To be staggered at how many people are prescribed Anti-depressants.

[TheoriginalLEM]

People who seem to be pretty much on the ball with ok lives.

At my place of work there are four of us, that i know of, on the same medication (There are only about 20 employees in total)

Another mother at Dd's school, my friend who i met at dd's playgroup.

My friend from a previous job and both of her children.

So these are people who i know are on meds. People who have been happy to disclose this information to me. I don't have a large circle of friends or aquaintances so the sample group, if you like, is small.

Both my mother and my eldest Dd have both been offered Ad's.

I suffer from long term anxiety and depression and feel like the ADs help me. My Dr has expressed the view that this is something I will need for life.

Thats a lot of people who i KNOW are medicated. Why is this ? is it because life and expectations are such that people are suffering from mental illness or are people being given drugs when they are dealing with life events and should be offered strategies to cope. My personal experience is long waiting lists for counselling that wasn't that effective and given drugs to help in the absence of therapy.

I can't help but wonder why this is, what the statistics are.

I agree with you op

There have been lots of very interesting replies

I know. I have severe mental health issues myself and I know it's not that easy but often fixing the causes can resolve the symptoms.

My mental health is rubbish because my physical health is rubbish which is knowing on into my relationships and friendships. Another time in my life a bad relationship was the cause so I made myself single and got better steadily over the following months.

It's finding out why you're feeling like that and either accepting it can't be changed (like my health) and making peace with it or challenging it and changing it.

It is very very hard to put into practice though I accept that

True Morris.

My great grandmother went into an institution after her last child was born and never came out - think she lived another 20 years. The family view I think is that she had hormonal depression of some kind. I never knew any of this until I was well into my 20s.

In 1951 just before the first antipsychotic medication I think there were 150000 psychiatric beds in this country - now there are 27000.

OP I know you are not talking about people who seem like they would have been in an asylum in 1950 - but maybe some of them would have been, if it had not been for medication.

But they don't work for everyone, some people even get worse on them and for some of those that they do work for it will be the placebo effect. I believe that St John's Wort has been shown to be equally effective as anti-d for mild depression. Mindfulness is also meant to be very helpful as well as talking therapies but anti'd are probably the cheap option.

I find there are two types of 'depression' - first is clinical depression, a mental health disorder where the sufferer has uncontrollable low mood, lethargy, etc etc. However second type, is that there seems to be a growing group of people with life acopia - they are not clinically depressed, but can't deal with things day to day life throws at them. Every minor problem is a disaster, there is no effort to look for solutions to problems, just a woe-is-me, look how terrible my life is, I have it so much worse than everyone else attitude. These people seek help from their GPs, who have nothing to offer but antidepressants in the hope they might help a few of them. Just my opinion.

throwing - I've just reserved that book at my local library. Thanks for the recommendation.

I look quite together from the outside. In fact I am quite together. But the only reason I am so together is because the medication lets me be that way. Without the antidepressants I was often rocking backwards and forwards in my chair trying to calm myself with deep breaths because I was terrified. I've struggled with depression since I was a teenager (am in my 40s now) but frankly it was all quite bearable in comparison to how I felt when I was struck with anxiety after my first child was born. I was paralysed with fear, with intrusive thoughts, and frankly life was unbearable. Much more unbearable than when I was just depressed.

People who know I take the medication are surprised because I have always seemed so 'normal', they would even describe me as fairly chilled.

I did try talking therapies. They helped a lot with depression, but they were a lot less effective with my anxiety.

This also surprises me.

I often think people should be prescribed running rather than ADs. I think for many, possibly the majority of, people that would probably be more effective tbh.

Pregabalin and mirtazepine are massively over prescribed in the community. Almost every person I work with is prescribed one, or the other, or both!

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/15/upsurge-prescription-drug-abuse-uk-pregabalin-gabapentin?client=safari

I don't think modern life is conducive to good mental health - I read a fascinating research article linking schizophrenia to city living, based on our flight or fight instinct being triggered by strangers, as humans are designed to live in small tribal communities. It stated (I presume correctly) that the larger the town the higher the rate of mh issues.

"A lot of people on them ime are just chronically lonely."

