How to overcome depression

You may want to read this book because one of your family members has entered a crisis. It could be your mother, your sister, an uncle, or any of the family members, and perhaps for weeks or months you have wondered what was wrong. Your family member is always far away from everything and everyone, and as you watch him or her, immersed in their deep melancholy, you get the feeling that life has come to a dead end for them. Perhaps you are beginning to think that you are the cause of this particular state of mind, that somehow you are to blame. What's going on? Your family member is sick with depression. Yes, sick. Depression in fact is not a mysterious meddling of gods or demons, it is a disease, just like a heart or lung disorder, or any of the diseases you can think of. Paradoxically, however, this can be cause for optimism. As long as it is an insoluble conundrum, you can only derive frustration from it. Once it becomes a precisely definable illness, it can be addressed as such. Most depressed people recover, because it is a disorder that can be treated with a very good chance of success. However, this is on one condition: that family support is an integral part of the healing process. Much of the credit for the recovery can be attributed to the participation of family members in the healing process. And it was precisely the many meetings with many families, the questions asked and the answers given, that provided the materials for this book. In the course of this writing, the author has aimed at a fundamental purpose: to set forth facts such that you will be able to cope with and understand your family member's condition, wherever he or she is being treated, during and after treatment, and even before seeking medical advice. Therapeutic treatment can do a great deal for the depressed person, but you yourself must play a role that often proves decisive. If this book succeeds in breaking down the wall of "hearsay" that surrounds depression, and in relieving the family of the anguish in which it is thrown when one of its members suffers from this illness, if it can help to bring the depressed person back to a normal life, it will have achieved its purpose.