What causes depression?   While depression is mostly caused by some type of stress, there are also some genetic pointers towards it.  Since stress is additive and if "abnormal" stress is present, the person may not be able to handle "normal" or everyday stress of just living and become depressed.

The two largest forms of stress that cause most depressions are allergy/sensitivity and mineral toxicity (mostly mercury today).  Both are generally unknown to the afflicted person.  In the many cases of depression I solved in my former orthomolecular practice, unsuspected allergy stress was about 75% and mercury about 20%, with a few cases in different categories.  (Today arsenic from pesticides is becoming more of a problem and lead is much less.  With the war(s), PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Dysfunction) is more prevalent.

Another form of stress is nutritional deficiency.  Stress requires more vitamins and amino acids than "normal", so these shortages may cause Leaky Gut Syndrome, where the gut "leaks" more into the body than it should.  This can cause bacteria to pass and the brain develops an allergy to some food.  This can be a part of the overall problem and should not be overlooked.

There are hundreds of symptoms that may be a part of individual depression.  Anxiety or PTSD are both forms of depression.  A very common symptom is often insomnia.

Removing mercury and other toxic minerals is simple and cheap.  If this is not done, then the toxic mercury may even be sufficient to damage brain cells.  This therapy can be done by using as much vitamin C in split doses every day that you can get into the person.  With adults I used 10 grams per day and it often took up to a year to get the mercury out.  I used hair analysis in my practice to monitor all toxic minerals about every six months. Because vitamin C takes ALL minerals out of the bloodstream by making ascorbates of them, it is necessary to replace the nutritional minerals.  For more details on this read vitamin C, particularly the section on "chelation".

Solving brain allergy stress is done with either Neurofeedback (NFB) or Neuroliminal Training (NT).  Both seem to relieve the "brain allergies" that are the major problem, thus allowing the brain to handle the day-to-day stress.

Neuroliminal Training has been found effective for depression by Dr Bate in volunteer trials over several years now.  It is the only therapy that is guaranteed to solve depression and other mental problems with 60 days of usage or return for refund.

It costs a fraction of the cost of EEG biofeedback/Neurofeedback.  (That's a no-brainer for mid and low income families.)

Nutritional Deficiencies:  As mentioned above, almost every kind of stress causes the body to use up various vitamins and minerals faster.  This means that when you are under unusual stress, you should be taking more vitamins and other supplements.  (Some health food stores even sell so-called "stress vitamins", which are merely a B complex and vitamin C pills.)

Vitamin and amino acid deficiencies may also start another serious nutritional problem.  Because the body needs the nutrition badly in many cases, it "has" to open the "channels" between the gut which is loaded with bacteria and the body which tries to keep sterile.  This leads to "Leaky Gut Syndrome" and some amino acids look to the immune system like possible bacteria, so the brain forms a food allergy to that body, thus adding to the allergy stress.  And the music goes round and round.

Talk Therapy In the past treatment of depression was done by many different types of talk therapy by psychologists.   There are over 250 psychotherapy "techniques" and NONE of them have been proven to work any better than any other.  Especially with depression.  The APA (Amer Psychological Assn)has neatly classified many different types of depression (manic, bipolar, unipolar, post-partum, grief, PTSD, etc - mostly for the purposes of legally making them covered by health insurance.)   But, the fact remains that very few depressed patients were ever "cured" by talk type psychotherapy.  As a matter of fact, it has been shown in several studies that talking to a sympathetic friend, even a bartender, or almost anyone who will listen is about as good as talking to a clinician (at $100 up per hour).

In my not so humble opinion, there is only one "depression", and like ADD/ADHD or Autism or Schizophrenia, it has many different symptoms, depending on the individual.  These symptoms depend on many individual factors such as predisposition, past learning, genetics, etc/P>

Psychiatrists would seem to have somewhat of an advantage here.  They have the battery of drugs that "seem" to help depressed persons at least get thru life without too many suicides from depression.  (It's been said that "doctors bury their mistakes", so I'm just not so sure about the suicide statistics vs drug deaths).

Today, all the data shows that many, if not most of these drugs are very dangerous and may be WORSE than nothing to many, if not most, patients.  Did you know that drug deaths have DOUBLED since the FCC allowed drug advertising on radio and TV?  Never mind all that - Big Pharma is getting richer - so a few people die.  Who cares as long as the profits keep rolling in?

Here's another truth.  Nobody ever got depressed because of poor toilet training as a child.   Freud had a lot of good ideas, but this wasn't one of them.   There's been a lot written about stress causing depression and stress is a component (as poor toilet training may be).    But, it doesn't CAUSE depression directly.   So, just what does cause depression?

The Orthomolecular theory and my experience in practice (prior to retiring many years ago) taught me that there are only three basic causes of depression.  Working on all three of these basic "stresses" always cleared up the patient's ability to withstand the normal stress of everyday living as well as the heavy stresses put on some individuals at times. 

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