To think my friend isn't really depressed?

[louiserh33]

I'm speaking as someone who's battled depression for years ...
She got dumped after 3 months from her boyfriend ..the next day couldn't sleep and went to the doctors and asked for anti depressants.
She started them for 4 months ...her ex text her one day and she got back with him.
Two days later stopped the anti depressants and never mentioned depression again,said she was cured.
Friday her boyfriend dumped her again..
She went to the doctors and started the anti depressants again and got a month long sick note.
This ain't depression is it?

She knows better than us what the truth is likely to be.

Perhaps, but the doctor is the one with the expertise and medical qualifications.

Op this doesn't sound like a good friendship. Maybe for your own mental health you should leave it.

If she has trivialised your MH to begin with it’s not a true friendship. Do you feel you’re getting the right treatment for your depression? If not talk to your GP again. If you’re on medication you should be having regular reviews to check the effectiveness and suitability of it. It’s ok to say I need better help/different support. It’s not a failure at all.

As for the situation with your friend maybe take a step back. She quite possibly has reactive depression as others have said. Or there could be something else she’s only disclosing to the GP. Don’t get sucked in to MH top trumps, it’s no good for you. Practice self care as much as you can, but concentrate on getting the right treatment for you rather than thinking if she’s legitimately receiving treatment or not.

Have you spent time in your friend's head?

This, really OP. I have depression but day to day you wouldn't know it. I struggle with all manner of things but tend not to let people know. Then one thing can apparently tip me over the edge and it all becomes more obvious. You can't really know, unless you were in the GP appt with your friend, why she was prescribed ADs.

I think your reaction might be part and parcel of your depression. You're so ill a the moment that this feels like a slight on you when to be honest it's something completely separate. I hope you're getting the care you need - things do change, including our mental health!

Plus I think there's the expectation that one ought to be happy, it's seen as the norm or a virtue to aspire to, so the instant you're not you think you're malfunctioning and get a pill to fix it.
Yes, this. For a condition to be a "mood disorder", as depression is, there has to be a baseline for the "normal" mood, and I think that has shifted upwards significantly even in the last decade, with the social media and happy happy lifestyle advertising introducing a massive reference bias.
I also think (please take this in the spirit intended) that childhoods became too happy. Which is certainly a good thing, but maybe the same causality is at work here as with the "hygiene hypothesis" for autoimmune diseases, effective defences against situational sadness are not built.
Which leads to any deviation from the baseline to be immediately classified as a pathology.

I'm just amazed that she got given ADs. I had months and months of not being able to function, staying mainly in bed and barely hanging on to my job, crying in the street and the dr basically told me to pull myself together!

I don't know what I would have done without my mother because I have had in my life since the day I was born.

The first time I suffered symptoms of depression (I say symptoms bevause I and my GP believe I have depression all the time but can usually self manage with exercise, diet and self care) it went on for ten years because I couldn't find the strength to leave the situation causing the depression.

I don't think anyone noticed I was depressed until I started recovering as it crept up slowly and people, including myself, kind of forgot what was normal for me until I started recovering.

So, I suppose without my mum the situation would have festered. I guess as it was income related it would have either resolved itself eventually or outside agencies would have become involved and I would have been forced to act to solve it.

@poppiesallykatie

What a nasty evil piece of work you are.

Break ups make up a significant amount of suicides, and are the leading cause of suicides amongst teens!!

You know nothing of what you talk of. The only thing you care about is ‘defending’ your version of depression so you can play top trumps with who has it worse. Absolutely disgusting.

@poppiesallykatie
& not to mention calling bullshit on others experiences of depression, just because they’re different to yours.
You should be ashamed of yourself.

@poppiesallykatie just read back the stuff you have posted on this thread, and hang your head in shame. This should be a supportive community.

If her happiness is so tied to someone else then she has mental health issues.

So Thursday she was great,then Friday she gets dumped and bang she's "depressed"

No-one knew I was depressed, I put on a face and they all thought I was fine. Maybe the relationship breakdown was enough to push her over the edge.
Please don't assume that because you have depression that you are an expert on it. People's minds work in different ways and depression can manifest in different ways. You are not a doctor and not a mind reader.

It would seem that depression as a term is used so casually now it is almost useless. Depression should be distinguishable from from upset or feeling sad but people do seem to casually conflate the concepts which is a shame.

Break ups though can provoke extreme distress for all sorts of reasons. For instance some people have low self worth and find that worth in a relationship and when it ends that is catastrophic for them.

You might be right your friend ain't depressed but that is not to say she is not struggling massively at the moment and may need support. Arguing over diagnostic labels seems kind of pointless in the here and now.

Illness isn't a contest.

I also have situation depression like @Frequency does and to the posters saying "oh its not real depression, its just sadness", you can all go jump in a fire.
I in fact do live on my own and can tell people like @poppiesallykatie that what happens when someone isnt there to make you care about yourself when your partner of 2 years dumps you without any warning is you spend a month dragging yourself into work, crying at your desk all day, sleeping all evening and all weekend - literally 20 hours a day asleep, making yourself eat a packet of 4 biscuits over the course of the day even though they taste like ash because you know that literally starving to death isnt something youre supposed to do, and then ending up being signed off work on ADs.

So yeah, you can take your "its just sadness" and shove it.

I have only read back the messages and @StormTreader even though you told me to shove it, I get what you are saying and you painted a pretty good picture. I don't mean to trivialise your experience.The context is lost here though on the OP's post. I didn't want the OP to feel trivialised either and re-reading her post and mine, I was addressing her experience.

I am not nasty or evil @MonsterTequila, nor am I hanging my head in shame @LuckyLou7 and I was trying to support the OP. It touched a raw nerve for you both. But I am and still am in a world where long-term depression has led to a psychosis (not me, may I add, but someone I love very much); I didn't mean to upset anyone, but any coping mechanisms a person can learn or any alternative structures as opposed to just taking drugs are admirable and worth it in my book.

Ach, while I agree GP's can be quick to dish out meds instead of taking an holistic approach (and that's all to do with time and budget constraints and another thread), as someone who muddles along with ill MH until that sort of thing happens, and has attempted suicide multiple times after breakups, I'd say wind your neck in.

Well I admit that its a very emotional situation for me - I was referring to the view of "mmm you're really just a bit sad though, aren't you? Its not REAL depression" rather than to you as a complete person!
It's an attitude that made it very much more difficult to admit I really did have a need for actual medical intervention and that I couldn't just "grow up, you've just been dumped is all, you need to just get a grip dear", to the point that I was almost too physically weak to walk to the GPs by the time I went. Had someone said to me "you just need to grow up", maybe I wouldn't have gone. Something to consider.

You cant really know OP unless you know her full, previous medical history. It may be she can manage anxiety/mild depression with her relationship being her anchor/crutch, but not having that, is what is last straw/pushes her over into full depression. I've also way back, known someone who had a complete breakdown when her constantly unfaithful husband finally left. She'd always had mild depression after a brutal childhood, but managed to struggle along without help until her husband dumped her. That was what was her final straw mental health wise.

Op I completely sympathise. It's very frustrating. Maybe a little bit more of a distance between you might help. Have the friendship but don't get too emotionally invested

@StormTreader; I do apologise. and I wish you the best. And I have learned from this thread believe it or not.