Depression: Causes and Cures

Warning: I don't have any kind of medical degree.  I was raised in a family of dentists, most of my family's friends were doctors of some sort, I took a couple basic courses on Psychology in college, and I got a quick course on general First Aid for civilians;  everything else I picked up at random -- sometimes by odd pathways, such as studying Witchcraft, if you please.  Still, I have a knack for seeing patterns, and I've seen this one repeat enough times to have something of an informed opinion..
"Depression" is a doctor's -- and pharmacist's -- dream disease, because the patients don't die and rarely get better;  they just keep coming back for more appointments and more pills.  I haven't looked at the figures lately, but it's safe to say that there are millions of people diagnosed with Depression, and they spend billions of dollars on treatments every year, with no end in sight.  I find this annoying, to say the least, especially when I've seen that there really are cures for it -- and quite often they're cheap.
Now obviously to cure an ailment you must know what causes it, and from what I've seen there are six common causes for what's generally called Depression, each with its own cure.
The first, and all too often overlooked, is just plain self-indulgence.  There is a class of people wealthy enough to feel entitled, and they raise their children to feel the same.  We used to call such kids spoiled brats, but it's Politically Incorrect to use that term these days.  It's currently fashionable to coddle their own and their kids' every emotion, no matter how childish, and to value feelings as much as physical facts.  This is where we get cases of "emotional distress" used to demand ridiculous repayments, or really stupid laws passed, or downright dangerous political actions.  When you hear people claim that having to argue a point with someone causes them "Depression", this is what you're dealing with.  
When you have a gang of such "victims" acting together, the immediate solution is to arrest them -- preferably on a late Friday night, so they can't reach their lawyers until Monday morning and have to spend the weekend in crowded holding cells.  Forty-eight hours or more of real misery should give them the beginnings of a sense of perspective.  The long-term cure is to take each coddled individual and sentence him/her to a long stint at a hard, simple, physical and preferably "dirty" job.  I'd recommend Farm Hand;  it's clearly necessary work, will get your terribly-sensitive "victim" out of convenience-filled cities and away from supportive crowds, will give them healthy exercise and even teach them a useful trade.  It's hard to be self-indulgent when there's no indulgence to be had, and with competence comes confidence -- and maybe even maturity, as viz. Kipling's poem, "The Prodigal Son."
The second common cause is simple real-world sorrow: loss of a loved one, a home, a career, and so on.  Everyone meets trouble and sorrow in life, and the solution is well known: slog on.  Don't be ashamed to ask reliable friends for help, comfort and advice, and don't be too proud to accept their help.  Cherish what you still have, and make a realistic plan to regain something of what you've lost.  There's always something valuable to be done, and something to be gained, even at death's doorway.  Consider the man who was dying of colon cancer and had a last-minute inspiration to donate his body "to science";  he then learned that his still-healthy heart, liver, and kidneys would save the lives of three children, and he died happy.
Third, there's serious -- such as third-stage diabetes, or Addison's Disease -- glandular problems.  A complete endocrinological work-up will reveal this, and there are real, physical solutions.  This is where pills and more pills will actually make a difference.  Cure the glandular ailment and you'll definitely feel better.
Fourth is flat-out neurosis, such as Body Dysphoria.  Nowadays it's fashionable to treat this with offers of hormone and surgery -- even for children as young as four!  A  far more sensible treatment is serious psychoanalysis.  Find out just why the patient hates his/her own body before doing anything drastic to change it.  A complete physical is in order here, including a thorough gene-test.  If little Johnny thinks he's really Jennie, it could be that he has a real genetic anomaly, which must be dealt with.  If there's no genetic or physical problem, it might be that he just envies his sister's doll collection, or really doesn't want to grow up to be a Marine drill-sergeant like his daddy.  In any case, a psychological problem needs a psychological solution, not just a prescription for cheer-up pills.
The fifth common cause is simply pain: nagging, constant, inescapable pain.  It need not be severe, -- just inescapable -- to ruin your day, and your night's sleep, which is guaranteed to make you Depressed.  The obvious cure is to first find out what's causing the pain and repair it -- but if the repair doesn't stop the pain immediately, the victim will definitely need pain-killers and possibly for a long time. 
