Have you ever been treated for depression?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I suffered from depression when I was eighteen, which finally lead to my being diagnosed OCD. (Which isn’t a picnic, obviously, but you cope.)

It was like, nothing made me happy. Not even the little things in life. Not my favorite books, or foods, not going out with my friends, or listening to music I liked. Everything was just…blah. I couldn’t eat at all – I felt nauseous all the time. It didn’t help that my best friend turned all flakey and ended up telling everyone we knew about it.

(Basically it would be like she’d see someone we went to school with, “Oh hey, how’s Guin?” “Oh, she’s not doing so good – she’s in therapy right now.” WTF, bitch? And she didn’t seem to see the big deal. She said it was nothing to be ashamed of, so why should I care if people knew? sigh)

I started seeing a psychiatrist AND a therapist. I was put on paxil (which I still take to treat the OCD), and my therapist taught me ways to deal with OCD. In my case, it’s not like germs, or having to open the door a certain way. I’ll become obsessed with a certain idea, and I’ll constantly be thinking of it, scared to death, to the the point that I can’t sleep*.

The sucky thing about OCD is that you really can’t reason yourself out of it, because the more you try, the more you obsess – duh. :wink: So the best way I found was that to distract myself with something else. Breathing exercises, meditation, or find some positive thing to latch on to – an art project, a book series, etc.

And gradually, things became better. No it wasn’t easy – it took WORK. But things definitely got better.

Anyone who says, “just get over it”, or “everyone feels sad” needs a swift kick in the ass. Depression fucking SUCKS. And people who ridicule me for taking meds are cordially invited to bite me. (Not directed at anyone here). I hear people always liken it to “a crutch.” Well, if you saw someone walking with a crutch, would you yank it away from them and say, “Walk on your own!”? Of course not. You use a crutch because your body is impaired in some way, and you need that crutch to help it along.
Well, same with anti-depressants. There’s something wrong in your brain, some chemical impairment, and meds correct that. It’s a small price to pay, if you ask me.

*Like when I was ten, I once got stomach flu – I mean a serious case of it. After that, for about six months, every time I had a little bit of a stomach ache, I was terrified that I was going to throw up. I couldn’t sleep, I’d be up all night, and the worst part was, obviously, that my stomach WOULD be upset, from nerves, obviously. :wink: If we had pop in the house, I’d gulp it down to settle my stomach. If not, I just drank glass after glass of water, convinced it would help. Don’t ask me what the idea was behind it.
If I heard someone else was sick, that made it even worse. The weird thing that got me over it? The next time I actually did get the stomach flu. After that, for some reason, the obsession left. Don’t ask me why. OCD is fucking weird.

42

My war with depression is a life-long struggle. It’s not always visible, but it’s always there. I had been in therapy a few times when I was younger, but each time the therapist concluded that I don’t need therapy. There’s only one medication I tolerate, and it works more for my insomnia than my depression.

Someone should do a case study of my father’s family. Every single person shows symptoms of chronic depression, but it manifests itself differently in each individual. And a greater-than-average number of them eventually develop Alzheimer’s.

43

Couldn’t really answer the poll, because my treatment in the past has been different from my current treatment (which will be different from my treatment in the immediate future, most likely, at the recommendation of my therapist).

In the past: talk therapy alone, and talk therapy with meds. Meds pretty much don’t fix me and give me all sorts of unpleasant side effects, so I won’t take them anymore.

Currently: talk therapy alone. My current therapist is the only one I’ve ever had who’s been helpful and effective. She’s worth her weight in gold.

Immediate future: will most likely be adding in some form of alternative treatment, once I hunt down a source for it; which came out of a recent conversation / suggestion from my therapist.

44

Mine too. I take meds but to be honest, I wouldn’t be taking them at all if it weren’t for my therapist’s encouragement. It would be so easy to throw them away after the first week or so of horrible side effects, but having someone who regularly checks up on me has been essential for me to “stay on board.”

Personally, I hate going to psychiatrists. I know they’re doing a noble job, but I have yet to met an MD that has made me feel as comfortable as my therapist does. All I ever seem to do with my psychiatrists is argue with them or reluctantly take their prescriptions slips. I’m just a bag of chemicals to them, it seems.

45

My option isn’t listed: I’ve been diagnosed, but I was never really treated. It was supposedly just a low level depression based on my agoraphobia, but now that I find that it completely disappears when I don’t have a headache, I believe it’s something else.

Plus, I’ve been on antidepressants for my OCD all my life. And some people think that OCD is actually an odd type of anxious depression. I’ve had all the treatments for that, along with ADHD when I was (mis)diagnosed as a kid.

46

I currently use therapy/treatment/medication not covered by the above.

I really wasn’t sure how to answer the poll. This reply makes it sound like I’m using acupuncture or something, which isn’t the case.

