My Sister Believes She Can't Get Out of Depression Without Drugs

Dear Ms.Curtiss

My name is T_________ and I have a younger sister who is feeling depressed. She is all about the medication and therapists making her feel better. She also believes that she will be on those pills for the rest of her life. I brought up the point that depression is a choice and it is up to her if she wants to feel better. She argued with me by saying all the doctors and therapists claim that there is a chemical imbalance in the brain and that we are born with it.

But I stood by what I believed and she did not take it too well. She claimed I was not her brother and that she wished me out of the family.

I am asking if there is any way I can present this information to her without her blowing up at me and refusing the fact that it is up to her to be happy.

Any help at all would be great. It hurts to see her the way she is.

Dear T______

If someone believes they are sick, they will be sick. People have been hospitalized with illnesses that were later discovered to be simply mass hysteria. You sister's doctor can offer no medical proof that she has a chemical imbalance in her brain that is genetic. There is a chemical consequence in your brain foer every thought you think and the balance changes constantly. That's why all depression is chronic instead of some kind of a permanent condition; it comes and goes.

What tests have been done on her brain or anybody else's brain that proves she has an inherited chemical imbalance? And as for medication. This year Newsweek's cover story was that anti-depressants were no better than placebos in relieving depression. Again, if you believe anti-depressants will make you feel better, you will feel better.

You sister's doctor probably doesn't know that the pain of depression is only produced in the subcortex, and that there is never any physical or emotional pain in the neocortex. Furthermore, due to the process of pain perception, which her doctor probably doesn't know about either, before a human being can feel any emotion or physical pain, the signals that such emotion or pain is being produced in the subcortex must go up the brain and not only be received but acknowledged in the neocortex. This is the reason hypnosis can be substituted for anesthesia in open heart surgery.

You can't be depressed for more than a few minutes if you refuse to think depression when it pops up and use mind exercises to block the acknowledgment in the neocortex that depression is being produced in the subcortex. Unfortunately the medical and psychological professions are not interested in this because you don't need drugs, or doctor's visits once you learn how your brain works and get some practice controlling it instead of letting it control you.

Lots of money being made on people's pain. When I gave a two day seminar of my work to the National Board of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists several years ago, the psychologists and psychiatrists were not interested. The only people who were interested were the psychiatric nurses who are the ones that have to mop up the problems that drug taking causes. A. B.Curtiss