Antidepressant meds and you...

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After my dad died when I was 15, I went on prozac for about a month. Didnt notice anything, so I stopped taking it.

Some time after that, while I was still in high school and suffering from major depressive episodes, I went to see a psychologist. The guy just got me to talk about all of my problems, but didnt offer any help or advice really. I felt he was useless and that I wasnt getting anything out of it, and this coloured my opinion of therapy in general for quite a few years.

Towards the end of my university days, still suffering from depression, I asked the warden of my residence (himself a psychologist with the university) if he knew of anyone that could help. I had one session with him to establish, well, where I was in life, and then he arranged for me to see another psychologist in the university.

After a few sessions, she diagnosed me with dysthymic disorder, a long term mild depressive disorder, and said I had likely suffered some sort of serious depression while in high school. She suggested medication, but I was against it. I started on a course of cognitive behavioural therapy, which helped me recognize the causes of my moods, and what was a good reason to get upset, and what wasnt. I became a lot more self aware that year, learned a lot about myself, became more confident, and eventually went on to anti depressants (Citalopram). Didnt notice any side effects actually. By that point, I had learned enough about myself to cope with depression, but realized I needed a little push to completely break the cycle. Citalopram helped me do that. I was on it for most of the second half of the year, right up until I landed in London.

The thing is... everyone is responsible for their own moods and attitudes, and in a perfect world, everyone would be able to help themselves without needing drugs or therapy. But it isnt a perfect world. Life is hard, and sometimes people just dont stop to think that actually it isnt that bad. You get conditioned to think in certain, often destructive ways, and breaking habits when you dont even see them as habits is next to impossible.

My therapist also said she finds it strange that people dont baulk when you say you are physically unwell and so going to see a doctor, so why should seeing a psychologist be any different?

Yes, such treatments can easily become crutches, but I think the "self help" books are worse for this. They are pop treatments sold to the gullible, often with little practicality for a person's life.

 

Excellent post Proteus za.

The simple answer is fear.

 

Now that I like. It makes sense, and it's tangible....not "too cute" at all....unless it was baby blue or something.

 

If you see your brother, mother, child with the word Love written on their arm, are you going to think they're crazy and want to commit them, or ask them why they did it?

Or, if you are a stranger and see ten people with the same word written on their arm, are you going to think, "Gee, everyone must be crazy today!" or wonder if it means something?

That being said, I would agree that 'Love' is pretty generic and isn't necessarily effective. It is more of the placement, as people who cut generally cut their arms/wrists.

And as for using a band/ribbon - they have become so commonplace (hell, I have one to promote Battlestar Galactica) that they don't mean anything anymore. If I see someone wearing one of the Livestrong-type bracelets of any color, I usually ignore it. A single word, however, is certainly a knew type of 'band.' It would interest me.

 

My mother was addicted to prescription drugs, my brother dropped out of school due to a drug addiction and one of my children is a hypochondriac who looks at mental health web sites and diagnoses herself -- yeah, I'd just think they were crazy. But then the Addam's family has nothing on the Bruno family.

Saber, I didn't see it on a single person -- so it's quite likely people who did write on themselves were in a vast minority and most people only saw one or two with the word "Love". I don't think it would have changed their opinion at all -- nor do I believe the average person would have thought much about it. The entire effort was not very well publicized, and it should have been.

 

Haha I only saw it on one other person - it was a thing started on facebook, with about a million people 'attending' the event. It seems to be in it's first years, hopefully it will build up steam and they will advertise better.

I think that statement can be applied to any and all movements where people wear bands, or ribbons, or things like that. If even a few people notice and bother to ask, then they are a few more who are at least aware of the fact that people care. Whether or not *they* care is up to their personal opinion.

I still don't know about the whole crazy thing - I've seen lots of people (before I was aware of this event) with writing on their arm, and my first reaction has never been "oh what a nutcase, look at that goofball with those crazy words on their arm!" To each his own, I guess.

 

Well, that's how these things start. I (vaguely) remember when the pink ribbon was new. It was odd and unusual, and took a few years (and a LOT of advertisement) to get going.

Still, I think Splunge made a great point with "Love" already being taken... by a lot of things. It's fine as a slogan, but not as a symbol.

As for the stigma still attached with mental illness, it's an issue of lack of understanding and knowledge. We've seen it here in this very thread with Blades' posts. I don't mean to single you out, Blades, but your posts really illustrate how a simple and relatively minor lack of understanding can radically change someone's look on things. People today understand disease, they even understand things like cancer and AIDS, but most don't understand depression, or schizophrenia, or psychosis, or anything else. Because they don't understand it, mental illness becomes a boogeyman.

 

I was going to say it just sounded like some facebook thing

It smacks too much of the emo kids who carve or right love on their wrists and arms for 'irony' value or for attention. The last thing those attention seeking brats need as an excuse to pass it off as something viable and 'proof' that their suffering is real because others are doing it too.

To glorify a social trend for attention as an awareness for depression is more than a little cheapening to the cause they are trying to represent.

Physical health is taught in schools but everytime in the UK there has been a petition to teach more about mental health it has been passed off as "inappropriate" and "too delicate" to teach due to the number of people who would either feel insulted by the classes, self-diagnose or announce truthfully or otherwise that it was a condition another classmate suffered.