I have struggled with depression at least since adolescence. I used to be severely depressed in my early 20s and during that time I took medication (which was ineffective), received regular therapy and was even hospitalized at one point. I have since received the treatment necessary to become functional and basically happy. It’s not really accurate to say that I’m not depressed any more, but I no longer take medication and have little trouble managing it with behavioral activation and CBT techniques found in various workbooks and manuals.

I would say I’m ‘‘recovered’’ but that is misleading. I used to have major depressive episodes lasting weeks with maybe 1 or 2 weeks of normal mood in between–just constant misery. During those times I would be actively suicidal or at least wanting to self-harm and I refused to get out of bed or leave the house. Now it’s different… I’m vulnerable to depression on the weekends for a few hours a week, and during stressful events in my life, but I rarely if ever go down the ‘‘suicidal or self-destructive’’ path, I just think, ‘‘God, this sucks, I hope it goes away soon’’ and keep on going through the motions of ‘‘normal person’’ even if I don’t feel normal. I’m pretty sure I have levels of depression that would cause the average person to seek help, but it just doesn’t seem like as big of a deal because it used to be so much worse. Where depression once completely derailed my life, it now just makes it harder from time to time.

Once I’m finished with graduate school I do plan to return to formal CBT treatment for depression and maybe seek help from an internet addiction counselor. But I don’t consider either of those things necessary, just helpful. Despite the lingering issues, I would rate my overall satisfaction with my life as about an 8/10. That has to mean something.

47

You used prescription medication and psyhcotherapy/talk therapy in the past, but are not using it now.

48

Okay, then go ahead and disregard one vote for ‘‘alternative’’ treatment. I responded that way because I’d like to think I am treating myself, regularly, with CBT, exercise, and meditation, all of which have been proven effective in ameliorating depression. Because I have had CBT in the past, because my husband is a trained clinical therapist, and because I am only using workbooks that have shown proven efficacy in randomized controlled trials, I feel pretty confident that I’m using the techniques effectively. Nevertheless, it’s not technically therapy.

49

Talk therapy only, for about a year.

I attributed the onset to a hormone treatment I was on, although that was never verified. Stopped the hormone, started the talk, it lifted in due time. My baseline is sorta on the lower end of the happiness scale anyway (our friend Al Bundy’s baseline is obviously on the very high end of the scale), but I do recognize that I was in true depression at that time.

50

Currently in therapy/on medication was my vote

Anxiety/clinical depression here.

I have been on Celexa for 5+ years. Although I am not currently seeing my therapist on a regular basis, I have seen her on and off as needed for the past three years. In the winter of 2008, she suggested that I might suffer from ADHD (non-hyperactive, inattentive type) as well. That made all the difference in the world for me! I wasn’t able to start medication for it immediately, because I was still nursing my second child. When he finally weaned this summer, I was able to get a prescription for Adderall (5mg) and was told to use it on an as-needed basis. It has been a life-changing experience for me! I can focus and get things done like a “normal” person, and I no longer worry so much about not getting things accomplished and feel depressed that I am unable to reach my full potential. Certainly a very interesting combination of issues and treatments.

51

That’s been my experience as well. I’ve intermittedly seen several psychs over a ten-year period and none of them seem to be particulary interested in the fine details of a patients condition----they ask, are you depressed? Are you anxious? Are you suicidal? And then they write a prescription. Ironically, the one psych that seemed to be interested and whom I liked a lot has a history of writing himself amphetamine prescriptions and is currently being charged with Medicare fraud, according to the Baltimore Sun.

52

Currently on a low dose of Prozac, which evens me out around my period. I still get the blues around that time of the month but nowhere near as bad.

I was definitely severely depressed (but not suicidal) in college - broken heart. Walked around in a fog for nearly 2 years, had no idea my utter lack of desire to do anything, be around people, and wanting to sleep all the time was depression. I wish I’d known.

53

I’ve never been treated for depression, and I used to also think, somewhat scornfully, “They can just get over it”.

Then I started making some friends who were depressed, and I am compassionate, I swear I am, so I started listening more, and began to understand a little.

Then I started to think - what makes me eternally cheery? Is it really something I do? Sometimes, but other times it’s just my default. And if I am eternally cheery, might others not be eternally the opposite?

Then I started realizing it was rather like PMS. Before my period, I cry at everything. I cry at AT&T commercials where they call India and talk to their family. These days I am a tough strong woman, and it infuriated me that this was happening and I had no control over it.

Then I started experiencing some bouts of seasonal affective disorder and that was what pretty much clinched it. It’s all brain chemistry. Whatever chemical I have that lets me be eternally cheerful, and, even when I am feeling a bit down because I haven’t seen the sun in weeks, still fight it off? Other people may not have that chemical, or have it in much less quantities, or maybe they have some other chemical that fights it off.

