Rosie turns depression treatment on its head

NEW YORK - Rosie O'Donnell put her "American Idol" feelings aside and got personal Friday on "The View," revealing her problems with clinical depression and demonstrating her unconventional therapy.

Rosie calls it simple and not at all scary. "You go like this," she said as she hung herself upside down, dangling from a yoga swing. "I'm upside down for an average of 15-30 minutes a day."

By self-medicating through inversion therapy, Rosie said she has been healing her depression, brought on by the shootings at Columbine High School.

"It felt like it was happening to me," Rosie said. "I knew it wasn't happening to me, those (are) not my children, but I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't stop crying on the show. I stayed in my room. I couldn't get out of bed."

According to Rosie, the unconvential — and some say unsafe — therapy is said to help blood and oxygen flow to your brain.

"It really releases the serotonin," she said while inverted. "And (it's) good to have meetings like this with your staff."

That's not all Rosie revealed on the show, which devoted its entire hour to depression.

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"I too have SAD: seasonal (affective) disorder. (It's) part of depression, so if it's sunny in Miami I instantly feel happy, and if it's gray and cloudy, I feel like I'm being tortured by someone," she said.

Rosie also admitted she also takes doctor-prescribed medication, which at first she wasn't receptive to.

"When I first started taking them I had (a) metallic taste in my mouth," she said. "I had head zings. It was zingy; I thought, I'm not going to do this."

Rosie held on and found the medication that worked.

"I wanted to say to everyone afraid of the stigma of medication that ... it saved my life," she said.

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