MISSION STATEMENT

The depressiondialogues.ie site has grown in particular out of the experience of the Depression Dialogues meetings which began in June 2004. The main aim of this website is to promote the understanding that depression is an emotion, and a legitimate response to life's difficulties, rather than a disease caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and to disseminate knowledge to sufferers about alternative methods of regaining wellness, other than medication. Depression dialogues.ie will be both a publication and a resource. We intend it to be a web publication of high quality and professional standards which will bring hope and a sense of empowerment to anyone experiencing the pain of depression, whether that pain is relatively mild or deep and severe. We will make available on or through the site material of all kinds which will help illuminate the way out of that pain and to mental well-being. A core value in doing this is that we want to take the mystery and the mystification out of depression and its sources. In the first instance, that means taking depression out of the realm of illness and disease in the medical sense, and returning it to the field of ordinary human experience. You will find on the site a growing body of material which explores this theme and lays out its implications.Second, we will help.

We will develop an online 'Resources' area in which visitors will find many kinds of useful material: a bibliography of helpful and useful works; links to other helpful sites; links to articles.

Approaching various problees in online journals; the text of articles and other materials reproduced from other sources; and much more, including advice on exercise courses and other lifestyle changes, on how complementary therapies or vitamin and mineral supplements might help, and where to go for help other than the chemical kind.We will develop a 'First Aid' section to deal with those strange, inexplicable feelings or events. Are you feeling fearful? Wonder if you're having a panic attack? Just can't find the energy to do anything much? Worried that you are withdrawing too much from daily life? Sets of symptoms, guidance and advice - first aid level only - and tips on where to go next will be just a click away.The 'Vantage Point' section will bring in comment, analysis and articles from a wide range of professionals and prominent thinkersms and causes implicated in depression, and solutions, one of the website's navigation bars will take visitors direct to sections dealing with depression, elation, panic and anxiety, bullying, sexual abuse, using psychoactive drugs, drug side effects, and an outline of psychotherapy as an alternative to drug treatment.

We want to hear from those who have experienced depression or are doing so, and who would like to share what they have learned. That applies whether it is about the meaning of their experience, how they coped, whether the treatment they received was useful or counter-productive, and especially about any methods or techniques they found or evolved which helped them cope or return to a happier, well state of mind. Their stories and accounts will appear in the 'Voices' area. We hope and believe that this area will become one of the most helpful and empowering elements of the site and an immediate source of encouragement to anyone who finds themselves in the clutches of depression and consults these pages.

Not least, we want to stimulate debate and to bring about change. We will investigate, comment and criticise. We will commission contributions from thinkers and practitioners in many fields, but we will also welcome contributions from anyone who feels they have an insight to make available, a point to develop - or critical comment on anything we publish. We want the ‘dialogues' of the title to have a real meaning. Please do contact us.

Feelings of isolation and helplessness can be among the most debilitating and discouraging aspects of depression (and other conditions). Above all, we intend this site to show you, the sufferer, that you are not helpless and that you are not, in any sense, alone.

The History of Depression Dialogues

Dr Michael Corry

'Strictly speaking, the question is not how to get cured, but how to live'

(Joseph Conrad)

The motivation to create Depression Dialogues has come from over 30 years of practice, and a clear understanding of the interconnectedness between illness, our individual nature, relationships, environments, and our ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. Of the different branches of medicine I worked in, which included obstetrics, paediatrics and general practice, this view was consolidated in psychiatry, which I commenced in 1978. Sadly, I found that, with the exception of my professor, Dr Ivor Browne in University College Dublin, and his senior psychologist Vincent Kenny, the notion of interconnectedness was a rare concept among Irish psychiatrists. Custodial care flourished in Dickensian work-house conditions, electric shock treatment was widely practised, and medication held the monopoly.

Many victims of this regime were spending their lives warehoused in institutions, suffering irreversible brain damage from the side effects of years of medication, and lacking social and living skills, all of which rendered them ultimately incapable of integrating back into the community. They had lost their social identity through the slow institutional process of civil death. Some had passed the point of no return, and were lost forever in the labyrinths of their minds. They seemed to move like ghosts, disconnected from their own bodies, flitting from one hiding place to another. Others, yet again, moved like mechanised scarecrows, their bodies held entrapped by medication. Many spend their days like obedient stones on sunlit patches of grass, waiting to be called for mealtimes.

Unlike when I witnessed the inadequate conditions of care in the third world in Africa in the mid-1970s, where I worked as a missionary doctor, I could find no reasonable excuse for the ones I faced at home. The following quote from my journal of 1981-82 gives a sense of how the horrors of long-stay institutional care appalled and challenged me:

'I was stunned and changed by what I witnessed in the back wards of St Brendan's Hospital (Dublin). The conditions were repulsive. The impact of seeing hundreds of unkempt human beings of all ages lying, sitting and walking in smelly, shabby hallways and corridors, looking like inmates of a concentration camp, was staggering. This human zoo was caused by a diffusion of authority, lack of accountability, lack of interest, conceptual gaps, the culture of silence, the inappropriateness of the medical model, involuntary detention, and pure staff laziness. This was the undeniable barometer, the true measurement of care, love, respect, and civil
liberties.'

