Looking for Natural Depression Treatment Options?

If you or someone you love is suffering from depression, chances are good you’ll do whatever it takes to help end their ongoing struggle with the disorder. Depression is, after all, a very serious mental health condition. More than 90% of all suicide victims were either suffering from depression or substance abuse when they took their own life. To prevent that statistic from hitting too close to home, you may want to learn more about natural depression treatment options.

Why Choose Natural Depression Treatment?

People suffering from depression normally are prescribed antidepressants by their physician or psychiatrist. However, these drugs can cause serious side effects you won’t find with natural depression treatment. People on these prescriptions suffer from fatigue, sexual dysfunction, nausea, and a host of other problems. Additionally, some of these drugs have been linked to an increased risk of suicidal o violent behavior. Prozac is one example.

With a natural depression treatment, these side effects are not usually a problem. Plus, with a natural depression treatment, the cure is correcting the problem in a less artificial way. Chemicals in the drugs change our brain chemistry which can have severe, unintended consequences.

Some Options for Natural Depression Treatment

The good news is medical research has found some options that can help provide relief from the symptoms of depression.

Supplements of amino acids may be a promising natural depression treatment. L-Tyrosine is one example. A study was conducted on several patients who were kept depression-free using strong doses of antidepressants. They were given L-Tyrosine (a type of amino acid) supplements and after only two weeks the patients were able to give up the medication completely. The supplements caused no ill effects in the patients either. Other types of amino acid supplements have also been effective.

Another approach to natural depression treatment is to use nutrients. Under this theory, it’s deficiencies in certain vitamins or minerals that may be responsible for the depression. Vitamin B6, for example, plays an important role in brain chemistry because it is needed for the conversion of two amino acids into serotonin (controls mood) and norepinephrine (involved in stress reactions). Without sufficient B6, these chemicals cannot be properly manufactured and this can lead to depression. Even if you don’t have a full-fledged deficiency, simply having the bare minimum necessary can still lead to depression. Studies have repeatedly shown B6 supplements have been effective in easing depression in men and women.

Other nutrients and vitamins, including folic acid and Vitamin C, also play a role in this type of natural depression treatment.

Outside the United States, St. John’s wort is also considered a natural depression treatment. Nearly two dozen clinical studies on this supplement have been conducted over the last two decades and all of them have showed noticeable improvement in depressive symptoms compared to placebos. How the supplements works to achieve this result is not fully understand, but it may possess some of the characteristics of MAO-inhibitors, one of the most popular classes of prescription strength antidepressants available.

Natural Depression Treatment Looking for Natural Depression Treatment Options

Natural Depression Treatment

There search for natural depression treatment seems to have intensified in the recent past, at least if the number of searches being initiated on the search term ‘natural depression treatment’ and the number of resources on the same subject – natural depression treatment – are anything to go by. A number of reasons can be seen as motivating this enthusiasm for natural depression treatment, which surprisingly, is finding widespread appeal even among psychiatrists and other mental health experts, who by virtue of their training have tended to be quite skeptical of things labeled ‘natural,’ traditionally favoring pharmaceutical-based depression treatment over natural depression treatment. Indeed, thanks to the growing enthusiasm for natural depression treatment, many mainstream psychiatrists are increasingly advising their patients to try the natural depression treatment methods, before embarking on medication as a tool of the very last resort.


One of the reasons behind the enthusiasm for natural depression treatment is the growing realization that most of the pharmaceutical treatments for depression are in actual fact hazardous medications, which often cause side-effects more obnoxious than depression itself. Granted, most of these medications work faster than the natural depression treatment aids (which include various herbs like St. Johns Wort, which is a potent natural SSRI and non-substance treatments like psychotherapy). But in exchange for their speedy action (as compared to the natural depression treatment tools) the medications can often induce the mentioned obnoxious side effects, which in some cases include other potentially more serious mental disorders like mania which can degenerate into full-blown psychosis. In any case, while they are faster in their action than the natural depression treatment methods, the medications used in the treatment of the condition still take a number of weeks, typically a minimum of two, before noticeable results can be seen from their use, making their ‘speedy-action’ advantage over the natural depression treatment aids rather marginal.


Another reason behind the growing enthusiasm for natural depression treatment is the realization that the medications that can be used in their stead often work paradoxically. This is where a person who opts for the medication (rather than the natural depression treatment) ends up more depressed than they were before starting to take the medication, to a point where they start experiencing even more alarming symptoms like urgent suicidal ideation, which they didn’t have before they started on the medication. This is a very common scenario for a class of depression medications called SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). And while many natural depression treatment aids like St. Johns Wort for instance work through the same mechanism, the side effects and paradoxical effects (when they do ever occur) are typically less pronounced for the usage of the natural depression treatment aids than for the medications used in the treatment of the same condition.


Of course, this is not a blanket endorsement of natural depression treatment aids over medication. There are cases which warrant the use of the medications, and where the use of depression medication makes for a better choice than the use of the natural depression treatment aids. But in the final analysis, the natural depression treatment aids do have a number of advantages of the medications, especially in the treatment of mild cases of depression.

Natural Depression Treatment Natural Depression Treatment, SSRI