If you live in the modern world, chances are you probably know someone who is depressed. It’s an epidemic of sorts that seems to have sky rocketed over the past few decades. To date, pharmaceutical companies have been controlling the entire conversation, convincing people that they are powerless and NEED their drugs to feel better.
We’ve all seen the creepy commercials that show a sad and exhausted person popping a shiny pill and then walking happily out into the sunlit meadow – while a voice drones on in the background listing every terrifying side-effect of this new wonder drug they’re pushing. So many good people accept this brainwashing sitting down, without taking their eyes off the TV, or even better, taking action.
But you and I are awake.
And so is my friend Dr. Kelly Brogan, a NYC-based psychiatrist and author of the best-selling book “A Mind of Your Own.” Her work has redefined the way we look not only at depression, but the way we see life, and our relationship to all the things we experience throughout it.
We interviewed Kelly about her pioneering work a few weeks ago, and guess what? It all comes down to remembering our sense of TRIBE, and ushering in the forgotten wisdom of the ancients. (You know I’m in!)
Kelly has become a highly controversial figure in the medical world, because some of her natural approaches are at odds with conventional psychiatry. But as a devoted mother of two, as well as a highly accredited healer, we knew she was someone well worth chatting with.
It takes a lot of courage to take a stand for what you feel is right, especially when you’re challenging an entire establishment. Kelly speaks honestly and from the heart about the very sensitive topic of depression – and more importantly she shares valuable information about the best ways to move forward.
The most important 6 words that Kelly shared with us are: Depression Is A Symptom, Not A Disease
Watch the video below for a quick dose of wisdom from Dr. Kelly Brogan
(We have included a transcript of this video below – if you prefer to read.)
To watch our full interview with Kelly, click HERE.
For a transcript of this clip, continue reading below:
NP: So why depression? A Mind of Your Own is focused primarily on depression, although there are a lot of little offshoots that make you realize that everything might be linked to the same cause, but why depression specifically?
KB: So what you’re saying is very true because the illusion of these different diseases being different diseases is one that I like to myth bust upfront. Is depression really different from any other physical illness in that it’s just a message that there is a source of imbalance to be examined? Depression I think I wanted to reach the most people I possibly could with my “credentials” and the truth is that eleven percent of Americans are taking psychotropic drugs, one in four women of reproductive age are, depression is the leading cause in the world of disability according to the World Health Organization.
I couldn’t pick a heavier hitter and it also happens to be one that touches the very core of major questions we have to begin asking about our orientation towards our bodies and our real lack of acknowledgement that there’s anything beyond the body in all of conventional medicine; that there is such a thing as a soul or spirit. Despite the fact that psychiatrists actually means doctor of the soul, it couldn’t be more divorced in a really Cartesian way from any acknowledgement that there is any role for experience. Everything is management and functionality and punching the clock and staying productive. It happens to be a subject that really lends itself to looking at these bigger issues, which I think do manifest in other physical illness as well.
NP: One of the spookiest things that I’ve ever encountered was two very close friends of mine, you might even call them very close family members, got divorced and when they got divorced the first thing that there psychologist did was refer them to a psychiatrist to prescribe them some kind of an anti-depressant. These are very smart people and they both did it. They both took it because I think that there is sort of this, we just do what our doctors tell us to do. I mean it’s just the way that we were raised, if the doctor tells you to do something, then you give it a shot. Unless you experience a transformative illness of your own where you have to find other ways, you don’t really ever come to that conclusion, you just do what your doctor tells you to do.
These people both took anti-depressants and started fading away. They weren’t crying or curling up in a fetal position but they were also not themselves. They were gone. They were basically just gone for a couple of months until I and my sister started both being like hey, what the hell is going on? Like are you kidding me? You’re really doing this to yourself right now? This wasn’t even a chronic condition, this was nothing – this was just a life circumstance that they were prescribed medicine for.
KB: Yes it’s amazing. I love that example because it really illustrates what we’re dealing with here. There’s recent data just out that echo’s previous data that suggests basically most prescriptions for anti-depressants are written by non-specialists and mostly by family practice doctors and GP’s, internists and that more than half of the prescriptions are written not for depression, for a dog dying, divorce, for circumstantial experiences.
Listen, doctors, for the most part, I have to believe are not bad people. These are the tools that we were given to ease struggle and suffering. We want to fix it. That’s part of the problem, the whole mentality of conventional medicine is fix it, fix it, fix it. So a divorce is challenging, for many people it’s like a birth canal to a new you, to your next chapter and if everything is co-conspiring around you to essentially say – don’t go there, that can hurt or don’t go there like that could actually interfere with work or don’t go there you have shit to do, you don’t have time for that – then when somebody offers you a hand in the form of a prescription, how could you not take it. Why would you not take it?
Part of my mission has really been to focus on some of the almost sensational sounding concerns that I developed after a deep dive into the literature, which included the fact that taking an anti-depressant prescription can actually change the course of your life and the lives of other people within days of your first dose. I got an email the other day from a woman who wants to make her presence known to me and she said my husband never suffered from depression in his entire life. He’s not a psychiatric patient. He was struggling with circumstantial insomnia and his internist prescribed him an SSRI anti-depressant and five weeks later he was found dead hanging in his garage. So she’s pretty upset about this and to her it’s pretty clear the causative relationship between that medication and her husband’s death.
Guess what, people shoot up schools, they take down airplanes, they kill their babies and their children, they murder their spouses, they behave in heinous ways that human beings would never ever consider engaging if not for being under the influence of such an altering chemical that we’ve barely characterized what it does.
So if it were the magic pill we are told it is, and I was at my training, that’s safe and effective and a quick fix, of course why would you not take it. The problem is we are representing it in a way that is wholly inconsistent with what the medical literature is telling us are its intended risks and then we’re not evening grappling with the bigger question of, is there a role for sitting in your experience, is there a role for witnessing your experience, is there actually a purpose and a meaning, personal to you, for the types of suffering that you’re exposed to. We can’t have that conversation other than places like this. It’s a complex issue and I appreciate your highlighting that element of it.
The post The Medicine In Suffering – Rethinking Depression appeared first on The Sacred Science.
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