Work assiduously on your belief system

• VITHAL C NADKARNI

IF RECENT research is to be believed most of the newer anti-depressants do very little for people. In fact, a placebo or dummy pill may work just as well for people with mild or moderate depression, British doctors who analysed a large number of published and unpublished studies said. They added that people taking the drugs say they feel better simply because they’re swallowing tablets which they think are helping them. Other treatments like exercise and talk therapy provided as much benefit as the drugs, the experts said. All this only validates the power of belief. So instead of blaming your brain for its alleged deficits and frantically popping pills to correct the chemical imbalance, you might be better off if you worked more assiduously on your belief system. But that still does not satisfactorily explain what causes depression in the first place. Once you understand that, you can correct its maladaptive cycle incredibly fast; in just 24 hours, claims British psychologist Joe Griffin who has pioneered a revolutionary theory that links REM sleep and evolution of dreams to roots of depression and other neuroses. For 40 years it’s been known that depressed people have excessive REM sleep, he writes in Dreaming Reality, co-authored with Ian Tyrrell. They dream more than healthy people. Griffin and his colleagues at The Human Givens Institute claim that the negative introspection or ruminations that depressed people engage in actually causes the excessive dreaming. When you dream you burn up much more energy, and your brain cells aren’t refreshed because you are not getting enough slowwave sleep. That’s why depressed people wake up feeling tired and drained. But once they understand the link between dreaming and depression they can begin to work on it immediately. For today’s worry is tomorrow’s depression. Nip it in the bud and it will not bloom into tomorrow’s nightmare. That’s exactly why Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra recommends thought control (chitta-vritti nirodha). “Take physical exercise,” Griffin adds (echoing Patanjali). “Keep your mind focused outwards off the negative introspection. Know the importance of bringing in a bit of pleasure and challenge back into your life.” The Gita gives exactly same advice: balance right amount of work, play, and fun with the proper amount of dream and thought (yukta swapnavbodhasya) to banish pain.