The problem with applying this cure is the current medical/political fashion for withholding effective pain medication because of The Opioid Crisis.  This "crisis" simply means that politicians looking for useful Causes have discovered that there are a lot of junkies in the world.  In fact, there have been junkies for a very long time, and when you factor out the stresses of the Covid mess, there is no reason to assume that there's a greater percentage of them in the population than there ever was.  Why people become junkies is a whole other question in itself -- one which, curiously, few people are willing to tackle in public -- but the Opioid Crisis is primarily the result of a change in markets.  
It used to be that junkies would contrive to get morphine from amenable doctors or else visit the pusher in the alley to get dirty and overpriced heroin, whose ultimate source was the poppy-fields of southern Asia.  Shifting wars and politics in Asia reduced the supply, at about the same time that the pharmaceutical companies developed new-and-improved painkillers such as oxycontin and hydrocodone, and people inclined to be junkies decided that the official product was cleaner, stronger, and cheaper than street heroin, so they went searching for amenable doctors.  Eventually the police noticed the shift in product and duly reported it to the politicians, who realized that there was gold in them thar ills: a whole new Cause to campaign on.  The political solution was to lean on any amenable doctors, thereby making it difficult for them to prescribe the synthetic opioids to patients who actually needed them.  
This leaves a lot of people stuck with their pain and the resulting depression thereof.  Fortunately, at the same time, the decades-long grassroots campaign to re-legalize marijuana began making serious progress, so that now most states legally allow marijuana for medical and even recreational use.  Marijuana isn't much as a painkiller, but it is a euphoric and tends to put the pain "at a distance", so that the sufferers can at least get decent sleep.
But the sixth cause of Depression, and legally/medically the hardest to deal with, is rage -- hopeless rage, which cannot strike its target so it turns back on its source, which is the victim him/herself.  The way out of this trap is the way you came in;  acknowledge and admit your rage, determine what causes it, and find a way to satisfy it.  The problem with satisfying rage is that strong emotions require physical involvement;  when we're sad we cry, when we're happy we laugh, and when we're angry we want to hit something.  This can cause legal problems, which is why most doctors shy away from this cure.
Here's where a knowledgeable witch can be more helpful than an official doctor.  No law forbids anyone from dancing around a campfire chanting curses while stabbing a voodoo doll, but such can be emotionally very effective.  I've prescribed that technique myself a few times, and it does indeed provide relief.  Besides, if the sufferer has any psychic talent, the ritual may actually strike at the target of his/her rage and exact some satisfyingly real vengeance.
I recall a case of a friend (no names) who was depressed because her daughter was being miserably oppressed by her ex-husband, who was trying to keep all the money, all the property, and all the children.  Since they lived in a different state, making it impossible to get hair or clothes or fingernail-parings from the ex-husband, I got my friend a man-shaped black candle (available at occult shops or online), and had her rub strong-scented oil into the candle for three nights while thinking hard about the nasty ex so as to "identify" him with the candle.  Then I set a fire in a small barbecue-grill in the back yard on the night of the night of the full moon (dark of the moon would have worked as well), and had her dance around the fire, holding the candle and thinking really hard about the Nasty Ex and how much she hated him and stabbing the candle, while my CD player played "March of Cambreadth" (check that one out on YouTube).  When her fury reached a fever pitch, she threw the candle into the fire and watched it burn while the smoke rose -- and, curiously, drifted away in the direction of the state the Nasty Ex lived in.  When the candle burned away and I turned off the CD player, she sat down feeling much better.  
Interestingly enough, she soon learned that the Nasty Ex had gotten good and drunk and drove his car into a ditch, totally wrecking it, and getting himself locked up for drunk driving.  Thus he was in jail during the next court hearing, and the judge -- not being impressed on learning where the absent Nasty Ex was, and why -- awarded custody of the children to their mother.  When my friend heard about this, her depression vanished completely.
It was a lot safer, cheaper, and more effective than Zoloft.
--Leslie <;)))><  )O(