Professor John Mendoza, chairman of the Australian Federal Government’s National Advisory Council on Health, resigned the other day.

He says the Government has no vision or commitment to mental health.

Like most rows, this row was about money. The government intended putting in $30 million a year where Professor wanted a billion.

Professor’s pet project seems to be “Headspace” — a youth mental health service. He talks about mentally-ill young people losing touch with their families, getting into crime etc.

Losing touch? Surely the biggest reason family members lose touch isn’t so much having an illness in the house, as having a television in the house.

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Think of depression, less as an illness, more as an industry.

Drug companies get rich selling Zoloft, Prozac etc., chemicals said to rectify “chemical imbalances in the brain”, which perhaps cause depression .

What makes our brain chemicals imbalanced anyway? Doesn’t what happens to any body organ largely depend on how we use the organ? What goes wrong with our brain chemicals might result from the moral and spiritual decisions that we use our brains to make.

And if “depression” results largely from such spiritual malfunctions, the solution may be a turn to true religion.

Tablets and counselling could also be a part of the answer — but only a small part.

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“Depression” is a fashionable word for what would have, in the past, been called sadness or suffering.

Shouldn’t we be giving priority to teaching children how to suffer — and to teaching them that suffering has meaning and purpose? Might one reason we have guilty feelings be that we are guilty? Guilt is best resolved by forgiveness. Once forgiven, a weight rolls off our shoulders.

Ask a priest to hear your confession. If you haven’t been for ages, don’t worry, he’ll remind you how it’s done.

Another good aspect of confession is that it is free.

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Blessed Mary of the Cross (Mary MacKillop) wrote to the members of her Order when circumstances were making them depressed, “We have had much sorrow and are still suffering its effects, but sorrow or trial lovingly submitted to does not prevent our being happy — it rather purifies the happiness.”