I was equally stunned by the lack of concern shown by my colleagues as a whole. I felt they had sold out: I felt they had taken the thirty pieces of silver. If this was happening in any other branch of medicine, and an audit was carried out, serious basic questions would be asked, such as: Why are patients spending so many years in hospital? Has the right diagnosis been made? Are these patients, who are evidently not recovering, on the right treatment regime?

It was clear to me that psychiatric patients were in a different category than say, those suffering from cardiac conditions, about whom, if any of the above questions needed to be asked and answered, there would be a public outcry. It seemed to be acceptable to be treated for depression for years and still be depressed! To be treated for schizophrenia for an entire lifetime and still be psychotic! In addition, the side effects of medication were frequently worse than the so-called disease. It was abundantly clear that treating non-physical states with physical interventions was unscientific, dehumanising and dangerous.

The fundamental tenet enshrined in the Hippocratic oath, ‘First do no harm', did not seem to apply in the area of psychological distress, nor did the true meaning of the word psychiatry, that of ‘soul-healing', have any place (from psyche meaning ‘soul' and iatriea meaning ‘healing'). To make matters worse, few seemed to mind, and the strident inhibition on asking new questions and introducing change was shocking. This collective suppression of novelty and change, in order to preserve the familiar, was never more obvious to me than when I directed in 1983 the Demonstration Resocialisation Pilot Project of Europe, in St Brendan's Hospital. This was a holistic, therapeutic healing community focussing on social and life-skills training. Partly funded by the EU Social Fund, its aim was to resocialise long stay psychiatric patients to the point where they could take their place in the community with tenure.

After three years of dedicated work by a core team of 24 staff, which was yielding very persuasive results, it was shut down. This happened in an atmosphere of institutional resistance, passive-aggressive behaviour, betrayal of the notion of healing, and the eventual abuse of the project's monies by the mandarins in the governing Eastern Health Board, who were answerable to no one. European monies were jealously guarded by this secretive bureaucracy and cynically used to balance their own books. It was a scandal, but because it was common practice it was accepted as the norm. My contribution to the improvement of conditions for hospitalised public patients was abruptly brought to an end. It was a hideous experience, and I left feeling isolated and broken-hearted.

In 1987 I co-founded the Institute of Psychosocial Medicine, located in Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin, which today is a thriving multi-disciplinary centre offering a variety of therapeutic services. As the name suggests, it is grounded in the immutable relationship between each individual's psychological distress and the social milieu in which this arises. As a result of the centrality of a mind/body/spirit understanding to the healing process, in 2001 I co-authored with Dr Aine Tubridy the book Going MAD? This book is part of my effort to humanise and demystify mental distress, and distance it from the dominant sick-brain model in which medication is the primary intervention. The importance of psychotherapy, the practice of ‘soul-attendance' (from psyche meaning ‘soul' and therapeia meaning ‘attendance') is emphasised throughout and remains the driving force behind the Depression Dialogues meetings and this healing-focused website.

The medical community has the responsibility to embrace change and hold the flame of compassionate care higher and higher. There are few doctors who do not want to see sweeping changes in society, because, in the main, they work with its casualties. There is no group of professionals as close to the pain and suffering of humanity. The fundamental law of cause and effect is the doctor's benchmark. These are new times and we need to ask new questions. We urgently need a new language of healing: one that comprehends the evolving changes; the exquisite uniqueness of each human being and their right to express it in communion with others in a healthy environment.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, the brilliant philosopher, argued powerfully in favour of this need:

People say again and again that philosophy doesn't really progress, that we are still occupied with the same philosophical problems as were the Greeks. But the people who say that don't understand why this has to be so. It is because our language has remained the same and keeps seducing us into asking the same questions.

We have come to a fork in the road: we either rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, or we create a service from the bottom up, one based on awareness, education, personal health skills and the consciousness of interconnectedness.

Dublin, Ireland: February 2005

Editor: Basil Miller
Poetry editor: Jacinta Leonard

Contributors: Dr Terry Lynch, Kieran Crowe, Dr Aine Tubridy, Dr Michael Corry, Gillian Duffin, Declan Phelan, Jackie O'Keeffe, Declan Hammond, Ciara Cronin, Paddy Doyle, Marie Campion, Nuria O'Mahony, Dr Andrew Rynne, Dr Joseph Glenmullen, Bruce Levine, Brenda Duffin, Jim Drinkard, Barry Turner, Dr Ann Blake Tracy, Philip Barton

Depressiondialogues.ie is the website of the Wellbeing Foundation, whose main objective is to educate the general public and specific groups in the meaning of depression and related mental and emotional states. It is managed by the editor, Basil Miller, a professional journalist, and administered by an editorial board which decides overall policy and the thrust of the site.
Depressiondialogues.ie welcomes contributions and comments from all: from those who have been affected in any way by depression or its adjuncts, from GPs, psychotherapists, psychiatrists and other healthcare professionals.

If you would like to contribute to the site's content, contact editor@depressiondialogues.ie

If you would like to help with sponsorship or a donation, contact donations@depressiondialogues.ie

depressiondialogues.ie
2 Eden Park / Dun Laoghaire
Co Dublin / IRELAND

telephone
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+353 1 2877782 (editorial)