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Homeopathy cures more than physical problems. Because it works on the whole person, it can also help to balance the emotions and the psyche. No one suffers from depression in exactly the same way, for the same reasons, or at the same times, so the treatment of depression should not consist of standardized treatments or pills as if they did. Appropriately, in the practice of real classical homeopathy we take the case of the whole individual and find the remedy that will stimulate a balance and cure of whatever is out of balance and may be causing depression in that particular individual.
It is very important to find the remedy that matches the specific way in which you as a whole person experience the symptoms of your ailment. The study of the patient's physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual specifics are necessary to finding the individual cure for the individual person. Some of the symptomatologies will include the personality, intellectual character, activities, way of life, habits, relationships, age, sex life, genetic history, environment, and all other causative factors of the disorder.
The state of "Depression" involves many emotions that cause an inability to feel or experience joy, pleasure, well-being or happiness.
Some such feelings are:
anger; agony; anguish; anxiety; bleak; blue; brooding; chagrin; cheerless;
darkness; dejection; desolation; despair; desperate; despondent; devastation;
disappointment; dismal; distress; doldrums; downhearted; forlorn; gloomy;
glum; grief; gruesome; heartache; hopeless; inertia; insanity; joyless;
loss; melancholia; misery; morbid; paranoia; pessimism; regret; remorse;
sadness; solemn; somber; sorrowful; suffering; torment; unfortunate; unhappy;
withdrawal; woeful; worry; wretchedness.
There can be physical causes of depression, like various illnesses or diseases, weakness, fatigue, pain, hormonal imbalance, etc. And there can be other experiential causes. Properly practiced homeopathy can address all of these causes whether they be physical, emotional, spiritual, or the result of past experience.
Here's one, typically individual, example of the simillimum of a remedy for a Case or Depression. This will serve to illustrate the comments made above:
The patient is a businessman, forty-two years old, black hair, his appearance gives the impression that he is weighted down, and he is chronically depressed. The most recent causations of his depression and despair were a disappointing love affair, severe emotional stress, anger, and general hopelessness. He does not tend to have strong connections to other people and is very emotionally defended. He had recently ended a relationship with a woman, then he fell apart. He wasn't clear about how she had "disappointed" him, but felt that he still loved her. When angry, he strikes out by breaking objects. He is very ambitious in business and his financial success is of utmost importance. He believes he has the golden touch and is destined to succeed, but he hasn't so far and fears he is failing. He tends to hurry in his mental work because things cannot go fast enough. He is very critical but cannot bear to be criticized. He has always contemplated suicide as a way out, with thoughts of jumping out of the window. He did not talk readily about his anxiety, but he feared having a fatal heart disease and also had a vague fear of men. He had heart palpitations from anxiety with trembling and a feeling of oppression of the heart at night. Insomnia with difficulty sleeping even when tired from chronic depressed state and thinking in bed at night. Smiled involuntarily when speaking and questioned rapidly without waiting for a reply. There is a history since early childhood of struggle for parental approval. Family medical history of syphilis, alcoholism and depression.
Physical problems: Dull pain in teeth while chewing. Mild tinnitus with humming noises that are better while hearing music and worse in the morning in bed. Testicles feel sore, especially in the evening. Herpes eruption on palms of hands with burning pain. He is generally chilly and is hypersensitive to pain and noise. Appetite: desire for dry bread, coffee, milk, delicacies, and alcohol; aversion to meat.
His modalities are: Worse from < cloudy weather, in the winter,
on getting cold, at night, after lying down, right-side, noise, sweet odors,
and from wine.
Better from > sunny weather, dry weather, warmth, in the summer,
in the evening, and from music.
His M.D. prescribed Prozac® for his depression and several other drugs for his physical problems after a ten minute exam and consultation. He filled the three prescriptions but never took the Prozac®. Instead, he went to a psycho-therapist at the suggestion of a friend who was afraid he might commit suicide. The therapist, after two months, suggested that he take the Prozac®. In healthy terror of drugs, he found me.
After the first week on the homeopathic remedy that matched his symptoms and state of mind, he felt that the "dark cloud" surrounding him was lifting and after another four months of treatment he was feeling brighter and hopeful, no longer depressed or anxious. He was now able to deal with the ups and downs in his life, including having been "downsized" out of his job. That was three years ago, and he has never suffered from depression since. I have since seen him about once a year when he has an acute illness.
