In 2001, Dr. Derek Summerfield, a South African psychiatrist, was working in Cambodia.
There, he encountered a story that would forever reshape how he understood depression and healing.
Dr. Summerfield was there during the introduction of chemical antidepressants to the country, and as part of his work, he explained their purpose to the local doctors.
Curious, they listened, then responded with a statement that surprised him: “We don’t need those. We already have antidepressants.”
Dr. Summerfield assumed they were referring to traditional herbal remedies, common in many cultures.
But instead, they told him a story—one that stayed with him long after his visit.
In a small village, a farmer had worked tirelessly in the rice fields, his life bound to the rhythms of planting and harvesting.
One day, his life changed forever.
While tending to his crops, he stepped on a landmine left from the war.
The explosion took his leg, and with it, the life he had known.
The community rallied around him, helping him recover and fitting him with a prosthetic leg.
But when he returned to the rice fields, his pain was immense.
The muddy water caused constant irritation to his prosthetic limb, and the physical reminders of his trauma became overwhelming.
Each step was not just painful—it was retraumatizing.
Soon, the farmer withdrew from life.
He stopped going to the fields, refused to get out of bed, and cried through his days.
His despair was palpable, a pain that anyone in the village could see.
The local doctors didn’t turn to medication.
Instead, they turned to him.
They sat with him, listened to his story, and asked the simple yet profound question:
“What’s causing this pain, and how can we help?”
It became clear that his pain made sense.
His depression wasn’t a mystery.
It stemmed from the physical agony of working in the rice fields and the emotional weight of reliving his trauma daily.
The solution, the doctors realized, wasn’t in fixing him—it was in fixing his circumstances.
Together, the community devised a plan.
They pooled their resources and bought him a cow. With the cow, he could become a dairy farmer.
No longer would he have to work in the fields that had brought him so much suffering.
What happened next was extraordinary.
Within weeks, the farmer’s tears stopped.
Within a month, his depression lifted.
Tending to the cow gave him not just a livelihood, but a renewed sense of purpose.
His days were no longer defined by pain and loss, but by connection and hope.
Dr. Summerfield was struck by the simplicity and depth of this act.
When the Cambodian doctors referred to the cow as an antidepressant, they weren’t joking.
They had intuited something that many Western approaches to mental health often overlook: healing isn’t always about medication.
It’s about addressing unmet needs, restoring dignity, and offering practical solutions rooted in compassion.
This story wasn’t just about a cow.
It was about a community that refused to let one of its members sink into despair.
They didn’t tell him to “get over it” or “pull himself together.”
Instead, they worked together to remove the source of his pain, reminding him that he was not alone.
For Dr. Summerfield, this story became a powerful metaphor for what depression often is—a signal that something in life is out of balance.
And it’s a reminder that sometimes, healing begins not in a pill bottle, but in community support, connection, and purpose.
True healing begins when we listen, act, and restore hope through meaningful change.
This post was inspired by Johann Hari's Ted Talk, This could be why you're depressed or anxious.