to talk about antidepressants?

[Neednewjeans]

Who's on them then? Have they been a help or do you regret taking them? After a bad bout of PND most health professionals kind of 'gave up' with me as I wasn't willing to try them (mostly due to my GP saying my symptoms could become worse before getting any better which, at my worst, I couldn't get my head around).

So...I'd just like honest answers. Did they help? Do you regret it? Would you like to come off them? Or not?

Fluoxetine didn't suit me.It really, really didn't. Citalopram does. Now I'm me. I have good days, I have bad days - I laugh, I cry, I experience all of life's emotions. And, even better than all of that, I no longer want to hurt or kill myself on a daily basis, I no longer give in to the self harm urge every other day or so and my suicide plans are a distant memory, not a continual work in progress. I still cry like a child with rage, frustration or sadness sometimes, and I can laugh until it hurts at others. Now I straighten my hair because I like how it looks, not because it gives me an excuse to press hot metal plates into my skin. I have a sex drive - complete with not wanting sex, and being as horny as a flock of unicorns. I am alive. And even when it hurts, and is so very hard, it's not torture. It used to be. I doubt I'll ever come off these tablets and for that I am more grateful than I can express.

CBT - tried it.

People need to work hard at CBT & do 'homework'

I couldn't even make a cup of tea let alone do any homework for CBT because i was suffering from undiagnosed, severe chronic depression.
aka Major Depressive Disorder.

But after finally being a lot more honest with the CMHT now i'm on anti-psychotics too but on a low dose being titrated up. & on a high i feel like i want to float right out the door & keep running & running; some people take illegal drugs to feel like this)

yes anti depressants did save me from being sectioned as i was almost catatonic with depression 2 yEears ago.
I don't want to name which meds as some are good for some people (eg pure SSRIs; but SNRIs are better for other people; some people take the older meds - everyone & everyone's condition is different.
I tried 2 SSRIs didn't work; but the 3rd AD - an SNRI - has been effective.

anyone who belongs to the 'pull yourself together' school of thought; should try not actually being able to move to get water or to wash; i live alone so hid it well but couldn't function at work - started not turning up at all so really was my colleagues who got me the right help as i 'wasn't myself'.

As you may have guessed i've got other MH problems & actually i think the CMHT aren't being strictly honest about them to me but who knows?

I would recommend ADs for severe depression, counselling etc only works when you start to recover + ADs aren't 'happy pills' they just lift you up enough to function better than before; & keep you off rock bottom; i can still get depressed & suicidal but not as bad or for as long periods as before.

I took dosulepin for 18 months for a horrendous bout of depression that hit me like a train. I would be dead now if I had not taken them. No doubt whatsoever. Depression untreated is a terminal illness in my opinion. Anyone who has never experienced it can never understand. My sil told me her family don't get depressed cos her family just would not stand for it. So much ignorance.

Ps weaned myself off them easily as I began to feel alive again. Gradually reduced dose over 3 months. Been good since but am vigilant for symptoms of it returning.

Good to hear other people's experiences of depression etc by the way; glad that many of you found ADs to be useful too.

The Seroxat during the 90s made me suicidal

I'm now on Citalopram and feel great No plans to come off it.

I don't know if this is the right thing to say but I do feel comforted that so many of you have been through depression/anxiety as it makes me feel not as alone and insane.

I think it must take tremendous bravery to take ADs. I wish I was braver and could give them a go but I just have this mental block with it.

If I was brave, Neednewjeans, I'd be dead. For me, ADs take the edge off for a while and allow me to function. I found that they blunted the low and made me feel like I could actually talk and go to work. When I'm going down, like now, I can go days without speaking apart from to the kids I teach. Self-service checkouts are my friend because I can't even manage to chat to the checkout operator. With ADs I can keep going a bit longer.

I found CBT crap - if you don't believe that the negative thoughts aren't true then it doesn't really help that much. I am that much of a crap failure, so pretending it isn't true doesn't help anyone.

