To wonder what people did before antidepressants?

[dottypotter]

Don't know how long anti depressants have been around for depression and anxiety etc, but what happened before they were invented does anyone wonder?
Did people go mad?
Put up with it, but never get better.
Did their depression etc just go away. Intrigued.

Died unnecessarily I expect, much like people did before antibiotics or any number of medicines. What's your point?

A few people that I work with who are

Thrown into horrific mental asylums, the goings on inside would be enough to make you throw up. Utterly torturous and painful existence. Then followed the age of lobotomies and ice therapies, rudimentary electric shock treatments too. All in all, mental health “care” has always been terrifying.

Use alcohol a lot.

Well, people suffered, people killed themselves, people went into asylums…

Self-medicated with alcohol, laudanum/opium, cocaine, and cannabis- which were all legal at the time. I agree lots of unnecessary deaths though as self-medication tends to slowly kill you so not really a long term solution.

Took to their beds with 'nerves'

Could it be debated that Without social media ect and more underlying factors that we have today maybe the conditions were not as prevalent ?

Alcohol. Voilence/Beating spouse to a pulp. Suicide. Back further in time I'm guessing they'd also get put into institutes or mental asylums for life.

I'm not sure whether your post is a pondering one or an agenda'd one.

Gin? As it goes, it has been making a resurgence over the past 5 years or so!

All of the above plus I do think modern life is more stressful

Long term in institutions.

No. The conditions associated with depression were just as prevalent, perhaps more so. Most of the time it went unrecognised and the self-medication of choice was blamed as the cause rather than a coping mechanism. This was all then chalked up to a moral failing.

I think a lot of people drank and smoked, beat their wives or children or had other unhealthy coping mechanisms. My great grandmother was an alcoholic childbeater, my grandfather was a generally unhappy drinker and philanderer and my grandmother was addicted to valium. My own mother is a smoker and has very volatile, sometimes violent relationships with the rest of the family.

My generation and the generation below seem to be breaking the cycle. Yes, most of the younger women in my family are on an ssri but at least we aren't violent or alcoholics. We are all working on ourselves and trying to be better parents than ours were.

Probably die of alcoholism

Pondering One. Guess we are lucky today then.

Plenty of people came back from war in a bad state and were sent to large hospitals such as one in Netley near Southampton where they had horrific therapy.

Modern life is more stressful? Behave yourself.
We've never had it so good compared to ' back in the day '

Just talking about a great aunt over Christmas who would go for electric shock 'therapy' for her depression. (40 to 50ish years ago)

Yes of course it is love… 🙄

Not really, most of modern life is self-imposed stress. We don’t have nearly the stresses from pre-modern times to contend with.

My family carries a strong genetic predisposition to depression. Before effective treatments came along, four of my relatives from three generations killed themselves.
Great aunt threw herself off a bridge, uncle shot himself, aunt took a massive barbiturate overdose, and teenage cousin took all the medication in his GP father’s bag, late at night to be sure it would be too late when he was found in the morning.
Since better antidepressants arrived, one sister has survived an overdose and was sectioned for a fortnight, and one daughter has survived two attempted hangings and is now relatively stable on treatment.
And in answer to a PP, ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) is not primitive or barbaric - it’s administered under anaesthetic and has an 83% success rate in treating severe depression. For catatonic patients it is life saving.

Yes, "stressing" because you don't have as much stuff or followers as Stacey Solomon is the same as the conditions in which many had to live a few decades ago

Ooh, I expect they just pulled themselves together and got on with it. Well, you did in them days, didn't you? Not like today with all these 'trendy' illnesses they read about on social media and the tiktoks. Eeh, I don't know. Young people.

....or no, hang on. Mental illness throughout history has always existed, except the treatment was mostly brutal and terrifying and ineffective, so people who were suffering hid it out of shame and fear, attempted to self medicate with alcohol and drugs, killed themselves or ended up in abusive asylums or imprisoned in private homes (if they were rich). I expect some of them got better though, since some mental health crises do resolve themselves.

There's lots about the history of mental healthcare online, OP, if you truly are "wondering" what people did before antidepressants.

Nah. Antidepressants are taken by a wide range of people including those with a mild or moderate problem. 14.7% of the population in England took an antidepressant in 2021/22. A very tiny percentage in comparison would have been institutionalised in the days before antidepressants.