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It Is Written

John Bradshaw

Clearing the Fog: A Conversation on Depression

Coming up next, please stay tuned for It is Written, presented by Pastor John Bradshaw.

For decades and decades, depression and anxiety have presented the United States and other first world countries around the world with a major health care crisis.

Neil Nedley spoke with me about this subject about 10 years ago.

He's the president of Nedley Health, and for 25 years has been successfully treating people, battling all forms of depression and anxiety.

We're talking about depression and how to successfully treat depression through lifestyle.

Why would we talk about this when there are already myriad treatments for depression?

Why aren't you saying there's an array of drugs available on the market, grab 1 and off you go.

Well, because those drugs have been tested and tried and all sorts of studies have been done on them.

They can help certain patients, but their help is limited and they actually don't decrease suicide risk, and they don't improve functioning that much.

I mean, over placebo, 1 of the drugs improves function by about 6%, but most of them don't improve function.

And depression is a disease that disables.

It causes a lot of dysfunction, and of course it's also 1 of the leading causes of death now, with suicide rates being so high.

And so why would we recommend that they take something that isn't going to improve in those parameters?

And so it's not that we're against medicine.

We have patients come to our program with medication.

And we'll keep them on their medicine until they're better and don't need them.

But medications alone are not the answer for depression or anxiety.

Okay, it'd be really easy for somebody to say, well, Dr.

Nidalee has a vested interest or he's got an ax to grind.

And I want to ask you, how much of what you're sharing with me is opinion versus hard science?

Even the top pharmaceutical researchers in the world will tell you that drugs have their limitations and that they're not the answer.

Consensus mental health organizations tell us that drugs are not the answer to this problem.

Once again, they can help in certain situations, but they're not the answer.

We have to go beyond drugs if we're going to eradicate and produce the great results that can be obtained for depressed and anxious people.

In a moment, not right now, in a moment I'm gonna ask you what the answer is.

Here's my first question going down that road.

Is there an answer for depression and anxiety?

Our case reports are very well obtained, and the typical patient that we see with depression and anxiety, severe actually, or maybe even extreme, will leave our program in 10 days with no depression and anxiety, and their emotional intelligence will go up.

We have to do a number of different things to produce this dramatic change in their brain chemistry and their change in their thought pattern, but It's well worth the effort.

The reason I think it's important we speak about this from a faith-based point of view is that the Bible speaks again and again and again about health and mental health is supremely important.

Look, just to digress for a brief moment, I think it's important we talk about this because too few people speak about mental health.

Like it or not, there's still a stigma about mental health where someone who has an ingrown toenail is happy to tell us for NDAD surgery, but somebody with a mental health issue will keep it to himself or herself, maybe to their detriment or even their demise.

And another reason we want to talk about this is because looking at it from a biblical point of view, we see that ultimately, ultimately, this thing between good and evil is a battle for the mind.

So in 1 place the Bible says we have the mind of Christ.

I know you can talk about that ad infinitum, but briefly what's depression?

And help me understand the difference between severe and extreme and these various forms.

So, major depression is actually a constellation of symptoms.

And I use the psychiatric Bible, the Diagnostic Statistical Manual gives us 9 hallmark symptoms of depression.

You don't have to have all 9 of them, but you have to have 5 of those 9.

But 2 of the classic are deep sadness, which you may not even have and still have depression, and apathy.

This is where you wake up in the morning and you're not excited about the day.

You get up out of duty, but not because you're interested in the day.

And that will happen not just once in a while, but for a depressed person, it'll be there for at least 2 weeks.

In addition to that, there'll be energy issues.

There'll be sleep issues, either wanting to sleep all the time or not being able to sleep and waking up too early and not being able to go back to sleep.

Then there's more irritability than there used to be.

And then focus and concentration issues can also be a major problem where you're reading something that's interesting to you, you get to the bottom of the page, and you forget what was at the top of the page.

And you have to go back and read it again, and it might even happen again.

And that can be a sign of both anxiety and depression.

You're not saying 1 of those means you have depression you're saying there's the 9 points if you have 5 that qualifies you.

I don't want anyone to think because they can't focus on a page that means too much but it might.

We're gonna get to the cure if you like, the treatment for depression in a moment but I want to ask you this.

And society has known for decades we have a great problem in this area.

What's happened in the last 10 years in terms of depression and anxiety?

The rates have gone up astronomically in the last 10 years.

And you know, what has also shifted is depression used to be the older you get, the more likely you're gonna get it.

And now we're seeing this big peak among young people, adolescents, teenagers, even pre-teenagers, and particularly those in their 20s, off the charts in regards to depression and anxiety levels.

And that's changed over the last 10 years.

The reason is actually the smartphone usage.

It wasn't till about 10 or 11 years ago that about half of Americans owned a smartphone.

And now that smartphone is actually able to distract them very easily.

And when we are driven to distraction, it actually decreases an area of our frontal lobe that is precisely the area that's needed for managing distressing emotions.

And so it's not the smartphone itself, per se, but the normal use of the smartphone, where we're allowing ourself to get distracted by Snapchats, texts, push notifications, and even when we get on there to do something, we forget why we got on there to do something, and we immediately see a text or an email or things like that, and that division of attention actually causes biochemical consequences in the brain, and those biochemical consequences increase the rates of depression and anxiety.

So in recent years it has become much worse.

In recent years it's affecting far greater numbers of younger people.

Okay, we're going to talk about what a person can do about depression and anxiety.

In just a moment, we will talk about what a person can actually do.

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Clearing the Fog: A Conversation on Depression

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