Salt adds flavor to food and has always been highly prized.

Packaged and take-away foods contain a lot of salt which seems to blunt our taste so that we require large amounts or we think food lacks taste.

There is some evidence that an increased intake of salt may be responsible for an increase in the cases of high blood pressure.

It is not suggested we should avoid salt but that salt intake should be reduced. We may miss it for a few weeks until our taste buds recover from the years of excessive intake.

Professor Morgan, professor of medicine at the University of Newcastle, has estimated that, in a population with a high salt intake, the incidence of high blood pressure related to salt intake will be 20 per cent, whereas those on a reduced intake will have an incidence of only five per cent. A low intake will reduce this further to between one and five per cent.

Reducing salt intake is an easier and cheaper method of controlling blood pressure than having to take drugs.

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The patient may misinterpret this and believe that the drugs are depressing him, so he stops them; the anxiety again surfaces and depression recedes.

But the condition is unlikely to improve unless the doctor can recognise that the underlying depression is the more important problem and the anxiety is only a manifestation of it.

There are now two types of drugs for the treatment of depression. These lift the depression and bring the patient back to normal. Then he is in a position to sort out his problems or seek counselling.

The tricyclic anti-depressants are slow to work, taking weeks to show effect. However, if stopped, their effect can be lost in two to four days.

They can make the person drowsy, constipated and dry in the mouth. They may cause sweating, shaking, blurred vision and occasionally slowing of the urinary stream.

The possibility of these symptoms needs to be explained carefully to patients so that, if they do occur, the patients will not abandon treatment. Most of the side effects disappear within two to three weeks. This is usually just after the therapeutic effect has begun.

The other major anti-depressant drugs are the MAO inhibitors. Mono-amines are a group of chemicals like dopamine and S-HT.

Psychotherapy or counselling is usually necessary as well. Counselling often implies the giving of advice but psychotherapy is more than this.

It really means teaching the patient to become aware of himself, what motivates him and what factors led to his depression.

Learning to recognise and cope with these can lift the depression and lead to emotional health.

A few of the tranquillising drugs have some form of anti-depressant action as well and may be of benefit in those cases of depression with marked anxiety.

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