[nugga]

I don't want to preach and I don't know your situation but I offer my perspective regardless. I may be talking completely past you because I'm not familiar with the term organic depression, and that's ok, maybe someone else will find this helpful.

I grant there may be some mechanism that can be fixed alleviated by chemicals acting on the body but everything is connected, body-mind-soul. As far as I can tell, depression is in essence a negative feedback loop of bad thoughts that flood your brain and body incessantly creating negativity and sluggishness that further shape your thoughts and behaviour.

A depressed person may not even realize their mind may be constantly telling them they suck or they're not worthy or whatever, but that is, as all thoughts and emotions are, illusionary in the sense that you don't have to take that as your own. You don't have to associate your being or identify as that chatter or the phenomenon passing through that body. You're purer and more beautiful and more deserving of love than that.

Thoughts can have tremendous energy especially if you get provoked by or stuck to them. What prolonged persistent meditation practice (say at least 2x30 min per day) may help one achieve is a sort of mental clarity or non separateness from/non attachment to thoughts, seeing how the mind really works.

[WalterSear]

> As far as I can tell, depression is in essence a negative feedback loop of bad thoughts that flood your brain and body incessantly creating negativity and sluggishness that further shape your thoughts and behaviour.

Science have a thoroughly incomplete and yet much more detailed and nuanced understanding of depression. I suggest you look into it, if you are interested enough to have an opinion on the matter.

I meditated for over an hour a day for several years - I had long term injuries that needed me to sit motionless several times a day while I treated them, so I would get myself set up, and the meditate through the session. (It wasn't a painful or otherwise sensate process.) I'd had started meditation earlier than that, with some classes and literature in college.

I'm actually up in arms now against people who insist that mediation/yoga/SSRIs/most therapists can make a damn bit of difference in the case of actual depression. I wasted 20 years of my life listening to them, when the people those things are going to help aren't actually depressed to begin with.

[nvarsj]

Talk of depression and other mental health issues always seem to bring out the crackpots on HN - "meditation and lifting weights will cure <disease>".

I'm glad you found a medication which works for you. And I hope people who are suffering ignore the crackpots and go see their doctor.

[montyf]

> I'm actually up in arms now against people who insist that mediation/yoga/SSRIs/most therapists can make a damn bit of difference in the case of actual depression. I wasted 20 years of my life listening to them, when the people those things are going to help aren't actually depressed to begin with.

Woah, "actual depression"... hardcore!

The problem isn't other people. You are the problem. Your ego is so big that it bleeds through your posts, as if it's crying out for someone to stop it.