The National Clearinghouse for Long-Term Care Information is a new web site developed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide information and resources to help you and your family plan for future long-term care needs. While the website is aimed at the senior community, there is much information that can be helpful for families of younger people with disabilities. The website offers three sections, including: Understanding Long Term Care, Planning for Long Term Care and Paying for Long Term Care. The site also offers a planning guide for download.

A New Year: A New You

Caring physicians offer medications, empathetic psychologists listen with educated intellect, while family and friends show their loving concern as they, too, share in the frustration with the suffering that often exceeds the disability itself.

If you're seeking for a way to alleviate, dissipate, or eliminate those hours, weeks and months of feeling downright lousy, there is a restoration, remedy and cure. Depression can be a thing of the past, and no longer your daily companion. It can be gutted from your life, once and for all.

In order to eradicate any symptoms of depression, one must first define, diagnose, and recognize it for what it is. Only then can an effective therapy plan be formulated for each and every sufferer, great or small, with mild or severe symptoms.

Definition: Sometimes depression is a way you feel when you just don't feel the way you use to feel. To feel depressed is to feel disharmonious with oneself, an experience of sadness that exceeds just how bad it really is, our inner core eroding into itself.

Diagnosis: To obtain a diagnosis one must undergo a process of subjective observations by both professional and caring participants on how one feels. This process usually entails a thorough and comparative analysis of patterns, old and new. It always includes observations of physical and verbal communications and a whole lot of gut instinct. Most often, it's the persons themselves who know, plain and simple, the severity of their suffering.

All too often, I've seen ill and disabled people seek attentive physicians who immediately start a pharmaceutic therapy solution as soon as feelings of melancholy appear on the horizon. Filling shelves that line our drugstores, medicines abound that ease or eliminate. It's easy to see why even well trained doctors become firm believers in prescribing just one more pill.

Now please don't disregard the importance of utilizing the services of highly trained medical professionals, but instead, see them as a part of the solution to a healthier state of mind, not the whole. In many instances that care is a starting point to future wellness.

Evaluate the abilities within yourself to help yourself. Because you just might be surprised at the healing powers within. Sometimes it's only when the need is greatest that the inner self can most clearly understand the areas of your life that are stopping you from loving every single minute without the dragging force of depression.

Recognition: This comes to us when we find ourselves in a state in which we just can't stand feeling this darn lousy one more minute! It's when the days stretch out with hopelessness and the nights go on forever; it's when we know that something has got to change, and the time is NOW! When you understand in full the invasive force of emotional darkness, you'll start your walk towards the light.

Making headway: There is help! There is a solution! You can make all those morbid feelings of worthlessness and emptiness erode into nothing more than a bad day, yesterday. Today can be brighter and filled with purpose for no other reason than, "Today is always worth something, if we're willing to give or find value in it." You're in it! That in itself makes it special! Now, it's what you decide to do with this day that's going to make today count, so let's start doing some math.

The best prescription I've found, and hopefully you'll find too, for ridding yourself once and all from depression is:

1. Stop thinking about yourself: Instead, replace that with thoughts of someone else, anyone else, as long as those people are a positive force in your life. Yep, you got it! That's all it really takes, but with a bit more context and a lot more effort.

We're all guilty of it. I sure know that I am. Whenever we seem to have an extra minute or two, our minds inevitably seem to focus on whatever is going on, in, with, or around ourselves. It's a topic of which we just can't seem to get enough. Of course, there really can't be anything much more interesting than me - or is there? Self-care and ego are two mighty close neighbors. Caring for ourselves, so we can care about others, is humanism. Ego unchecked can mutate into caring more about only "one", "me." "Me" can fuel the fires of depression hotter than any other fuel source.

Tomorrow morning when you get up, the first thing you'll say to that spouse, family member, friend, or even God is, "How are you doing today?" You will not ask yourself how you're feeling or doing. That's a no-no! You will not make any type of subtle inquiry facing inward. Tomorrow you're not going to care about you. Instead, you'll let others have that joy. You see, the same pleasure and jubilance you experience in caring about others goes both ways! Allowing others to care about you is just as beneficial to them as it is for you to care about them.

Amazing isn't it! When we care about others, our whole body seems to care more about us. It's supposed to. That's how it all works. With endorphins rushing throughout, newfound energies, and lust for life will replace those down-turned, dog-eared feelings of sadness and despair. Even as I type, experts in white lab coats are running around test cases as they tabulate the positive effects of care and love for others.

When we give of ourselves, we inevitably find ourselves on the receiving end as well. This symbiotic relationship allows us to enjoy one another's company, another's amazing thought processes, morality, wellness of spirit and overall goodness. This is a sure fire way to set off what I call the "Domino Endorphin Effect," and all it takes is to care about someone else, more than you do yourself. Best part is - everyone wins!

2. Care with all your heart about others:No matter what your health condition is, tomorrow you will figure out a way to show your love and caring heart for someone else, but it's one thing to say it, another to show it.

Inactivity is a killer. We must work our hearts both emotionally and physically. It doesn't matter what part of your body improperly functions, so long as you keep moving the parts that still can get up and get out.

If you're like me, you now reside in the classification of being 100% disabled. The United States Government, Department of Social Security has determined it, and your body is always around to remind you of it. In all probability, you will remain gainfully unemployed for the rest of your life. So now, you've got to figure out what to do with this newly discovered time. Instead of seeing your disability as disabling, I propose that you view it as the greatest opportunity to become more of the person you've always wanted to be. Now is the time, this very moment, to show others your appreciation, love, and care. Give of yourself from this day forward in brand new ways never dreamed of before; your heart will love you for it.

On those days when the body just can't seem to get out of park, you can always take your brain for a walk.

© 2006, Bobbie Ratcliff
This article may not be reprinted without the permission of the author.