 

If I saw ten people, sure. But I didn't see any (although I wasn't looking for it). I would also like to point out that writing something on your wrists at a time of year that most people wear long sleeves also raises the possibility that people won't notice.

 

And your degree on the subject is from where? Your Daddy?

 

Perhaps that and the violence aspect that surrounds many mental issues (either violence to yourself or others). I've never heard of the flu, pneumonia, or even cancer spurring someone to violence.... The stigma of mental issues also come from countless cases of brutality.

 

Depending on the form of cancer it can actually trigger violent episodes, it's quite a strange phenominon. A lot of medication for physical symptoms induce highly negative emotional responses as well.

It also tends to not neccessarily be the majority of mental health issues that cause violence or exhibit violence but the ones that are seen most clearly and are grabbed by the media the fastest and most frequently.

 

IMHO, the stigma also comes from the idea that we are in total control of our own minds 100% of the time. Therefore, if we have any problems in our minds, then it means 2 things:

1: We caused the problem ourself, so the problem is our fault -- a result of a lack of self-discipline or morality.

2: We can fix the problem by simply exercising self discipline, morality, and courage.

I don't buy either of those positions. No matter how strong a human may be, sufficient force can break that human's arm. I see the mind in a similar light -- no matter how strong-willed you are or how many techniques you employ, your mind can be broken if sufficient force is applied to it. And as some arms are stronger than others, some minds are stronger than others. It has little relation to the morality, decency, or character of the person suffering therefrom.

 

LKD, you nailed it.

Just like why people are proficient at different things to a wildly varying degree, there's a huge variance in how good people are at self-reflection.

I'd argue that people that actually ARE good at it - whether inherently or through rigorous training such as cognitive behavioural therapy - do not personally see the need for psychotherapy. Just as a healthy person doesn't feel the need for a regular doctor.

However, it's intellectual mishap to expand this idea into thinking that psychotherapy is unnecessary for everyone. To the person with healthy mind, yes it pretty much is unnecessary, but how about the poor sods that didn't get their fair share of mental health?

 

But not all mental health is based on how good you are at self reflection or therapy, physical affects upon the brain can cause mental illness as well.

 

That's true 8ppl, but I wasn't contending *that*.

Once the root cause of a mental condition is known, it merely requires administering the proper treatment(s) for it. Or trying to find one, if none are known yet.

It's FINDING the root cause that is the hard part. This isn't any different from how stuff works at Ordinary Diseases Inc., apart from the fact that measuring the whats, hows and whys of one's mental health are much more dependant on how the patients themselves can "point to where it hurts". And that, if anything, is where your mad skillz (or lack thereof) at self-reflection are truly measured.

Or have I missed something else entirely?

 

I have serious issues with psychology and psychoactive medications.

First of all, psychologist seem to me to be a sort of "paid friend". Like a waiter, priest, or whore.

Secondly, sadness, anger, hatred--these emotions exist for good reason. We don't have feelings, we are feelings. Maybe instead of popping pills you should leave your husband, or remove your parents from your life. Maybe you should become "crazy", and stop eating meat, or cancel your internet access/cable tv.

If the vast majority of people are crazy (religion..?), then what sort of baseline does that provide?

The key to happiness is relationships. If you are unhappy, it is because there is a bad relationship in your life. Change that. Can't stand to be alone? Change that. Grow.

Pills are for quitters. The worst part is, since those drugs have to bypass the blood/brain barrier in order to be effective, the psychoactive chemical contained therein has to be extremely soluble in water, hence, any trace amount not reacted within the body of Jane/John Doe Capitulated goes down the toilet, won't be easily removed by water-purification, and then comes right out my tap. Thanks loser. Now we can both forget the things that need to be changed.

 

Congrats, Blades. I think people now have an easier target for criticism.

 

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Two concepts for you -- dose (in this case dilution) and multi-stage water purification which include caustics (not much survives the process).

 

I'll admit that some psychotherapists are douchebags. Yet I wouldn't put them in the same category as a whore. Come to think of it, I wouldn't put priests or waiters in the same catagory as a whore, at least the way you set it up.

Waiters, priests, and mental health professionals provide a service. There's nothing wrong with that. As others mentioned earlier, you go to medical professionals for expert advice on matters that you do not have a great deal of knowledge about. Your advice on how to solve problems sounds a bit to me like telling someone who has cancer to:

"figure out the correct dosages of deoxypraladine, hydrospasodone, and corticolucade*, loser. If you need help doing that you must be a loser."

You are assuming that they know exactly what the problem is and that anyone with half a brain would know what to do about it. That assumption is wrong, no other way to say it.

And you don't seriously think that there's a direct connection between what goes down the toilet and what comes out of your tap? I'm sure that your town has a water purification plant. Take your kids there on a field trip.

I understand that some people can become dependent on therapists and pills. But "some" doesn't mean "all". I've seen some people who have been really aided by mental health care. They were not "quitters" any more than a person with a cold is a "quitter" for taking some Nyquil. What sort of experiences have you had that have made you so vitriolic on the matter?

*I made those drugs up -- I don't know the true names of cancer drugs, and I doubt anyone without specialized training does either.