Bringing in the Spring at

The

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The aetirement Community

That g - fas If Alt!

Acute Depression:
Hope For Sufferers

VERNE PALMER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

T

For more information about
The Trowbridge
and our Community Involvement

Call Meg or Maria at
(810) 352-0208

24111 Civic Center Drive
Southfield, Michigan 48034

CA

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• Clinical Teaching
• Testing/Evaluation
• Therapeutic Tutoring

545-6677 • 433-3323

Oak Park

LYNNE MASTER, M.Ed

Owner, Director

Bloomfield Hills

http://www.metroguide.com/lynne

o Dacia Adams, depression
is like a wild animal lying
in wait for her.
It has stalked her for as
long as she can remember, dri-
ving her to episodes of uncon-
trolled bingeing and purging as
a teen-ager and to drug and al-
cohol dependency in her 20s and
30s. It has cost her jobs, rela-
tionships and threatened her life.
Still, the 53-year-old Santa
Monica, Calif., writer is one of
the lucky ones. She found a doc-
tor who recognized the underly-
ing cause of her angst and made
sure she got help.
Millions of others aren't so
lucky.
Depression — dubbed "the
common cold of mental illness"
— afflicts 17.6 million Ameri-
can adults. Eighty percent of
them could be helped, yet less
than one-third seek treatment,
according to the Southern Cal-
ifornia. Psychiatric Society.
For the majority, the obsta-
cles — shame, fear, ignorance
of possible treatments and bias
in health care coverage —
prove overwhelming.
"There's a real stigma to
mental illness — people are
frightened by what they don't
understand," says Dr. Beverly
Feinstein, president of the
Southern California Psychi-
atric Society.
"We're taught that mental
illness is something shameful,
and, because most of us want
to deny we have similar
thoughts and feelings as those
who are ill, we deny the illness
exists."
Others are hindered by lack
of health-care coverage — 95 per-
cent of insurance plans don't cov-
er mental and medical illnesses
eqi i al ly — and the fear of losing
what coverage they do have.
"In the past people had to de-
cide whether to report psychi-
atric treatment and risk not
having their coverage renewed
or pay for it themselves," Dr. Fe-
instein says. "That's not as true
today, but people have been
dropped for something as minor
as going in for marriage coun-
seling."
Equally daunting for many
Americans is the deeply rooted
conviction that they ought to be
able to handle their problems
themselves, to "tough it out" if
need be.
"I hear that over and over, 'I
should be able to work this out

Verne Palmer writes for Copley
News Service.

on my own, I'll be less of a per-
son, less strong, if I don't,' " says
Dr. Richard Merel, chairman of
the department of psychiatry at
Torrance, Calif. Memorial Med-
ical Center.
"These are people who
wouldn't hesitate to go to a doc-
tor for diabetes, a broken leg or
high blood pressure," he says,
"but there's something about a
problem of the mind or the spir-
it that people think they ought
to be able to fix all on their own."
The irony is that recent med-
ical research has shown that se-
vere depression is a biologically
based disorder, caused by an im-
balance of chemicals in the brain.

"This is as much an illness of
the brain as diabetes is an illness
of the pancreas, and there are
specific treatments for it," Dr.
Merel says.
But because depression often
is triggered by an emotional
trauma and often is complicated
by unresolved childhood issues,
treatment frequently includes
psychotherapy as well as the use
of anti-depressant medication.
Among the best-known of the
those drugs is Prozac, the first of
a new class of safer, less side-ef-
fect-prone anti-depressants that
made nationwide headlines and
the cover of Newsweek magazine
when it hit the market in 1990.
Eventually, Dr. Feinstein be-
lieves, the disorder's neurobio-
logical roots will make seeking
treatment for depression more
acceptable, but she sees no sign
of that happening anytime soon.
`There is no public support for
mental-health care of any kind,"
she says. "Just look at the cri-

sis we're in in Los Angeles Coun-
ty. In the 1960s people were
treated in state hospitals and
there were many, many public
mental health clinics. In the '70s
the state hospitals were closed,
and now we're threatened with
closure of the clinics and the few
remaining inpatient facilities.
That doesn't seem like progress
to me."
To Melissa Brown (not her
real name), society's problem
with mental illness all boils down
to an inability to deal with pain.
The 31-year-old former NASA
aerospace engineer says people
— especially children — aren't
taught that pain and struggle
are a part of life and how to
cope with them in a healthy
way.
Being afraid, they avoid
them, she says. And that un-
resolved pain provides a breed-
ing ground for ills both
emotional and physical.
"I don't see that depression
is any different from cancer,"
she says. "It's just your body
processing your inability to deal
with life's difficulties."
Dr. Brown has spent the last
eight years learning to deal
with her pain, fighting her way
through episodes of bingeing
and starving, compulsive exer-
cise and periods when she
couldn't force herself out of bed
for days on end, almost caus-
ing her to flunk out of school.
"When you're depressed, you
feel hopeless, powerless and
joyless, like nothing you can do
will make any difference," she
says.
More than once she has flirt-
ed with the thought of death.
"A lot of people end up taking
their lives, and I respect that
choice," she says. "People think
people who take their lives are
spineless or weak or selfish, but
that's not it at all. They just don't
know what to do about the pain."
The hardest part of dealing
with depression for her, she says,
is having to reach inside herself
every day for a reason to keep go-
ing.
"When you're depressed you
don't want to fight for yourself,
because you just don't care."
Her three cats have helped
keep her alive.
"That may seem like a small
thing," she says, "but who would
take care of them? They need
me."
For Dacia Adams, devastated
by the breakup of a long-term re-
lationship that involved a shared
DEPRESSION page 66