I do not feel that it is wise to give the name of the homeopathic remedy that cured this particular case because I do not want everyone surfing the web who suffers from depression to run out and try it whether or not it matches their exact symptomatology. That may be the conditioned medical tendency in our society, but it is not the correct way to treat any health problem. Students of homeopathy will be able to find this remedy by taking the case as presented.
We live in a drug dependent society in which most of the drugging is with legal, "orthodox" drugs prescribed by medical doctors. If we were to really "just say no to drugs," some of the biggest transnational corporations on the planet would go out of business. The biggest drug problem in America and many other countries is with legal drugs and the profits to be made from them.
Our society is suffering an epidemic of antidepressants like Prozac® and Zoloft®. These drugs are harmful not only because of their many side affects. More importantly, they suppress the emotions to a less accessible level of consciousness. This causes stress to the whole system at deep levels which affects the whole vital force of the individual and can lead to any number of serious health problems. It's literally "the blobbing of America."
Antidepressant drugs do not cure depression. They suppress and conceal the feelings by modifying the brain and the mind. This causes some people to feel that the drugs help them because they can't feel their emotional responses, but this is a process of suppression, not of cure. Antidepressants such as Prozac® have an enormous impact on the neurotransmitter system by flooding the connections in the brain with serotonin which then jacks up the whole system and causes the brain to shut down its own receptors and possibly even kill them. Prozac® can actually exacerbate suicidal tendencies and externally directed acts of violence in a significant number of people. When patients on Prozac® become agitated or develop suicidal symptoms, Eli Lilly (the manufacturer of Prozac®) recommends that they also be given tranquilizers and various sedatives, thus masking how Prozac® alone affects such patients.
Prozac® is being widely prescribed for depression in children and teenagers. Many HMO's, in their quest for a fatter bottom line, have decided to refuse to cover psycho-therapy in children and insist, instead, on the use of drugs for these children. A child's most trusted comrades and staunch advocates should be their parents. Who is in a more powerful position or has a more passionate reason to protect and nurture a child? Why, then, are they allowing the drugging their children with drugs produced by the wealthiest corporations and prescribed by licensed lazy doctors or doctors who are being dictated to by the accountants at HMO's? Perhaps these parents feel it's okay, with no reason to worry or question authority, because it's LEGAL. But the "side-effects," adverse reactions, long term damage to the child's psyche, and even life-long addictions are dangerous, even if they are "legal." There are alternatives, but the AMA isn't telling you what they are. A healthy habit that should be cultivated is to question all authority.
How we think, what we think about, and our mental habits are an important health issue, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically. More and more we are being overwhelmed by a tidal wave of corporate values and attitudes that are far indeed from the basic innate human values and longings for love, security, interconnection, kindness, cooperation, personal effectiveness, and meaning. Our personal "mental ecologies" are being polluted as never before. It's no wonder there's a developing mental health crisis. Despair, insecurity, powerlessness, depression, sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, etc. are certainly some of the "side-affects" of the society in which we live. For correcting what's wrong inside and out, Prozac®, Valium, and the other drugs in the corporate arsenal are worse than the anger and sadness felt, or the actions that might be taken to correct what's wrong. In fact, by disabling the emotions, they stand directly in the way of correction and they contribute to the very conditions that demand correcting. This is "the blobbing of America."
Properly practiced homeopathy, as described above, cannot cure all the ills of society, but in dealing with the whole individual it can not only cure the patient of depression, it can also help them to avoid or get out of the trap of legal drugging.
You Can Have a Homeopathic Consultation: click here.
Links:
Prozac and Psy Drugs --Read this important interview with Dr. Peter Breggin
Prozac On Trial --An explosive book review exposes much on Prozac and its manufacturer
Books:
Books by Dr. Peter Breggin
You can purchase all of these books securely online by clicking their links
below. They all carry substantial discounts.
Talking
Back to Ritalin
Not Yet Available, but you may still order this book now. Amazon.com will
ship it to you when it is released by the publisher.
An another excellent book:
The
Power to Harm: Mind, Medicine, and Murder on Trial
By John Cornwell.
Cornwell is a journalist for the London Sunday Times and director of the
Science and Human Dimension Project at Cambridge University. It is about
the lawsuit that twenty-seven survivors, relatives and executors of the
estates of victims brought against Eli Lilly, and the jury trial in state
court in Louisville in the fall of 1994.
Read a revealing and explosive review of this book here.