and even months to make it work, that what seems to be overconfidence simply reflects this self knowledge.

The two things that Dr Seligman’s model misses that people who STAY optimistic do are:

*First, they notice things that can harm them if they fail and do things in advance to prevent this.  And, they take action immediately to fix things they didn’t manage to prevent.  One successful CEO called these things “Below the Waterline” risks.

One person said that people who jump into water that they cannot see into feet first and NOT head first, tend to survive when there WERE harmful things they didn’t see.

People who STAY optimistic are Prudent Optimists who work hard at prevention to remove risks!

They also test solutions to see which ones work to do more of, which are total wipe outs to stop doing, and which ones need to be done better or another way.

*Second, they DO know very well what they themselves did to make good things happen and exactly what other people do to mess things up and cause bad results.

BUT, because they also know that other people have thousands of hours a week and skills and knowledge that they need and benefit from, they only give credit to what those people and the help they did provide and completely leave out what they did themselves –

AND they take responsibility for helping others get good results so they help find out what resources they need or training or help to succeed.  Only if they find someone who cannot or won’t do this, do they stop working with that person and replace them.

It may look impossible to take responsibility for getting good results anyway when people helping them don’t initially do so.

But effective optimists do just that. They take “radical” levels of responsibility.

This does take extra effort – sometimes a LOT of extra effort; but people who learn how to do it and force themselves to do it well are EFFECTIVE optimists.

..depression is a hardware and software problem of the brain.  

1.  We now know:  how to use cognitive therapy to fix the software; 

There are ways that even short term therapy with someone who knows how can help people learn these skills. 

But we’ve just described what bad mental software consists of and what desirable mental software consists of which people can use themselves to make these repairs.

We now begin with the next section:

2. We now know how to fix the hardware;

a) We know what drugs directly harm the hardware and reliably cause depression.  So knowing never to take them even once and to stop them as fast as is safe to do so helps.  Knowing what to replace the drugs with instead also helps.

b) We know things that repair or replace nerves and brain cells and their connections. Successful talk therapy changes the part of the brain used and has this effect!  And, when people do the things that grow new brain cells enough to show on a brain scan, most cases of depression and many cases of PTSD ALSO show dramatic improvement.

a) We know what drugs directly harm the hardware and reliably cause depression.  So knowing never to take them even once and to stop them as fast as is safe to do so helps.  Knowing what to replace the drugs with instead also helps.

Never take beta blockers -- or stop them ASAP -- which you may need to do step by step for safety. 

Beta blockers are a known cause of severe depression and the only way to stop it is to stop the drug.

One doctor quite eloquently describes how his patients who were put on beta blockers by other doctors immediately developed severe depression.  Many even committed suicide before he could help them get off the beta blockers.

People on beta blockers have no physical energy to make an extra effort physically or even make enough of an extra effort mentally to do their work decently and manage their life away from work.

So being unable to change how much energy they have or how they feel, they tend to spend their time ruminating about how dreadful things are.  Every day there is something that always happens that IS bad:  They feel horrible and have no energy because they are taking the beta blockers.

They become less able to exercise.  And, the beta blockers prevent the exercises that they do manage from making them more fit!

They have this effect on heart muscle too.  So when they are given for heart failure, they reliably cause it to get worse instead of better.

Last and far from least, they cause mental decline directly if you keep taking them.

Then, for many people, they are as addictive as cocaine and extremely hard to stop taking.

Last but far from least, although they have these effects, they will often cause dangerous surges in blood pressure if you stop taking them totally and immediately.

So you have to lower the dose gradually to stop them safely under a doctor’s care while measuring your blood pressure several times a day.

This is an extremely challenging way to stop an addictive drug as well.

So, the only safe way to deal with beta blockers is to NEVER begin taking them.

And, if you don’t want to be severely depressed, you must stop taking beta blockers as fast as is safe.

We will continue this in part 3 next week.