So tonight's talk is on that happy subject depression, understanding it from a variety of angles.

The goal is to really familiarize us with what the different types of depression are, what causes it, how it can be treated,

Buddhist insights and tools that can alleviate depression.

So to any degree that you experience yourself or no others, you could of course be of help for them.

Simply understanding it in my experience is of many benefits.

So one of the first issues that comes up is a lot of people misuse the word

depression. They will say they're depressed during as a matter of course just for the word generally when the word

sad would do or dispirited. Now there is a kind of depression known as situational

depression which happens after a significant setback in life like a breakup,

loss of a job, loss of a

a loved one, and in such cases, extended periods of crying, sadness, guilt, or lack of motivation is very common and actually very, very appropriate.

There's a lot of studies started by the great John Bowlby in the 1940s with children of England during the bombing by the Germans at that time and

Bobby discovered that when children were separated from their mothers

if they didn't grieve the separation, they wouldn't accept the fact that

they had been, in essence, separated from their mothers and wouldn't then be able to go on to make new

caring, open substantial connections with other caretakers that were available.

And what he determined is that grief after a significant loss,

the sadness, the sorrow, the crying,

is the way that our brain, especially the right hemisphere, essentially

erases all the inner working models that sort of guide our emotional attachments that we have.

And it's through grieving that we in essence wipe the slate clean and open the mind up to new possibilities.

When we don't grief after losses,

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