At one time or another, most people suffer from Depression. Celebrities are no different. Just ask Rosie O’Donnell. She recently spoke about her battle with depression. Now, the television personality will describe her experience as well as the treatment options she found effective on ‘The View’ on Friday.
When speaking about her depression, she explains that there was one event that triggered the illness.
According to Rosie O’Donnell, when gunmen entered Columbine High School and took the lives of 13 people, she went over the edge. She secluded herself in her bedroom with the lights off and cried constantly. She could not seem to get a grip of herself, and refused to leave the bedroom.
That was when she knew she needed medication.
On Friday’s show, Rosie O’Donnell will speak out about her dealings with depression on “The View” in hopes to spread the word that depression is a serious illness that can happen to anyone. She will also discuss what helped her pull out of her depression and will demonstrate “inversion therapy”, something that she does still and credits for helping her battle the illness.
Inversion therapy involves hanging upside down or at an inverted angle to use gravity to naturally decompress the joints of the body. In particular, it is often advertised as a relief for back pain. It, however, is rarely regarded as a serious treatment for back pain.
Hanging in this way, as with gravity boots or inversion tables, causes each joint in the body to be loaded in an equal and opposite manner to standing.
Proponents claim that inversion therapy is particularly beneficial for the spine in that it relieves pressure on the discs and nerve roots; this in turn allows discs to recover lost moisture and to return to their original shape, decreasing the pressure they can exert on nerves.
Advertisements also claim that it stimulates circulation, improves posture, strengthens ligaments, increases oxygen flow to the brain and increases flexibility.
People who have heart disease, high blood pressure, eye diseases (such as glaucoma), or are pregnant should not try inversion therapy. The first time anyone tries inversion therapy, they should make sure there’s someone around in case they need help.
Rosie O’Donnell has also stated that she suffers from seasonal affective disorder, or otherwise known as SAD.
Seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, also known as winter depression is an affective, or mood, disorder. Most SAD sufferers experience normal mental health throughout most of the year, but experience depressive symptoms in the winter or summer. SAD is rare, if existent at all, in the tropics, but is measurably present at latitudes north of 30°N, or south of 30°S.
Sources: StarPulse (http://www.starpulse.com), CBS News (http://www.cbsnews.com)
