NARSAD Researchers Showcase New Treatment Options For Severe Depression; Provide New Clues About Treating Clinical Anxiety And Schizophrenia

Medical News Today:

New findings from research supported by NARSAD, the world's leading charity dedicated to mental health research, and conducted by scientists at Washington University's School of Medicine (WUSM) now point to new options for treating preschool-aged children with significant clinical depression as well as those severely depressed adults who don't respond to standard treatments, such as antidepressants and psychotherapy.

Presented at NARSAD's 5th annual St. Louis Mental Health Research Symposium on May 18th at Washington University, the studies, conducted by four leading St. Louis-based researchers, shed new light on what happens in the brains of children and adults who are affected by clinical depression, anxiety disorders and schizophrenia. Coming at a time when more than 57 million Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder, the new findings have immediate relevance in terms of new treatment options and different strategies for designing more targeted therapies for the future.

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Beyond Blue: J.K. Rowling's Suicidal Days

(I am so grateful to Therese Borchard for being the lone voice to say what I think. Knowing that I'm expected to live for my daughter and feeling, because it's not enough for me, she probably would be better off without me ...)

While I know that severe major depression and cycles of depression with bipolar disorder can be triggered by life events, they don't make the depression. Depression, as I have said 100 times on Beyond Blue, is a brain disease, just like cancer or diabetes or arthritis. It is not caused by a divorce, or a bad breakup, or a job failure, just like a person doesn't become diabetic when her husband is caught having an affair (unless she stuffs her face with Ben and Jerry's to cope, that is). Even if those things precede a severe episode.

"The thing that made me go for help was probably my daughter," said Rowling, referring to the then-infant, Jessica, reports the Telegraph. "She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn't right, this can't be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state.”

While I appreciate her point here, it once again deceives the masses on the complicated and disabling bio-chemistry, on the neurological shut down, that happens inside the brain of a person with a serious mood disorder.

Despite Rowling's suicidal thoughts, it's possible that her depression wasn't that severe. Because when a person wants to die as much as I wanted to die, no one thing is enough to save her. While I knew that I had to hang on for my kids, I also wanted to disappear for my kids. My self-esteem was so low that I wanted to get out of the picture so that they had a shot at a normal life without the baggage of a whackjob mom.

My God, think if everyone just had to think of their kids to save their lives! There would be so many less suicides. I truly wish that was all you needed to think about. But I know that this disease is so powerful and manipulative, that it finds a way to persuade you to end it FOR THE GOOD of your kids.

I applaud Rowling for speaking publicly about her darker days, for saying this: "I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never. I think I'm abnormally shameless on that account because what's to be ashamed of?"

I congratulate her on telling anyone who suffers from depression to "go and get help." But I warn people of the shallowness in this one profile: that falling down with a breakup and picking yourself up for the kids can itself send a superficial impression of what, exactly, this brain disease is capable of.

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