How does one cope with despair using Buddhist practises? I had rather severe melancholia for some time and I still feel deep despair occasionally.

For example, today, just after the workout and a good meal, I felt severe, yet inexplicable, mental suffering. No one offended me or anything bad happened recently, but I could not relax or concentrate on something. I just felt anger (not to anyone particular), self-pity and deep dissatisfaction. I wanted to pop tranquillizer firstly but instead decided just to sit down and practice open-monitoring meditation. I cried a bit, but these feelings have largely gone and I feel calmer now (though not happy for sure).

Every day I feel this subtle dissatisfaction and it often progresses to those hysterical outbreaks (uncharacteristic for males, I know). Despite that, I feel mostly drowsy during the day, not nervous, but this is quite another problem for which I think meditation on breath is the main solution, as it helps you stay awake and more concentrated.

Is open-monitoring meditation the best idea when you feel you are about to cry? I thought about Metta meditation, too, but wishing yourself or anyone else happiness sounds like a joke during those outbreaks. I often practice Metta before sleep though.

So what would you recommend on preventing and "treating" these hysterical reactions? You know, psychiatrists and psychologists have nothing to offer to deal with it, except for the drugs...
In the Buddhist system, your mood is a function of your position, a subjective universe you get yourself in. Three factors in your control are responsible for creating your universe, these are your karma, your attention, and your perspective.


Karma has inertia, it takes time and effort to get to a different place. More then anything, it takes a firm decision or determination.
Attention is faster way to control your mood. The world you construct in your mind is constructed from fragments you pick by attending to them. This consists of observations about the world as well as facts and opinions about yourself.

A lot of times the reason we feel sad or depressed is the cyclical going over all the problems we see in the world and in ourselves. It's almost like we take pride in maintaining ourselves in the traumatized condition. This harmful habit can and should be unlearned. 
The final part of the equation is your perspective, a set of expectations about how things are supposed to be, your basic frame of reference. If the fragments of your world (including your self-image) go against your "how things are supposed to be", then the overall state is evaluated as "wrong", and vice versa.

This allows another point of control, which is subtler and more powerful. Instead of shifting your attention entirely you change how you evaluate things.

For example, if you attend to true causes of things being the way they are, you will see that things actually are the way they are supposed to be, like the clouds morphing into their current configuration from their previous state, and on their way to next - then this picture of the world will be evaluated as "as it should be" - which is a happy state. 


The ultimate trick is to hold multiple perspectives at once which is akin to being simultaneously in multiple worlds. The end result of this is that you end up having no single position. Having no position, you are immune to bad mood and are mentally invincible.

A great way to spend the time you sit in meditation is to play with these factors until you gain some level of mastery over them.