Dean Ornish: If you’re feeling depressed, like so many people, you’re not alone.  Did you know that the most commonly prescribed prescription drug the last 10 years have been the anti-depressants?  Why? Because there are a lot of depressed people out there.

One of the worst things about feeling depressed is yout hink that Everybody else is just doing  fine except you.

That is not something most people talk about  and it’s one of the reasons I want to give voice to that by talking about my own depression.

I got so profoundly depressed when I was in college worrying so much about getting into medical school, I found that the more I worried, the harder it became to study and the harder it became to study the more I worried  Vicious cycle that almost killed me.

That was my way into learning about the elements of the spectrum.  It totally transformed my life and later when I became a doctor and started doing research, we asked people who had heart disease and prostate cancer and other illnesses to make these changes and we measured a number of different things.

We found their prostate tended to get better; their heart disease got better.

Their depression also got better even though we didn’t focusing on it directly because we’re treating underlying causes.

What we eat, how we respond to stress; how much activity we have, and perhaps most important, how much love and support we have.

The resources that we can provide you here in the spectrum, particularly the sense of community and the meditation and all of it together can significantly help you cope with your depression in ways that can take you out of it, can give you new hope, new choices and new possibilities.