Yes, I did think this when the elderly lady I visit was put on ADs by her GP after saying she was unhappy. Her unhappiness is clearly due to poor health and loneliness (almost all her friends and family are dead now) rather than any else. But hey. 10mg of Citalopram seems to be making her feel better, so why not.

It's definitely something I've thought about, OP. I've been on ADs for 5 years, keep thinking I'm getting close to we'll enough to come off them then crash again. So I am on them for the foreseeable and fully accept I'll be pregnant on them (sertraline, so generally accepted as the safest option).

As part of my job I see claims from students as to why they couldn't submit work or sit an exam. They had to get an extra person in for this job as the sheer volume of students reporting anxiety and depression has exploded. I think it is absolutely a good thing that people feel they can be more open about struggling but I wonder if the numbers of people suffering have always been so high.

I think it's a mixture of increased openness, life being harder for many and - please don't flame - lower resilience. I feel that I'm a very soft person and that, had I developed a thicker skin in childhood, I would be better able to deal with my feelings. And I see that in others too.

I'm surprised by how many people I know are or have been on antidepressant so totally agree OP.

Pregabalin and gabapentin are nerve pain medications as well as being anti seizure medications

Do they do anything for people who ant depressed? I mean surely if you don't need them to address a chemical imbalance then they don't make you feel any better? Or would they also give you more happy hormones if you know what I mean?

A big stress in my life is dealing with a child with ASD - I can't change that, I can't make a lifestyle change that will eliminate ASD, I can try and get intervention for him and coping strategies for the family but I need something to help me get there.

Lots of people without mental health conditions are prescribed anti depressants for other conditions.

A few years ago my dh visited his GP to get signed off work with a bad back. He mentioned it was getting him down and he wanted to return to work, being fed up sitting at home.

The doctor offered him Anti depressants . Neither of us thought that was necessary. AD's do seem to be easily prescribed .

I am prescribed mertizapine. The reason given with that it has a sedative effect and seeing that I was often sleeping for as little as 2hrs a night it was a welcome relief to suddenly have a full night sleep again.

The ads would have had a dual effect for your dad if he had sciatica. At low doses they're an effective painkiller whilst also lifting his mood. Assuming they wanted to give him amytriptiline

I have suffered with depression in the past for which I was prescribed AD with great results... i have strategies for dealing with it now, not always 100% but doing ok. However i recently had to consult GP due to work stress/high BP. All she offered me were AD. I explained it was situational and I wasn't depressed. She just said I should take them. I didn't... i had some time off, dealt with physical illness/fatigue and got through it. So I can see this from both sides. They can be great when prescribed for the right reasons. But I feel they are the GP's easy get out on occasion.

I'll be on mood stabilisers and ADs for the rest of my life, probably. I'd likely be dead without them.

Having said that, when my mood went south a couple of years ago, in a bigger way than I'd ever experienced, my GP sent me packing after five minutes with a month's worth of Prozac and amitryptiline. I overdosed on them within a few days and spent a week in hospital. I've been fortunate enough to be 'in the system since then and have had decent care, but that was an eye opening low point.

Pregabalin and gabapentin are nerve pain medications as well as being anti seizure medications
Pregabalin is the new go to medication for generalised anxiety disorder in place of benzos. I presume this is why fruitcider referred to it.

I took Ecstasy regularly in my youth, it felt good, the best.
I have taken Citalopram in recent years, the first tablet felt like Ecstasy, it was that good.

I think it's a combination of things mentioned and not mentioned.

People feeling more able to ask for help.

Increased stress of modern life.

Prescribed for non mh reasons

Prescribed because there's not enough funding for other treatment -metaphorical sticking plaster

As for the 'pull yourself together' 'go for a run' 'develop a thicker skin' type replies they just show that sadly there is still ignorance and prejudice. Not only is part of mental illness for many the INABILITY to 'pull oneself together' or self motivate, to the point that this is part of the diagnostic criteria, mental illness also doesn't preclude physical illness.

Myself and several friends who suffer from mental illness are physically incapable of 'going for a walk/run'.

There's also still problems with getting early enough diagnosis/treatment. Many depressives recognise that they first were ill in their teens yet there's even less funding for child mental illness plus Drs are reluctant to 'label' children. I've never understood that argument because once an illness has a name, has been confirmed it can be treated!