From Newsweek's Oct. 7 issue — "Brianne Camilleri had it all: two involved parents, a caring older brother and a comfortable home near Boston. But that didn’t stop the overwhelming sense of hopelessness that enveloped her in ninth grade. “It was like a cloud that followed me everywhere,” she says. “I couldn’t get away from it.” "

Well, Brianne, the good news is that ninth grade will be over soon. The bad news is that tenth grade will be even worse. Antidepressants might help, but you're still going to have acne and not be as smart as you'd like. Others in school will do better than you at most things you try, your "caring" older brother will go away to a third rate college and experiment with drugs before he takes a job in sales at a major pharmaceutical company, your father will be laid off at the end of next year's weak 3rd quarter and your mother will start drinking again. Your friend Sarah, who has been so great through all of this, will sleep with Jake, the boy you've loved since sixth grade. She'll post pictures of him half-nude on the internet and send you the IP address from an anonymous email address--I'm just warning you to look out for it so you won't delete it along with the 300 other spam messages you receive on that day. Also look to receive poor grades in most classes, especially math, even as you work harder and harder to pull up your GPA. Your old tricks of working hard right before the test and memorizing some stuff will only work until you get to college and have to read a lot of material. Let's be honest, Brianne, you're not a very fast reader and things are going to be a lot harder when the teachers don't know you personally and aren't interested in your emotional development.

We'd love to help you. We understand how difficult depression can be-- we, along with millions of other Americans, have been there. And while the medications you've probably been trying do help, it doesn't really seem like a long-term solution to us. Who wants to be on Prozac or Paxil or Whatever for the rest of her life? We're all made up of lots of strange parts, unique parts, that make us different from each other. Maybe your depression makes you think deeply about yourself, maybe it's part of God's plan that you struggle, maybe, like Job, you're supposed to try to make it through this trial-- or maybe it just makes you more interesting than you'd be without it.

As much as it seems like we probably don't like you (and, believe me, I'll bet that we don't), you're not alone. Lots of people of all flavors suffer from depression. Science has come up with surprisingly effective ways of treating and explaining this incapacitating condition. Still, doesn't it suck to have your story told in Newsweek? I wouldn't want that.

Best Regards and we remain, as ever, your humble servant,

The Raging Face