You're Never Too Old To Beat Depression

Elise asked me to visit her at her home because she was anxious and depressed. She was now past menopausal age and told me that she’d first felt like this when her children were very young. Her husband was ill and out of work at the time and she was struggling with young children. “I just had to cope”, she told me,

“I felt very vulnerable, I wasn’t eating well, not looking after myself at all – just caring for the family. My husband had a procedure done by the district nurse one day and he screamed – I’d never heard a grown man scream like that, it broke me. I went upstairs and curled up in bed for 3 days. I didn’t eat or wash – nothing. I didn’t want to think about anything, I just curled up like a baby in the womb.”

Elise talked about the responsibility of looking after a very sick husband and young children, about when the night nurse came to stay the night so that she could get some sleep but instead she just watched the clock go round until the nurse left and she could be on her own again. She looked after him until he died and then faced her greatest fear, of being without him.

Now, many years later, she admits that it has never got that bad again, but it has since lurked in the background constantly.

“I don’t like it at all, it’s all negative, I feel very self centred. I’m so ashamed,” she told me, “there are lots of people facing worse situations than me”.

Recently she felt things were getting much worse again. She was now suffering with bad headaches and terrible insomnia. Occasionally she felt her memory go completely which was making her very nervous about going out. “I just feel so vulnerable”, she said.

She was starting to get panic attacks ,

“It’s the fear of being on my own when I don’t feel very well. I get very breathless, shake all over, fear, I pray very, very hard for help. I want to ring for someone to be with me to reassure me which makes me feel much, much better, but I can’t have that because people have got to get on with their lives”.

“I feel I’ve pressed my self destruction button somewhere along the line, made the mistake of letting it absorb me. I’m not putting any effort in to anything, I’m too tired to put effort in, I’m losing ground. I’m not even doing as much now as I was last week. I can’t be bothered to cook, do any housework. I’m doing all the wrong things. My family say I want a pill for everything and they’re right”.

I prescribed a remedy called Lac-caninum as it fitted Elise’s symptoms so well. Two months later she came to visit me, travelling alone on a bus.

“There has been a huge improvement, I’m better than I’ve been in years. I’m so grateful. I never feel panicky any more, I still get a sinking sensation sometimes but I know it’s going to pass and it doesn’t stop me doing things. I’ve been getting out and about, last week I went to weed my daughter’s patio as a surprise because she hates that job. She was delighted and it made me feel really good”.

In less than 2 months Elise’s mood had lifted enormously, her appetite had improved, her panic attacks had disappeared and her sleep had improved slightly. As time has gone on her sleep has improved more and her migraines (which she hardly mentioned at first) became very rare.