I am reading a book titled Lethal Warriors: When the New Band of Brothers Comes Home.  This is a book that I am reading for enjoyment as opposed to research.  Yes, I do read books likes this for enjoyment.

I have read just under fifty pages, and I am really enjoying the read.  Two things have really stuck out for me.  The first is the military's reliance on antidepressants.  In 2007 the army was prescribing 22,000 soldiers antidepressants drugs or sleeping pills.  I wish the author had broken this data into the two distinct categories.  These pills, have become a way in which the army has decided to deal with the stress of combat.  If a soldier is having trouble dealing with the death of his friends or not seeing hisor her for many years family because of being deployed for the third time in four years.,  they are given a pill.

I have many problems with this, but one of my main concerns is that if depression is a "disease" as the APA claims, it seems that it should have been apparent in these soldiers long before they went into combat.  It seems that their depression is a result of stress and not the result of a chemical imbalance.  I am not trying to imply that all cases of depression are the result of stress.  Many casses of stress, can not be explained with an inablity to deal with stress, and may be a result of the person's brain no functioning properly.  But, in this case I really do not think that the Army is dealing with this issue in the proper manner, and much of their method of dealing with soldiers' depression has to do with the influence of the APA and the DSM in touting all depression as a form of disease that can be cured with a pill.

The second thing that shocked me was that the Army has what the author described as a don't ask don't tell policy toward depression.  Depression, if it is discovered that an soldier has, can be career killer.  So, many soldiers that want to make a career out of the Army  either suffer silently with their depression or they seek outside help and hope that no one finds out, and if they do they keep quite about it.

It seems that the Army has a long way to go in helping its soldiers with the stress of killing others and watching their friends being killed.

Peter

few weeks ago, I was at a party. The DJ at the party was gathering all of the children at the party so that they could do the Chicken Dance. I was not really watching what he was doing. But he did have a microphone, so I could hear everything that he had to say. Apparently one child in the group was not paying attention, and the DJ said something to the effect of "his meds are going have to be upped." My, wife, who is a special needs teacher, and I looked at each other in shock.

What the hell has happen to us. When did we become a country that thinks that there is a pill for everything that ails us or annoys us. When I was a child I was loud and full of energy. I am certain without a doubt that I would have been diagnosed with ADHD. In fact, later on in life, only few years ago, I was diagnosed with it. But, my psychologist did not suggest that I start taking meds. I am sure that If I was born only a decade later than I was (I was born in 1970) school administrators and doctors would have been pushing my parents to put me on drugs.

When are we going to stop thinking that a drug will fix everything, which it has not, and most likely never will, and start looking at other ways of dealing with issues of the brain. I just heard an interesting story about a doctor/researcher who is looking into the possibility that what children eat may be a cause of the increase of autism in the United States. She claimed that she was able to deal with a child's autism by adjusting his diet. To me, looking into the diet of a child, as the cause of a mental disorder is not that radical. It has come to the point in the United States that most food, even unprocessed food, is altered chemically. It seems reasonable that this chemically altered food might be having a negative effect on the way our brains function.Yet, this is not the way that many Americans think. And, in many ways who could blame them.

We are inundated with ads that tell us to take a pill to get an erection, to remove our feeling of sadness, to overcome heartburn, to loose weight, to deal with anxiety...etc.  You name it, they have a pill for it. And, doctors, the ones that we trust with the welfare of our bodies prescribed these drugs to us. They must be safe--a doctor would not prescribe a drug that is not safe. Yet think back. Think Prozac and teen suicides, think Vioxx and sudden and unexpected deaths. These doctors are often lied to about the safeness of the drugs. The drug companies only inform the doctors about the positive results of the positive studies.

We trust our doctors, and I don't think that you are intentionally doing harm. But, I think that doctors need to stop pulling out the pad and prescribing a pill every time something ails a patient.

Enjoy life,

Peter

I am a person that finds it very, very hard to do nothing.  If I do nothing all day, by which I mean something that could be considered productive, I feel that I have wasted a day, and in some distorted way feel guilty about it.

Now, my definition of productive might not be that same as yours.  To me, productive can  either be the most obvious--that at the end of the day I can show or tell you about my accomplishments--or it can be that I spend the day talking a walking in the woods with my family.  My idea of productive therefore could better be described as being active.  A day without activity is a waste.

Every once in a while, when I am just worn out. or completely unmotivated, I will just force myself to do nothing.  These days are rare.

There is one exception to the rule.  Saturday nights when the weather is warm and there is no precipitation, I  build a fire in our fire pit and listen to the Prairie Home Companion for two hours.

There is something about a fire that allows me to forget all of my worries.  I really can not explain it.  When I sit in front of a fire it is as if I am almost in a trance. All I want to do is sit and relax.

I think that it is important, if you are dealing with depression, for you to find you own fire pit moment.  When I was depressed there was a direct correlation between my stress and my level of depression.  The more intense the stress the worse I felt.

Of course not everyone can have a fire pit. But, you should find a way to get away from it all, and allow yourself to decompress.  And, if you are going to do this I think that it is really important that you truly get away from it all.  This does not mean that you have to go loose yourself in the woods for a week at a time.  However, if your thing is going for a walk in the woods, turn off your cell phone.  Allow yourself to get lost (mentally) in the woods.

I think that acknowledging that I needed a way to decompress was a big part of my healing process.

Enjoy life,

Peter

Link: http://www.sydney-neurofeedback.com.au/downloads/Hammond_b,%202005.pdf

This article summarizes how I feel about depression.

First, and foremost it demonstrates the effectiveness of neurofeedback in dealing with depression and anxiety.  The statistical information did make my eyes glaze over at pionts, but his writing is very clear and accessible.

But, before he addresses the effectiveness of neurofeedback he argues that there are some of us that are predisposed toward depression.  It is not that we will necessarily get depression, but if life pushes us around enough we have a greater chance to get depression.  And, the reason for this has to do with brain waves, which neurofeedback addresses.

Not only does neurofeedback work, it outperforms drugs, it is permanent, and it has no side effects.

Enjoy life.

Peter