Depression is a mood disorder characterised by low mood and a wide range of other possible symptoms, which will vary from person to person. An illness that can develop quickly or gradually, and be brought on by life events and/or changes in body chemistry. It can strike anyone, and is curable (www.depression.org).  There is some evidence that at least 50% of people with clinical depression are also suffering relationship and family dysfunction (Yapko M)

Depression is not a choice  and quite the contrary,  I believe depression is a symptomatic lack of choice or flexibility for the individual.    Depression has behavioural,  social and psychological components.  Medicine can of course play a part in dealing with the psychological aspects of depression and yet it does not address the behavioural or social aspects of depression.  Typically people with depression may have a marked internal absorption and miss opportunities to receive meaningful or positive feedback from the environment around them.

Depression can be described as an all encompassing way of being in life.  Yet that way of being for a person can with therapy, I believe, be changed.  A person with depression unconsciously runs their own hypnotic process on the reality that they experience.  I seek to undo the symptom induced hypnotic trance that can give rise to the very real negative experience described as depression.  You are not your thoughts !