I've been back on Sertraline for almost a year. I almost feel like me again. Almost.

And I call being scared to get out of bed in the morning because you are so crippled by anxiety/depression an illness. It IS physical. Starts off in the brain sure enough but depression DOES manifest itself physically. It really fucks me off when people who know fairy shit about MH issues come on threads like these with their quotation marks and twattery. No wonder MH has such a stigma attached and the reason I had to ask my GP to write viral illness instead of depression/anxiety on my sick certificate when I was off work. People just do not understand this shit unless they have had it.

Latara my counselling is for what caused my near breakdown a disclosure for stuff that happened many years ago very nearly broke me I started tht about 2 weeks before meds even with the AD's I was still having days of going to get ready for a shower and coming out of the bedroom to have it 3/4 hours later. Even my counseller says that in the last month she's seen the emptyness disappear and a spark appear, I feel it to still have horrendous days but refuse to up meds for a few bad days.

hackmum I find your posts rather strange tbh. Do you have a medical background?

I really don't understand what you are trying to say. That "mental illness" doesn't exist? Or that medicating it isn't helpful/good/right?

"Yes, SSRIs and ECT do release chemicals into the brain. But it may be a mistake to assume that the depression is caused by a lack of chemicals in the first place. To take an analogy: if you have a headache, paracetamol will make you feel better. But the headache wasn't caused by a lack of paracetamol.

Let's put it another way. One of the things we know now about the way the brain works is that it responds to the environment. So if you are unhappy, that may cause the serotonin in your brain to drop. Replacing that serotonin may make you feel better, but it isn't addressing the cause of the depression."

A lot of common medical conditions are of unknown cause. Over 90% of high blood pressure is idiopathic (cause unknown). To use your analogy, if the doctor gives you a diuretic for your blood pressure, it works by acting on e.g. the kidney to absorb less salt and water. Result is your blood pressure drops. But for the vast vast majority of people there is nothing wrong with their kidneys. The medicine is just a tool that doctors use to bring the body back to its normal, 'safe' state. Yes, perhaps if some of these people ate a perfect diet and went running every day their blood pressure might drop a bit. But for some it wouldn't. And if people stayed unmedicated and were unlucky enough to be in the group whose blood pressure stayed high, then they may get cardiovascular disease. They may have a heart attack or stroke.

The exact same applies to depression/other mental illnesses. Yes, we may not know the exact cause of the neurotransmitter depletion (although science does have a better idea than I think you think it does), but we know that giving antidepressants can increase levels again and ultimately upregulate receptors that have become downregulated. We could alternatively tell these patients to just relax/take up exercise/have counselling/quit their job/whatever, and some may get better on their own. Some won't, and may commit suicide. That's why psychotropic medications cannot be disregarded. In many cases it can save lives, exactly the same as anti-hypertensives do.

Having suffered depression for many years (cyclical) I have read a lot on the subject.
My reading tells me that people who study these things have identified a chemical imbalance within the brain related to serotonin levels. As more women suffer from depression, I believe that this shows a correlation with hormonal changes being in some way related to depression, my depression kicked in with the onset of adolescence and I had my worst episode after the birth of my daughter.
But I also believe it has something to do with the way our neural pathways get formed within childhood.
I know that the science behind it is still in it's early stages but I am quite sure that in the future we will have a much greater understanding of how it is caused and why anti-depressants and cbt do work. Oh and will probably identify the genetic component too, depression certainly runs in my family, a great uncle of mine threw himself in front of a train way before 1965.
As for treating it, I have recently had the longest most stable period of my life which is definitely helped by being on bupropion and citalopram. But I also had some dbt (similar to cbt) and it has helped me totally change my outlook, on how I let my emotions effect me and moved me towards being a glass half full kind of person.
But without the bupropion I am sure that making those changes in my outlook would have been a lot lot harder.

