Can our mind heal itself? Can we prevent and protect ourselves from depression?

What is depression? Is it just a biochemical process which can even cripple some individuals? Is it related to the individual’s state of mind and the environment? Can negative environment induce depression in otherwise happy individual? Can it be overcome? Can medicines cure it completely? I don’t know…

I strongly feel our mind can heal itself with some help. The movie “The Beautiful Mind” is a real life story of renowned mathematician Professor John Nash who overcame hallucinations and schizophrenia by immense mental strength. It is important for the suffering individual to be aware of actual nature of illness. This is where our doctors and society fails us. Psychiatrists tend to prescribe drugs to take care of biochemical process and the psychologists go for counseling but we need to combine the two. Also we need to understand that ‘depression’ is not a disease and patients need not be branded mentally ill, neither over sympathized nor shunned.

We all are obsessed with outer world but we ignore our inner selves. We bother about failure and how world rates us and our children. But we fail to realize we and our children possess beautiful minds which if nurtured can make us healthy and good human beings. We have to engage ourselves creatively. We need to do something which doesn’t promise rewards but only pure mental joy. Be it penning a poem or maintaining a garden or taking care of a pet or listening to music or playing a sport or meditating. It can be anything. But it is important to be stress-free without huge burden of expectations for little time in the whole day. Give mind some time and chance to repair itself. Mind needs recharging too.

In fact even in schools children should not be scolded and shunned but rather be motivated to overcome their shortcomings. Competition has become a way of life. But we must realize that life is a marathon. We may lag behind in one race but it is a long road ahead. It is important to keep going rather than running fast and losing mental and physical energy in the first lap itself.