Robert J. Wicks, psychologist and bestselling author of Riding the Dragon, recently told me a story about impermanence: A psychiatrist (Epstein) went to Thailand with some colleagues to meet a well-known Buddhist sage.  As they were about to leave they asked if he had a final message for them. He was drinking a glass of...

This blog post is painful for me to write because I have been an avid swimmer since the age of 5, when I took the water wings off and made it to the other side of the pool on my own. As I wrote in my post 10 Things I Do to Beat Depression Every...

“Were you frightened to have children with your history of suicidal depression?” a young woman asked me the other day. “Did you have to stop medication while you were pregnant?” In the last ten years writing about mental health issues, these two questions keep surfacing, especially among young women who dream of pushing a baby...

Most people are still locked into the theory that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain – a shortage of feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin that deliver messages from one neuron to another. That explanation works well for public consumption because it’s simple and it makes for great pharmaceutical commercials. But depression is...

“My favorite escapes from depression are meds and writing,” says Diana Spechler in a New York Times opinion piece. “But I can’t do both at once.” Friends have been forwarding to me her columns in the “Going Off” series, which chronicles her attempt to wean off the medications she takes for depression, anxiety, and insomnia....