Jodie Skillicorn - Healing Depression without Medication: A Psychiatrists Guide to Balancing Mind, Body, and Soul

While there are dozens of self-help books on depression, Dr. Skillicorn has done a masterful job of explaining principles of neuroscience and how they work to create new neural pathways for healing depression. Neuroplasticity is the name of the game, and Dr. Skillicorn presents meticulous research about the need to look beyond diagnose and adios medicine to help each individual develop his or her own customized program of activities and nutrition so that the brain can heal itself organically without dangerous medication. Whether you are a doctor, patient, or seeking help for someone you care about, you will find the help you seek in these pages.

Laurie Nadel, PhD, author of The Five Gifts: Discovering Hope, Healing, and Strength When Disaster Strikes

In this well-researched and empowering book, Dr. Jodie Skillicorn demolishes the facts surrounding depression, including the erroneous assumptions that it is caused by a flaw in the brains neurochemistry and that pharmaceutical cocktails are the answer. Creating her own potent healing recipe of mindfulness, meditations, guided imagery, healing movement, nutritional advice, and much more, this is a book that anyone dealing with depression cannot afford to miss.

Cate Montana, MA, author of The E Word: Ego, Enlightenment and Other Essentials

If you think you need psych meds to cure your mood, think again. And read this book.

Christiane Northrup, MD, New York Times best-selling author of Goddesses Never Age, The Wisdom of Menopause, and Womens Bodies, Womens Wisdom

Copyright 2020 by Jodie Skillicorn. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by

North Atlantic Books

Berkeley, California

Cover art and design by Howie Severson

Book design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in the United States of America

Healing Depression without Medication: A Psychiatrists Guide to Balancing Mind, Body, and Soul is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

The names and identifying details of patient stories have been changed to protect confidentiality.

MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: The following information is intended for general information purposes only. Individuals should always see their health care provider before administering any suggestions made in this book. Any application of the material set forth in the following pages is at the readers discretion and is his or her sole responsibility.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

This book includes material from well-managed forests and from recycled materials. North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We print on recycled paper whenever possible and partner with printers who strive to use environmentally responsible practices.

For Wade and Skye, who remind me daily about the meaning of love, and the importance of balance.

I am deeply grateful for all those who have helped me on this journey: First and foremost, my agent, Lisa Hagan, whose faith in my book made this adventure possible; my editor, Lisa Bess Kramer, who not only helped my sentences flow better, but offered assurance and encouragement at every step; North Atlantic Books, for taking a chance on an unknown author with a message, but no existing platform; Shayna Keyles, for delicately excising large chunks of my oversize manuscript, and offering an opportunity for discernment, letting go, and trust; Ebonie Ledbetter for her close attention to details in the final edits.

On the home front, this project would not have been possible without the love, support, and patience of my husband, Tom; my kids for keeping me balanced between play and work; my four-legged furry friends, for their companionship while writing, and insistent reminders to pause and pay attention to them; and my parents, who taught me (even though I did not always believe them) that I could do anything I set my mind to. Despite boxes of failed projects from the past in their attic, they never questioned that this project was possible.

I am indebted to the many teachers and healers in my life, too many to list, who inspired me and taught me that at the heart of all healing is the power of presence, connection, and listening.

I am grateful for my sister, friends, and fellow Chameleons, who believed in me and offered support, encouragement, and intentions throughout this process.

Lastly, there would be no book to write if it were not for all I have learned from my patients, who continually inspire me with their resilience, courage, and grace.

To find health should be the object of the doctor. Anyone can find disease.

A. T. Still, doctor of osteopathy

A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Look, Mommy, look, my daughter squeals as she rushes into my room clutching a letter from the Tooth Fairy. Fifteen minutes later she returns with a sly, wise smirk on her slightly less innocent face. Youre the Tooth Fairy, Mommy. I saw the letter on your computer. You have been Mom-busted!

That unraveling of truth, that validation of a lurking unvoiced suspicion in ones gut, is how I felt after reading Robert Whitakers book Anatomy of an Epidemic. The book challenged every dogma, every so-called truth about mental illness and how to treat it that I had learned in medical school and psychiatry residency. Imagine finding out that everything you had spent four long sleep-deprived years of residency learning was simply not true. Worse, imagine finding out that how youve been taught to heal people may actually be causing more harm than good.

The initial shock, anger, and despair I felt after reading the book shifted to an awareness of a deep inner knowing: I had recognized all along that this was not the way. I reflected back to my first days seeing patients on my own in the psychiatry residency clinic. My new patients were mostly old patients who were being handed down to me not only from the previous residents but the residents before them and before them. I remember wondering, even then: if medication and therapy work, why were these people not getting better?

This question became a challenge to dig into the research and find other healing options. I set about unlearning the knowledge I had acquired in medical school, and relearning yoga and meditation, which Id been practicing for years. I obsessively read and attended classes in nutrition, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, energy medicine, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), hypnotherapy, integrative medicine, Mind-Body Medicine, and auricular acupuncture. As I learned these skills, I continued to listen to patients stories to find more clues and answers.