Diagnosed with severe depression
- Thread starter Ultimale
- Start date
And how many pills do they want you to take?
Like health food stores, or the 'health clinics' operated by the same of sort of people. Don't get me started on those... Any visitor will be shown to be allergic to dairy products, and strongly advised to cut those out of the diet. Also, many visitors will be shown to have a wheat intolerance, and be advised to buy quinoa bread and oat cakes and soya milk, which the health food store also has a nice range of, from a never before heard of manufacturers.
Also you'll come out with a bag of strange pills and herbal supplements, to combat unspecific ailments, and promote general wellbeing.
Now healthy living is all well and good, but these sort of people are trying to run a business. They want to sell you things, riding on the 'health' bandwagon, it makes their products sound serious and necessary, as 'medicines', for lifestyle aware, health conscious individuals.
I tend to see the prescription of mind altering chemicals (psychiatric meds) with similar skepticism. They don't generally cure problems; they just delete emotions, and/or personality... which is inhuman, in my opinion, if done as trivially as health food stores sell you pills, which is often the case nowadays.
Emotions, I feel, should be present for one reason or another. As a reaction to pleasant or unpleasant situations, they are appropriate, to aware us of danger, of other similarly unpleasant situations, to guide our future choices, and dictate the natural growth of our personalities. And I think 'appropriate' is an very important word to decide whether or not an emotion should or should not be deleted. It should never be done so trivially through a 5 minute appointment and then handed a prescription. And this 'appropriate' isn't from a behavioral point of view, but from a 'does the person feel their emotion is inappropriate' point of view.
That can and should take time, to ascertain why an emotion is present, and whether it is appropriate, or is genuinely an emotion without an environmental cause, stemming purely from the body's own chemical mismanagement, in which case it should be managed with medicine.
So my skepticism here (and comparison with health clinics) is due to the liberal prescription of these medicines. Psychiatry also rides on the 'health' bandwagon, making their pills sound necessary, as 'medicines', for lifestyle aware, health conscious individuals...
Self understanding is more important, and prerequisite. This is what I encourage.
Self understanding is one thing - but it's rarely as easy as that.
Personally I've never felt any drug 'deletes' an emotion, but helped me balance overactive and often destructive behavior. I'm better off on meds, I've felt/seen the effects and know that my doctor is right to put me on them. I chose not to be for personal reasons.
But this is something I personally hate discussed on an internet forum. There are things I would never reveal publicly (not even to close friends) and my doctors know my condition better than anyone else. It would be downright foolish to rely too heavily on opinions of people who don't know me or my condition - professional or not.
Personally I've never felt any drug 'deletes' an emotion, but helped me balance overactive and often destructive behavior. I'm better off on meds, I've felt/seen the effects and know that my doctor is right to put me on them. I chose not to be for personal reasons.
But this is something I personally hate discussed on an internet forum. There are things I would never reveal publicly (not even to close friends) and my doctors know my condition better than anyone else. It would be downright foolish to rely too heavily on opinions of people who don't know me or my condition - professional or not.
Do you actually understand what depression is?
When I am suffering depression I:
Cannot do mathematics in my head;
Cannot play a game of chess;
Do not have the desire to pick up my guitar and play a song;
Do not have the desire to pick up a book and read;
If I force myself to read, I read the same page over and over and retain nothing;
Cannot take a course or class;
If I force myself to take a class I drop out after 3 or 4 classes;
Have no desire to socialize;
If I force myself to socialize I stand around like a statue and say nothing to anyone.
Depression is the shutting down of feelings, emotions and mental abilities. It is the loss of desire, creativity, ambition, initiative. It is blocking out people around you because you feel nothing for them. You feel no amusment. You have no curiosity.
The severity of these symptoms varies with me depending on if I am going through a mild chronic depression or an acute severe depression. With severe depression I can only sit in a chair and stare. I don't have any "sad thoughts", depression is the shutting down of my mind and feelings.
At a severe crisis point if I don't get help I would lose my job, wouldn't be able to care for my family and wouldn't have the capacity to do anything about it.
The meds I take don't delete anything. They restore some normal functioning to my mind. Even on meds I can lose a lot, and meds are not the total solution. But the meds do not shut down my emotions.
What you say may have some application to some meds prescribed for other illnesses but this does not apply to me or anyone with illness similar to mine. No one would be happier than me if there were a solution that meant I would never need another pill for the rest of my life, but that solution just doesn't exist. As I wrote above, therapy and meditation and yoga and exercise are also very helpful to me, and I do a variety solutions for my illness, not just pills. But pills do not do the things you describe for my illness.