And this:

"With physical illnesses, we can describe accurately what causes them, the progress of the disease, and (in many cases) how to cure them. "

Is flat out wrong. Ask any doctor.

Ah that's good then dotty i think it depends on what type of depression you have; i would go to a counsellor & just have nothing to tell them because my life is or should be fine & i've got no real problems; just mental illness which is really annoying because it's messing everything up.

Counselling is good for when you actually have problems that they can talk to you about; that's when talking therapies are a very good idea - i know for example my mum could do with counselling for some stuff from her childhood that still affects her; ADs wouldn't help her but would just mask those issues.

Hope it continues to help you & be a positive experience.
I don't wish to downplay the good parts of counselling & CBT for everyone; it just depends on the type of mental illness or condition that you have as to whether it's helpful or not.
Sorry i wasn't thinking of everyone else's experiences but just my own when i typed about the CBT.
Take care.

Sorry when i said i've got no real problems i meant everything is fine except for my MH problems.

The MH problems are what is a real problem for me right now & talking won't help tbh not sure what will right now; i just feel very hyper & agitated; hopefully it will calm down soon sorry.

My dh had picked the tree to hang himself from. Luckily he realised that what he was feeling was not normal and sought help - just in time. His psychiatrist pointed out that our seratonin levels can drop as we get older. He has ADs and is coming to terms with taking them long term. It is like living with a different person. There should be NO SHAME here. Your body is missing something. Like diabetics need insulin, some people need other drugs.

Bupcakes - I didn't 'believe' in people being off work for stress/anxiety/depression. I sure as hell do now. I totally agree you need to have been there.

There are two big wrong images surrounding anti depressants.

One is that they are a magic fix it.
The other is that they are for crazy people.

Yes therapy can be fantastic once you find the right type. But for a lot of people even the idea of therapy can be overwhelming until you are in a certain level of calm - which ADs can help you reach.

They don't always fix things, but the way I have always explained it to people is that they give me the breathing space back from how I'm feeling to try and look at things rationally.

It can take a bit of playing around with, getting the right medication for you - just like any other medication, its never a case of one size fits all. If you get decent medical support, though, this can be done relatively painlessly.

I've been on various different medications for several years now, and the only thing I regret is not trying them earlier. I was skeptical and - frankly - frightened of them. I so wish I hadn't have been.

One of my wonderful teachers put it to me like this when I really started to crash: You wouldn't expect to walk on two broken legs. The casts will help them mend. But in the meantime, the crutches help you wobble your way through life without it being so utterly impossible.

Need I was actually looking for a job this time last year attending interviews etc I was fine. Now been told under no circumstances to even think of looking just now.

sirboob that's the great thing about ad, it gives you some perspective and a more grounded normal one.
when your really ill everything seems so hard and such a battle. for me my ad just helped me to care a little less about small stuff instead of making mountains out of it.

They take the edge off. They make the difference between hiding in bed all day because you can't face the world, and actually managing to get up and dressed.

I think a lot of people are cynical about ADs, the same as they are about chronic pain, and mental illness in general: they can't believe it because they have never been faced with it.

NeedNewJeans It's so true.

I watched my mum stay in bed for 6 weeks when I was 20, she was severley depressed. I sympathised but I couldn't empathise. I wanted to tell her to sort herself out. Then when I found myself in that same position, it was DH telling me to sort myself out.

It's not just a case of feeling a bit down in the dumps. It's so, so much worse. It wasn't the just feeling "down", it was the whole feeling of discomfort. I didn't feel happy doing anything. I couldn't sit in the lounge and watch telly as I didn't want to do that, I felt sad reading books. So I just lay in bed trying to sleep and then crying when anyone woke me up because I just wanted to be asleep so that my brain/thoughts could be switched off.

SirBoob - I agree. A lot of the issues with my DH was that he felt ashamed. He is a bloke, with a responsible job and all. People like him don't need to lock themselves in their office and cry, do they? Killing himself became the better option!