Getting Unstuck: 24 Ways to Fight Depression

God’s plan is not for you to be depressed. He wants you experiencing His joy no matter the circumstances of your life. Yet approximately 20 million people suffer from clinical depression feeling hopeless, listless and stuck. The voice of depression says you cannot move out of the darkness blanketing your life. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is much you can do to lift yourself out of that stuck place.

Some types of depression are caused by genetic/biological factors such as lack of sleep, lack of exercise, PMS, hormone changes related to giving birth, menopause, medication side-effects, poor diet or disease. Other depressions are rooted in psychological, cognitive, and spiritual causes like troubled family experience, stress over postmodern living, social inequities like poverty and abuse, loss, negative thinking, sin, unresolved hurt and anger and poor coping responses.

Whatever the cause, try these helps from my book, Getting Unstuck, to improve your mood and start living again.

Dr. Linda Mintle writes the Doing Life Together blog for Beliefnet.