Reviews

Editor’s note: The following is Greg Vandagriff’s second chapter in his account of being delivered from the depression which had bound him since he was a young teenager. It is offered as a “peer experience” for young people like him and has been successful in helping many teenagers and young adults to identify the illness and to seek professional help. If you missed the introduction and chapter 1 of Deliverance, you can read them here Please feel free to respond to any of the authors through G.G.’s website at www.GGVandagriff.com.

So what is the role of medication in all of this? Perhaps you are among the many who feel that surely the Lord will lift this burden from me if I pray with enough faith, or receive a priesthood blessing of healing. And although I do believe that miracles of healing can and do occur, I also strongly believe that these miracles can not and will not come about until we have done everything in our own power to treat our ailments.

While serving, there were a few brief points on my mission where I felt close enough to my Lord that I could barely feel the effects of my clinical depression. Always these were periods of fasting, study, prayer, and service. Therefore, one may argue that if we were righteous enough, we wouldn’t need medication. I feel that while this may be true, it is foolish to embrace this mentality as a way of life.

I say this because you will eventually make a mistake. You are human, you are weak, and you will fail. When you suffer from clinical depression, you will dwell even on small failures, and when you do, you will fall into a cycle of despair, self-pity, and apathy. In your mind, you will feel like it is impossible for you to break out. Even though we know that it is possible to break free of these cycles, it is always time-consuming to do so, because sincere change does not occur overnight.

Proper medication makes it much less likely for you to dwell on your own faults and to slip into these cycles of depression. When you do slip into them, you are able to get out of them much faster. It is much easier to control your attitude towards life in general and to apply the atonement.

To make a long story short, when you have acquired proper medication, you will be able to place greater hope in the Savior and his teachings than you were able to before. This is because your attitude towards those teachings, and life in general, is more positive and energetic.

Is it possible to cope with clinical depression without medication? Yes, but I feel that the only reason for this is to allow us to hang on until we are able to obtain healing through a combination of spiritual and chemical factors. I believe there is absolutely no righteous excuse for choosing not to seek professional help and medication for our clinical depression. What it boils down to is whether or not we are humble enough to admit when we need help.

Do not justify or excuse yourself by saying that the money would be better spent elsewhere. Proper medication will improve every aspect of not only your own life, but of the lives of those with whom you associate. Pride you exhibit by refraining to seek help results in your continually draining the hope of those whom you most love.

Never stop searching or working towards a treatment that works for your specific needs. Do not try to excuse or justify yourself by waiting for the Lord to heal you or tell you how to be healed. Captain Moroni strongly rebukes those who had this attitude in his day:

Behold, could ye suppose that ye could sit upon your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God ye could do nothing and he would deliver you? Behold, if ye have supposed this ye have supposed in vain (Alma 60:11).

Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy (2 Nephi 2:25).

For I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men save he shall prepare a way for them to accomplish the thing which he commandeth them (1 Nephi 3:7).