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CARON GOLDEN
Special to The Jewish News

I is been said that we're the Prozac
generation. Feel a little blue? Pop
a pill and all of life's rough edges
will just smooth out.
Since most of us get depressed at one
time or another, it's important to distin-
guish the run-of-the-mill, life-stinks
blues from serious chronic depression.
Sadness, frustration or fatigue — that's
one thing; continued feelings of hope-
lessness and helplessness are something
else entirely.
In their book Overcoming Depression
(HarperPerennial), writer Janice Papolos
and Demitri Papolos — who is associate
professor of psychiatry and co-director
of the Program in Behavioral Genetics at
the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/
Montefiore Medical Center in New
York — note that there are certain char-
acteristics that mark periods of depres-
sion: Depressed or irritable or anxious
mood. Poor appetite and weight loss or
the opposite — increased appetite and
weight gain. Sleep disturbance: sleeping
too little or too much in an irregular
pattern. Loss of energy. Change in activ-
ity level. Decreased sexual drive.
Physical aches and pains (including
headaches, stomachaches and lower back
pain). Diminished ability to think or
concentrate. Feelings of worthlessness or
excessive guilt that may reach unreason-
able or delusional proportions. Other
psychotic and delusional thinking.
Recurrent thoughts of death or self-
harm, wishing to be dead or contem-
plating suicide.
It's an unhappy menu of symptoms,
they write, compounded by a lack of
understanding about what is actually
going on inside. Although mental
health professions have been studying
depression for generations, there is still
wide disagreement as to what causes
depression and how to treat it.
Michael D. Yapko, writing for
Psychology Today, believes that therapists
looking for the cause of depression are
just wasting valuable time. "Depression,
scientists have learned, is an organized,
patterned way of responding to events
and experiences," he writes. "For exam-
ple, some people develop the tendency
to take things personally, even when
things are not personal. The result is
that they draw wrong conclusions." Cil

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OLD /SENT

Caron Golden writes for Copley News

Service.

MEMBER FDIC

COLD KENT BANK 1998

3/27
1998

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