Ultrafeedback Survey

Ranking, By People Suffering Depression,
of
Effective Therapies and Lifestyle Factors
Between August 2006 and January 2007, a link at the depressioNet website invited visitors to participate in an
online survey. The URL for the survey was publicized in media articles throughout November.  271 people
completed the survey.

Prepared and managed by Ultrafeedback, the survey sought to find out what people living with depression would, if
they had the opportunity, ask people that had recovered.  It also asked participants to rate how effective different
therapies were in helping with their depression, and also to rate how effective different lifestyle factors were.  The
results are charted below:
What do these data tell us?  They tell us how people able to access a website known as depressioNet believe
various therapies are helping them to live through a life passage that surveys tell us afflicts approximately 25% of
North Americans: depression.  This is authentic data, as distinct from the clinical "facts" supplied by drug
companies.  In my analysis of it, I noticed that:

  • 16 categories of anti-depression strategy are rated by more than 50% of their "triers" to be of some value
  • The top 6 of these 16 are natural solutions
  • The 7th, which is prescription medicine, is a significantly non-natural strategy
  • 6 more effective strategies than the high-tech prescription medicine solution exist for most of us -- although
    by no means all.

That's just what I noticed.  But what's much more important is what you noticed -- because what I perceive is not
absolute truth.  Nor is what you perceive absolute truth.  But perhaps if you combine what you noticed with
something from what I have noticed, you will discover something truly healing for you.

Prescription medicine is promoted by billions of dollars of advertising, and always has side-effects even if
physicians prescribing them do not tell recipients about them.  They do not do so for any of a number of reasons,
including not wanting to burden further a patient/client already in a not very resourceful state of being, impossibility
of proper oversight due to shortage of time or interest/priority of the patient, and, let us be frank, some degree
occasionally of habitual ignorance of self-or-other.  Given this, one is always wise, I think, to employ as many of the
more effective natural solutions as often as possible.

These data also lead me to ask some questions, for example:

  • Is exercise at the top because thinking and action are fundamentally different ways of expressing the energy
    of metabolism and because thinking/mentation in the depressed person is occurring “too much”?  If so, how
    can a person determine if s/he has been thinking two much?

  • Are the next three depression-banishing strategies – support of family and friends, counseling therapies, and
    fulfilling work – indicative of the crucial necessity for social interaction, and perhaps also for careful
    consideration of what skills in relationship might be most worth developing, for example, skills to help one
    select, and engage "healthily", company that fully reciprocates in authenticity and empathy?

  • Is nutrition’s place in the list a factor of the abominable effects on metabolism of our often careless and
    happy-go-lucky or anxious consumption of foods that have been subjected to devitalizing "manufacturing" or
    transportation processes?

  • Is relaxation/meditation’s place on the list a factor of workaholic anxieties having become so common in so-
    called advanced economies?  If so, the classic book by a clinician on this category of anxieties is "Chained to
    the Desk: A Guidebook for Workaholics, Their Partners and Children, and the Clinicians Who Treat Them"
    by Bryan Robinson (and you can find a review of this book by the author at my Amazon Books profile -- you'll
    have to scroll down past a few more recent reviews).

  • Does the data that abstinence from alcohol and drugs features so high on the list above argue for
    abstinence, at some moment after stabilization, from all strongly psycho-active substances when one
    wants/needs to heal from the emotional turmoil that usually precedes an onset of depression?

  • Is prescription medicine’s relatively poor performance but very high trial rate a function of (a)
    ignorance/incompetence of the profession of psychiatry, or (b) the susceptibility of depressed people to the
    suggestions of the only socially mandated “friend” an impoverished, depressed person can often find to
    discuss his/her life difficulties without either feeling ashamed or risking her/his social reputation, or (c) the
    temptations to believe in a simple, quick-fix cure that pharmaceutical companies advertise, or (d) some
    combination of two or more of these factors?

What other questions occur to you?  How can you get sincere answers to them?  How can you test them for YOU?

These are not questions that one can answer by oneself in an afternoon, or a week, or a month, or in any particular
amount of time.  But with the help of people whom one finds trustworthy and empathic, and the presence of mind to
ask such questions of people who clearly have learned to be engaged fully in their lives, each of us can find
sufficiently authentic and satisfying answers to them simply by not giving up searching!  Some people have indeed
found permanently reliable answers to such questions as these.  But, if one hasn't asked the question that will
particularly address the issues of one's own particular life concerning how to regain or extend the thriving vitality
one previously enjoyed, hopefully, in one's life, one is unlikely to get an accurate or practical answer.

Lastly, since we all will die one day, many of us wonder: Why are we alive NOW?  Such a vast mystery as this
universe is cannot be merely a purposeless chaos.  It manifestly has order to it or there would be no laws for
scientists and great religious and philosophical thinkers to discover and others to use.  Moreover, all its creatures
manifestly have strong wills to live.  Why would that be?  There must be a purpose for each of us living.  What then
do you want your life to accomplish or contribute?  If you seek, find, and live out your most vitalizing answer to this
question, being patient with the perplexities you may suffer pending your search becoming successful, is it not likely
that you will feel you want to live fully for the rest of your life!  You, in conversation with the people you feel able to
trust and in prayer and meditation, can learn to see the value of your life's potential that in depression, is often, but
temporarily, "hidden" from your perception.  When you know and embrace that potential, depression will not be
burdening you again!  At least only momentarily ...


Angus Cunningham, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 080717-110114
Chart prepared by Angus Cunningham from data in “Back from the Brink” by Graeme Cowan