The pharma/psychiatric industry would prefer we think we can't do this on our own, but they're often wrong and it's not like their bottom lines re helped by studies like this one.

Not every depressive disorder is the same, and for some, a combination of CBT and medicine is the most effective therapy.

Recent research suggest type of therapy is less important than a bond between therapist and patient referred to as "therapeautic alliance".

That goes a long way when trying to understand how it is that 'uniquely' defined disorders all have similarly effective therapies.

Rejection of a therapy generally destroys therapeutic alliance and it's hard to know if the therapy fails or whether the alliance fails.

People who reject concepts that require surrendering to "higher powers" uniformly do poorly in mindfulness based therapy.

involved in mindfulness meditation. It is empirically validated. I hadn't heard that people who reject the higher power stuff don't do as well with it but I'll look it up.

why do unique disorders respond at least a little to disparate treatments? It seems at least in part because a gregarious animal in crises that cause dysfunction and damage to relationships often responds favorably to positive, stable relationships with therapists... apparently no one guessed that was important until recently

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150410083508.htm

The mindfulness stuff is supposed to be independent of the religiousness and judgement, but it's not.Zinn, Linehan, etc are all practioners of the religion as well as involved in therapy. Turns out the very popular mindfulness as promoted for DBT is supposed to be non-judgemental, but when you encounter the training there is, gues what? a 'right way' of doing it, after all. Ironic non-judgemental mindfulness is judged. And it seems the right way has a lot to do with all the 'right' judgements along the 8-fold path.

Nothing much seems to for any length of time.

It's pretty clear to me that "depression" is more than one thing, just like having a "fever" is more than one thing.

That's why treatment, with drugs or without, is such a crapshoot.

I find drugs helpful.

awareness of his own thoughts and feelings since part of the time he is a preacher and the other part of the time he is a biker. The thoughts and feelings would vary according to his mood swing.

Up to 40% of people have one or more mutations on this gene, and there is an association with many chronic illnesses because methylation can be greatly diminished - depression is one of these.