“…The challenge is to determine how to best use the psychotherapies that appear to reduce depressive symptoms, when to use pharmacotherapy alone or in combination with psychotherapy, and how to innovate or adapt psychosocial intervention to reduce human suffering, as well as the economic cost of depressive disorders.”

——-Psychiatry, Vol. 57, May 1994, p.128.

Let me say that our Depressed Anonymous groups, now located in many different cultures around the word, have a proven track record as an innovative and successful psychosocial approach in alleviating the misery of human depression. Because we are utilizing the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and its spiritual principles as the essential core of recovery, we are finding   that our psychosocial intervention, Depressed Anonymous, does reduce human suffering.

It is a maxim that  “it takes one to know one.”  This works well for most if not all addictive behaviors and thinking. My depression symptoms are very like others who are experiencing depression.  In discussing our symptoms and how they  have isolated us, we now in our own way, are using solution focused tools that  can release us  from the prison of our depression.

So my point is this: if the clinician wants to start you on medication  to alleviate the symptoms of your depression, ask him/her if they might refer you as well to a depression support group, based on the principles of Depressed Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. It is in this group fellowship where the person depressed  can find those persons who will walk with you through the valley of darkness into the light. I know–been there– done that!

For more information please look at the literature at our Bookstore and find the books which were written by persons depressed (they have been where you are) and can help free you.  You can also find a step by step process of getting your own group up and running.

Source: Depressed Anonymous, 3rd edition. Depressed Anonymous Publications. Louisville.