If you are looking for an exhaustive study about depression, I am sure there are better books out there. There are degrees of depression, everything from manic depression to the blues; one needs professional treatment and the other can be treated with a good bowl of soup or some “soul food”. There are seasonal depressions, postnatal depressions, and anniversary depressions, that mark the tragedies we have experienced in our past, which I don’t think these notes will adequately address.
 
What I address in this study are the kinds of depression that are common to man, the kind that so easily besets creative people like myself, whose strong imaginations can be hijacked and used against them. I want to address the kind of depression that David wrote about in the Psalms. I can relate to him and have experienced something similar myself.
 
I have not been trained at some school of higher learning. I have however, had a few bouts with depression, in varying degrees, some of which were simply circumstantial while others are real sinkholes, which felt like the bottom had fallen out of my world. These experiences caused me to go deeper into the Bible for solutions. I found them, became free and have stayed free for over forty years. I have also shared what I learned with a lot of other people, helping them find their freedom. These are my credentials for writing such as book.
 
As I searched the scriptures for a biblical solution to my own depression, I discovered some wonderful insights regarding certain words that contain the idea of depression. These words are cast down, heaviness, and bowed down, which we will look at immediately in the opening chapter. This gave me hope, which I found to be the key to getting free and stay free from the clouds that sometimes filled my head.