While the pharmaceutical companies compete for your attention on Facebook and other social media networks, let's think of successful self help tips as the best alternative to depression treatment. Given that the roots of depression are complex and complicated, self-help is one of the best ways to face up to depression. Medication and counselling all have their place and I know that many patients have gained benefit from medication but I would also point out that there are problems of side effects such as weight gain and reduced sex drive which tend to have a boomerang effect on this type of depression treatment.

Don't ask your doctor as he may not know much about depression treating strategies. The majority of primary care providers will prescribe anti-depressant medications as the first and only option. While anti-depressant medications are a perfectly valid and sometimes helpful method of treating depression, I would not exactly call them successful as a study three years ago showed that only about 50% of patients could actually get rid of their symptoms with this type of medication. That is not a high success rate.

There are lots of options in treating depression but there is no guarantee that they will work! We now know that millions of depressed patients take medicines which relieve their symptoms and never get to the root cause of the depression. When I say works, please forgive me if I smile, as we now know that the pie is divided into three more or less equal slices.