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"If many remedies are prescribed for an illness," Anton Chekhov once wrote, "you may be certain that the illness has no cure".

There are certainly many remedies prescribed for depression as well as the alternative treatments available and self-help remedies all of which claim to help, alleviate symptoms or cure. Anecdotal supposed cures are written about everywhere. Whilst few of them are actually harmful, it is harmful to reject effective treatments and replace them with pills, potions and ideas which are based on nothing more than persistent optimism.

There are two things to consider when thinking about using free treatments for the treatment of depression. The first is what type of depression are you experiencing? The second is to be honest with yourself as to how long you have felt this way? These questions are important because if you are suffering from reactive depression that has been triggered by a life event, then it is possible that you could use some self-help techniques to alleviate the symptoms. However, if your period of depression is protracted and the symptoms are severe, then you really need to see a Doctor (free in the UK) whether you pay for that treatment or not. However, whether your depression is reactive and therefore transient, or if it is clinical and more severe, there are several things that you can do to alleviate the symptoms:

DIET

The old saying "you are what you eat" extends further than the physical body. The functioning of the mind is also affected by what we eat. The BBC archives contains an interesting article about a man who had suffered with depression for 40 years. The key information from this story is that he discovered a book on wheat and dairy intolerance, put into practice what he learned and the results were a dramatic shift in his mood (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/he alth/4610998.stm).

Another possible source of problems in terms of diet, is a substance called aspartame. Try tapping aspartame into a search engine and you'll be clearing out your cupboards and spitting out your diet drink before you can say L-Aspartyl-L-Phenylalanine Methyl Ester. This artificial sweetener is regarded by many as the most dangerous substance on the market that is added to food. In the UK, the supermarket chain Iceland has removed this substance from its own-brand products. But the UK Food Standards Agency says there's currently no evidence to show that aspartame is unsafe. In other words the jury's still out. I'm not going to go into a lengthy

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