Thank goodness,
it's not a matter to be hidden anymore

"I should have gone to the doctor," she says. "I probably had a small chemical imbalance, and I could have cured it immediately. I told my doctor later, `I came to see you once for a physical. You asked me how I was, and I sort of cried.' And he said, `I just thought you were tired.' I said, `Well, I was tired, but tired of hurting.' But it went away."

For those suffering from depression, Bush offers the following advice: "People who feel depression, they should go to a doctor. I don't mean they need to go to loony tunes. My own doctor said, `I could have kicked you. I could have helped.'"

Florida governor Lawton Chiles battled the blues too. "The blacks" is what then Senator Chiles would call his moods, feelings so morose, so despairing, that to describe them as the blues would not convey their weight.

For much of his final year in the U.S. Senate, Chiles battled those moods, he said. He would go for days without sleep. And the accumulating stress would leave his stomach constantly upset. Food was unappealing, and he couldn't keep down much of what he forced himself to eat.

It was the insomnia and loss of appetite that caused him to see his doctor who diagnosed the depression. Within a month after taking the medicine Prozac, Chiles said the "blacks" disappeared, and his appetite returned. So did his yearning to reenter the political arena. He then ran for governor in Florida and won.

Chiles was confident that voters would look beyond the treatment and concentrate on his ideas and his record. Besides, Chiles noted that he isn't unique: half-dozen presidents from John Adams to Woodrow Wilson suffered bouts of depression.

Abraham Lincoln once wrote a friend, "I am the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would be not one cheerful face on earth … to remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better."

Said Chiles: "I'm in good company. Nobody is going to argue that it affected his performance in office."

Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes fame licked his darkest days, a serious bout with depression, by also seeking help.

"I did not want to talk about it and I didn't know what had hit me," the 77-year-old journalist told his very personal story under the bright lights of an U.S. Senate hearing for all in America to see and hear.

Wallace is urging Congress to put more money into depression research. He recounted how he's felt so low, "a feeling of bitter and unrelieved despair and thoughts of suicide."

Wallace previously discussed his struggle with emotionally debilitating depression in his autobiography, Close Encounters. He said it began back in 1984 when he was forced to testify in a libel suit brought against CBS by General William Westmoreland.

"Suddenly that episode turned for me into a thunder-storm of depression," the courageous family man reveals.

And then there's I — OR YOU — who struggled without knowing what has hit.

The sun rises and we can't get up. It's eight o'clock, then nine, and we are wide awake but don't feel like getting up.

We want to get to work and just can't get going.

For general information on depression, consult the organizations and websites below:

• The National Mental Health Association www.nmha.org
• The National Institute for Mental Health www.nimh.nih.gov/home.cfm
• The American Psychiatric Association www.psych.org/public_info
• The American Psychological Association www.apa.org.

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The warning signs.
You may be headed
 for depression if:

• You need more hours to do less work.
• You suffer chronic fatigue.
• You can't sleep.
• You're too busy to do routine things like sending out birthday cards.
• You start forgetting appointments and losing personal possessions such as house keys.
• You feel you have no control over your life and your future seems as bleak as the present.
• You drink more alcohol and use more drugs, prescription and otherwise.
• You feel no real joy in anything, not even your job.

 What to do
 if you think
you're on the road
to depression:

• Start a regular exercise program.
• Balance hours spent at work with hours spent with friends and family, and hours spent having fun.
• Start taking vacations, including a series of short vacations over long weekends.
• Check your directions in life. Is professional success worth it if it means losing your spouse, alienating children, and missing out on life's pleasures?
• Find a new career.
• See your doctor. Don't wait. Do it today.

  What to do
  if you truly are a friend of the one suffering from depression:

• Don't brush off as whimsical what you observe. Try to understand what your friend is going through.
• Do not take any action you normally would in response to someone's action, concluding that a "normal" and "good" person would not do such things.
• Urge your friend to see a doctor. Make your friend do it. Now you are a real friend.

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