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Unfortunately, we live in a society that is extremely judgmental – we see someone who is not mentally stable and we’re ready to ostracize them at the drop of a hat, even if the person is family or a close friend. It happened to my aunt – she alienated everyone in the family with her harsh tongue and sudden tirades. Little did we know or realize that she was suffering from a form of depression that affected the way she reacted to other people. She would come out with a string of obscenities even when she seemed to be perfectly normal. Only after her daughter took her to see a psychiatrist who got her started on drugs did she regain some sense of normality.

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She even apologized to the rest of us, but my cousin tells us that she suffers a relapse when she forgets to take her meds. But there’s another form of therapy that she’s trying for her mom – that of love. She lives nearly 500 miles away and so cannot visit as often as she would like to. But she does call everyday, no matter what. As she explained to us, her mom’s behavior took a turn for the better when she started receiving love and attention from her daughter. It made us realize that the reason for her depression and subsequent mental illness was the shabby way her sons (she has three of them) treated her.

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When depression is treated clinically, a combination of one or more of the following methods is used:

1. Drugs
2. Counselling
3. Therapy

What most people don’t understand is that emotional support goes a long way in treating depression than any of the above-mentioned methods. Yes, drugs do play an important role in regulating moods and normalizing chemical levels in your brain. But what really helps when you’re in your spells of lucidity is the fact that people do care about you. When you begin to realize this, your brain begins to produce the feel-good chemicals on its own, a process that helps to slowly wean you off anti-depressants.

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Counseling and therapy are forms of support, but they come from a stranger. Understanding and kindness must come from close family members and friends if they are to really make a difference. Very often, for patients who are suffering from depression, that could be the difference between living the rest of their lives in a sort of drug-induced limbo and rejoining the real world as a normal, lively human being.

1. For one, knowledge, especially new findings in the medical field, is always valuable. When it is made available to all without the matter of cost posing a hindrance, it could be used to great advantages in countries where medical assistance is a minimum and where doctors and nurses have to rely on their wits to save their patients from disease and death.
2. Medical ethics have always dictated that patients are allowed to dictate their treatment, that they can either choose or refuse a particular form of care. When new information is made available free of cost, patients who are suffering from congenital diseases or their loved ones can tap this source and research the possibility of using the results to aid their cure or manage their symptoms better.
3. It promotes research and progress by encouraging scientists and researchers to publish their findings on a global scale and earn accolades for their work.
4. It provides equal opportunities for all, rather than just allow access to those who can afford it and deny it to those who cannot. After all, when the journal is going to be made available free of cost in a mere 12 months’ time, what is the necessity in asking people to pay for it during that time?
5. It promotes general awareness of the goings on in the field of medicine because people are more prone to read open access journals rather than pay to read something they may not be interested in.

In short, open access promotes progress in the field of medicine and allows people in the medical community and patients to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of medicine.