These days I feel for depressed people, though admittedly, I am still impatient with those who do absolutely nothing about helping themselves and complain all the time - to make it clear, there is a specific person on the boards I am talking about, and most of you know who it is. And I count my lucky stars for having the nature I have.

54

Do you have a light box? I love my light box in the winter. I don’t get a chance to use it every day and can really feel the difference when I don’t.

55

I think it’s possible many people don’t know just how many depressives they know. Possily because many people with depression don’t know they have it.

There are multiple types of depression. Most people are familiar with the “laying in bed, crying all day” type. They are less familiar with the opposite symptomology (melancholic depression), where people become emotionally numb and cope by becoming engrossed in compulsive activity. It’s the latter who don’t always know they’re sick and are able to slide through the radar. They are the ones people say, when they commit suicide, “But they seemed alright!”

I have that form of illness. At my worse, I was walking ten or eleven miles aimlessly across town, in the hottest part of the summer or the coldest cold of the winter. If you had stopped me and asked what the hell was I doing, I would have said, “Just getting some exercise”, but really I was just allowing myself to daydream about suicide with the added bonus of activity-induced endorphins and site-sighting. And then I would come home and continue to daydream, adding other “bad” thoughts on top of them. Like banging my head or slicing my wrists. I’d just sit on the couch and think of all the wonderful ways I could hurt myself and/or die. One night I think I even went to bed with a make-shift noose tied around my neck. When you live alone, you can get away with all kinds of craziness.

But at work, no one would have never known that’s how I spent my weekends. I can put on the most convincing facade with the best of them. The rapid weight loss is what made people finally ask, “Is everything alright?” But behaviorally, I don’t think anyone (except for family) considered that I was depressed. I am a private person, not the debbie downer type. People usually come to me to unload their problems because I am a good listener. But even when I was drawing nooses on all of my papers, I could still smile and laugh and do my job. I definitely would have been one of those suicide cases that no one would have suspected.

Because we’re engrained to believe that depression is this stereotypical “crybaby” disease, I’ve been in denial for the longest time about whether or not I even have it. I still tell my doctor, when I’m feeling well, “I don’t think I’m depressed and I don’t think I ever was.” But then sure enough, something happens at work (usually something small and stupid) and the “This is a good day to die” switch is turned on in my brain. Even WITH medication this happens. I think the only difference between my brain with and without drugs is that now I am aware that those thoughts aren’t good and I recognize them as irrational, whereas before I allowed myself to marinate in them and like them.

56

I had really, really good ones until I became officially an adult, and had my insurance severely limited. All of them were more psychiatrist/psychologists. But now I’m stuck with the guys who have more patients than they can handle, dealing with multiple clinics, and only having 15 minutes per patient–not much time to do anything.

I wish the good psychiatrists that took adult Medicaid weren’t so far away.

Also, one thing I’ve never been is good at faking my emotions, so I’ve always marveled at the depressives that cover it up.

57

I have previously been treated for depression over a period of YEARS, with various talk-therapies, medications and hospitalisations that culminated in a series of ECT treatments ten years ago.

Since then, I have needed no meds or therapies of any kind, and I have not experienced any depressive episodes that would warrant treatment.

It’s not that I’m deliriously happy now, I’m just not miserable or suicidal anymore.

And believe it or not, it makes my life very comfortable…when I can wake up and feel OK about the day ahead (no matter how tedious or inconvenient it’s gonna be) it’s a huge improvement upon those dark days when I didn’t want to wake up at all.

YMMV and all of that, but I am grateful for modern medicine and how it’s helped my medical condition.

:slight_smile:

58

I was depressed for a few months a long time ago. I managed to snap out of it by telling myself how much of a moron I was and how great my life is. I’ve been optimistic ever since. On an intellectual level, I understand that this doesn’t work for some people. On an emotional level, I can’t help but not understand.

59

In my early twenties, in the summer of '01, my sister, thinking I was to commit suicide imminently, took me to the ER. I was forced into an outpatient group therapy. Sometime around then my family staged a sorta depression intervention. I think the intervention was before the ER. I was put on been on Paxil, Serazyn(sp?), and Prozac. I tried individual therapy. Nothing mentioned was tried long term and the only thing that showed any results was Prozac.

For the next decade I suffered and the only thing that kept me alive was the thought of hurting my family. This summer I reached my lowest point ever. Then one day I wrote how I was feeling down. Then I broke, or what was broken broke. These last six months I have been better than ever. I thought I was magically healed at first, but I now realize that I am now just able to fight rather than be defeated uncontested.

I feel like a new person. I am not that miserable person who ironically called himself Ataraxy. That’s why I changed my name. I don’t know what I did, really, but it worked.

60

I can only assume, then, that what you suffered from was a situational response to something and not something that would meet the diagnostic criteria for depression.