The good news about antidepressants

Turns out Tom Cruise is right: Depression really is all in your head. It's in the neurons of the hippocampus where science shows cells burdened by deep depression and chronic stress atrophy and die.

Rocky Mountain PBS broadcast earlier this month a three-part series called "This Emotional Life" that explored a broad range of human emotions and their causes.

One segment focused on happiness, and what it is in our lives that makes us feel that most ideal state of being. Marriage does, kids - due to the stress of parenting - don't. And money, if used the right way - altruistically and in pursuit of positive experiences - does. Age isn't the curse many believe it to be either. Given good health, most seniors report they are happier than at any other point in their lives.

Many of these findings turn conventional wisdom on its ear. And even though I'm a single, anything-but-rich mom, I found them incredibly heartening.

But the segment on depression cheered me most. Not only for what it revealed factually, but for its potential to further remove the stigma surrounding not only the condition, but the use of antidepressants.

While the research is not new, it has somehow never received significant press. And for those who suffer from the disease of depression, and the loved ones who suffer with them, that is a shame.

The findings show that hormones released by stress inhibit the growth of brains cells in the hippocampus - the part of the brain associated with learning, memory, mood and emotion. The longer the depression exists, the greater the damage to those neurological pathways.

But as insulin helps correct blood sugar levels in those with diabetes, science shows that antidepressants can change and correct altered brain chemistry.

Even more encouraging, researchers have seen through brain scans that antidepressants can stimulate the growth of new, healthy cells. Like the lungs of a former smoker, the damaged part of the hippocampus can be restored to the level of its original healthy function.

I take my antidepressant and mood stabilizer daily; they are as much a part of my morning routine as Folger's coffee and Chai Spice creamer. I take them for myself, but I take them also for my son, my family in other states, my friends, all the people in my life who care about me, and even for those strangers I encounter each day.

But it wasn't always so.

At 22, six months after my initial diagnosis of bipolar disorder, I packed up my Chevy Cavalier with everything I owned and moved from Wisconsin to Colorado. Somewhere in Nebraska, I threw my lithium out the car window.

As it turned out, lithium was not the right medication for me, as doctors now know is the case for many with bipolar disorder. But I didn't seek an alternative. Prozac was new then, today's most commonly prescribed and effective antidepressants and mood stabilizers non existent. In any case, I was sure didn't need them.

For the next 15 years, I was medication free. I was also a rocket of emotions, finally crashing in my late 30s into an 18-month depression. From the depths of that black hole, medication finally appeared to be my only source of light. I accepted its help with gratitude, but even as I crawled out of that hole and back to a normal life, I did so with great reluctance and a sense of shame.

I plotted ways to escape it. With enough Omega 3, St. John's Wort, SAM-E and sunshine, surely I could wean myself away from pills.

It was only until a couple of years ago, when I read some of the results of the study expounded upon in "This Emotional Life," that I became convinced they were necessary. Even good for me.

The report I read phrased the findings somewhat differently than the PBS series. It described the connections in the brain of a depressed and/or bipolar person as thinner and weaker than those of a healthy brain. Antidepressants and mood stabilizers serve to strengthen those connections, to coat them with a protective shield. They buffer the otherwise painful impact of stressors that bring the depressed brain to its emotional knees.

I hold that vision in my mind's eye when I take my morning medication. My antidepressants and mood stabilizer don't save me from bad days, but like a net, they keep me from falling all the way down and help spring me back up to steady ground. They shield me from greater harm.

"There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance," Cruise said in a 2005 interview with Matt Lauer.

Really, Tom?

Even love creates a chemical imbalance, as he revealed by bouncing on Oprah's couch in an expression of his love for Katie Holmes.

He, and others like him who perpetuate the stigma should be ashamed. Celebrities, unfortunately, have a profound influence on the American public. As such, they owe it to them to use great care in what they say. Years later, Cruise's words still ring in the ears of many who hesitate to take antidepressants for fear they will be considered weak.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is fear that makes people weak.

The determination to be healthy - for one's self as well as those who love them - is the definition of strength. It is what makes it possible to heal. And once healed, to spread that message and hard-earned joy to others.

Because happiness, as research shows and the narrator of "This Emotional Life" reaffirmed, is contagious.