How many Americans seek help for depression?
Only half of the 16 percent of
Americans, about 35 million people, who suffer from depression seek treatment.
Women and men are equally at risk to commit suicide.
Dr. Ronald Kessler, Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard, says that many
people seek help from family doctors, who are apparently not yet up to speed
enough to give good quality care. People with depression fail to receive
proper care.
Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/18/health/18DEPR.html?th
Editorial by Sieglinde Alexander:
According to my personal experience, depression is still not recognized as a
key factor in physical illnesses. Depression can cause physical illness and
physical ailments can bring on depression. The general practitioner who is not
educated in the effects of trauma- related issues that can lead to depression,
quickly writes out a prescription for symptoms of a physical illness without
understanding the cause, or worse, in the knowledge that there are other
interventions available but at more cost in professional time and effort.
How intensely a patient experiences pain
is, more often than not, related to a high stress level or even to depression.
If a patient experienced ECT (early childhood trauma) the pain of the present
triggers the early experienced pain and connects both. The pain level becomes
dramatically and unbearably high. Many illnesses an adult experiences can be
traced back to similar pains experienced in the childhood. The connection of
ECT (early childhood trauma) to depression could be easily made if the general
practitioner would ask the patient if he remembers a similar pain in
childhood. More often, as in my case, the ear infection, the childhood
illness was neglected in childhood and out of fear of being not heard or
helped again, anxiety elevates the pain.
Dr. Arthur Janov delivers his
research findings and the connection between mental and physical illnesses in
many of his books especially in “Why
You Get Sick and How You Get Well.”
Alice Miller alerts doctors to embrace
the connection of depression and physical illness in her book “The Truth Will
set You Free”.
As long as we refuse to act on the
knowledge that a human being is made up of intrinsically interconnected
physical and mental aspects, and functions only if both work in harmony, the
medical model must fail in its attempts to help the healing process.
return
to titles
Haunting Shadows from the Past
