DEPRESSION is different from sadness. Sadness is usually a temporary feeling based on an unhappy event or thought. Depression, on the other hand, is a feeling of sadness or melancholy that seemingly has no good reason, becoming an unshakeable, burdened and all consuming negative feeling. It may come from deep seated anxiety, based on fear or uncertainty about the future. When sadness is not, or cannot, be overcome in the normal run of emotions, it might degenerate to depression.

Depression affects adults and, more and more recently, adolescents. It was misunderstood and misdiagnosed for many years. Nowadays however, there is more empathy, especially within the medical profession, and gradually, society. In the past, patients were stigmatised if they were diagnosed as being manic depressive, for example, as the term immediately conjured up negative images of instability, irresponsible and dangerous tendencies, and a belief that the individual would pose a lifelong burden on their families, the tax payer and society. Presently however, with a better understanding of depression, Hollywood celebrities for instance, are removing, to a large degree, the stigma and shame heretofore attached to mental health problems. Catherine Zeta-Jones, the well respected Welsh actress, revealed publicly in 2011 that she suffers from bipolar disorder — the modern, more clinical and less emotional sounding name for manic depression.

It is interesting that those who treat depression with medication — be it medical or herbal —, as well as employ various types of therapy, also advocate strongly that a change in the patient’s way of thinking is an effective tool in combating mental disorders. To this end, psychiatrists, psychologists and other medical personnel lay great store on counseling sessions. Often, doctors recommend that depressed thoughts be challenged with clear logic and cold analysis. Even more interesting is that the medical faculty now agrees that spirituality, or the faith of a patient, is proving to be much more than a tool in treatment. They find that in many documented cases, it heals depression permanently. Dr. Lisa Miller, a clinical psychologist discovered, from over 10 years research, that patients who experience what she calls, ‘spiritual awakenings’ during treatment for depression are ninety per cent less likely to suffer depression again.

This is not really news to a spiritual healer. Mary Baker Eddy, a prolific spiritual healer named into the US National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1995, wrote in her seminal book Science and Health with key to the Scriptures that the treatment of mental disorders yield more readily than do most diseases to the salutary action of spirituality. She proved in her healing practice, spanning about 45 years, that, regardless of the term in which a mental disorder is couched, be it, manic depressive, bipolar or any other name, spirituality based on faith in Deity, has the power to establish and maintain a healthy state in the patient. Eddy discovered that brain, as matter, cannot adversely control, derange or cause God’s likeness to suffer. It is this fundamental, diametrical difference between other courses of treatment, which ensures that the spiritual method of treating depression actually results in healing.