> Please do not start taking such pills. [EDIT: of course, if you're able to undertake therapy without the help of medication, you should definitely do it! I'm

> Please do not start taking such pills. [EDIT: of course, if you're able to undertake therapy without the help of medication, you should definitely do it! I'm talking about severe depression below.] I really wish I could downvote you more than once, just because of this sentence. It's downright irresponsible to say such things. While depression may be a psychological problem in most cases, it is not always so. There are genuine neurological reasons for depression, and trying to "heal" these without the help of medication won't work. Moreover, with strong depression, it's impossible to even start any kind of non-pharmaceutical treatment. Really, people who say "don't take pills, just meditate/sing psalms/exercise/or something" don't know what they're talking about. The whole point of depression is that the patient has no desire to get better, he just won't meditate, no matter what you say. Or he will try it once if you're lucky and then get back to doing whatever his depression makes him do (you're lucky if it's simply doing nothing instead of trying to commit suicide). Medication - ideally - makes a depressed person able to start recovering. It makes depression symptoms lessen to some extent, hopefully enough for a patient to be able to work with a psychologist. Depression is a very severe illness. It's not "feeling sad from time to time". It's an illness which leads to death in some cases! It's a very serious condition, and saying otherwise, saying it's easy to fight against it if you know some "techniques" or other is actively harming people with this condition. Please stop doing that.