I have just read again that depression is a result of internal anger and it makes me feel so sad that I never knew this before and than no one in the MH profession ever told me.

[JustFab]

As a lot of you know I have had PND and AND and have been on ADs for many years but am being weaned off them slowly. I had the realisation that I didn't need them and what my difficulties actually were. If what I said in my title is the case, why is this never talked about and explored instead of people just being given drugs?

In fact there is another theory that depression is "learned helplessness".

What is interesting is that depression and anxiety has increased dramatically in the last 50 years. There is no way that can be down to genetics. Depression is less common in tribal or amish communities.

I think that telling someone with depression that depression is "learned helplessness" is quite demoralising. Its is almost as mean as telling someone to pull themselves together.

Some people fail to learn strageries to control their emotions because they have had a crap childhood. Ie. someone with a violent domineering mother may have learnt not to show anger for fear of being hit. Lack of assertiveness can make adult relationships difficult.

The field of mental illness is as wide as that of physical illness. I think a lot of different conditions get lumped under the heading of depression. There are neurological conditions like autism that put someone at getter risk of anxiety/ depression/ OCD. Life is more complex with Britain being a multicultural country and fewer manual jobs exisiting.

I thought this was due to less stigma being attributed to the illnesses, and wider recognition and diagnoses of it

The stiff upper lip seems to have disappeared

O & L - I'm really not at all sure about "making yourself do things" (CBT) builds the synapases in the brain. Can you say how you heard this. If psychiatrists don't understand brain disorder I am reluctant to believe a CB therapist who can make such an assertion.

CBT didn't help me much - made perfect sense when I felt ok but when the bad days come it's not so good. My CPN was very keen on it and I did force myself out for walks on cold wet grey winter days, and then didn't feel so guilty about going to bed with my soft fluffy blanket on. Had 2nd major episode 2 yrs ago and not fully recovered, many ups and downs and suspect that this is how it will be. However in my first major episode after the loss of my dearest friend at aged 46 a very wise psychiatrist told me not to do anything that was an ordeal. Another book I read talked of climbing the hill and slipping off the path, but remembering a little dry cave you saw just to your left and you could stay there safely before embarking on the climb again. My little safe cave is my bedroom.

SO I just think there are so many "takes" on mental illness that it leaves us sufferers just being confused so I usually find my own way of getting through the bad days and am lucky bec retired and family all grown and supportive DP.

My heart goes out to young mothers who have to carry on because there is simply no option.

wiki.medpedia.com/Clinical:Effects_of_Psychotherapy_on_Brain_Function thecarlatreport.com/how-do-psychotherapy-and-medication-change-brain-free-article. There is tons of about it online,

Difficult to read but, some of it is there. My CBT therapist didn't tell me, I just sort of picked it up. I thought this was the whole point of cbt, that it changes the pathways and connections in the brains in a neurological manner.

Crawling into bed and hiding away is what everyone wants to do. Forcing yourself to do stuff makes the electrical bits in the brain start firing which builds up the healthy parts of the brain.

I don't know much tbh, but I do know that cbt is almost certainly is based in neuroscience and changing pathways in the brain, and not just about talking.

I think it was ReallyTired that said psychotherapy can make things worse was spot on. This was definately the case for me. He suggested causes of my issues when they weren't the case at all and he actually made me feel worse. It sounds a bit trite but I find keeping busy and doing new things makes me feel better. Sitting in the house/staying in bed seems appealing but absolutely made me worse.

Yes, I found counselling rubbish. Just mulling over the same stuff made me worse

Couldn't make much sense of the wikipedia thing O & L - think you probably need medical knowledge to understand. Still find it difficult to believe that CBT can change pathways and synapses in the brain though. I thought the whole point of CBT was (at its most basic), an attempt to replace the automative negative thoughts that are associated with depression with more balanced ones, so that we don't make ourselves feel worse. This was certainly how it was presented to me by my CPN. Neither can I really understand that forcing yourself to do something makes the electrical bits of your brain fire up and build up the healthy parts of the brain. I know that exercise of any sort can raise the natural endorphins in your brain that can have a relatively good effect.

I know isolating ourselves by staying in bed is no good for us but on very bad days I try to do 50/50 and get up at lunchtime and do something - even if it's just crying as this seems to bring some relief. I go with my DP to a little wood near us and this has a calming effect on me.

Agree that psycotherapy can make you worse - it certainly did for me and if the therapist is a psycho-dynamic one, they believe that everything stems from your childhood. I don't entirely disagree with this because I believe that we are the people we become as adults are largely the result of our experiences in childhood. However the therapist I saw kept making "interpretations" that did not fit at all and when I told her this she got very defensive. She was actually very rude to me and I was getting closer and closer to a major episode of depression. I was seeing her x 2 per week at a cost of £90 per week, and finally stopped after one awful session. She didn't believe in meds and said she wouldn't go on seeing me if I went on them.One week later I was on a psych ward with a severe depressive episode and on meds immediately - 3 months as inpatient but still not fuly recovered after 2 years.

Huge empathy for all women on the thread or not who are suffering this horrid illness.

I am not depressed (which is maybe important) but I am mentally unwell and I know that for me therapy is absolutely what makes the difference and I have found a lot of ownership in identifying what happened as a child which has led to how I am today.

In therapy i am not really allowed to mull over or obsess over things that will not move me forward, but as I say maybe I need therapy because I have a different type of mental health problem.

"In therapy i am not really allowed to mull over or obsess over things that will not move me forward, but as I say maybe I need therapy because I have a different type of mental health problem."

There are hundreds of different types of theraphies, and many of them claim to be the magic bullet. My personal opinon is that teaching someone strageries for coping with the present is more effective than mulling over the past. There is a difference between needed help and being utterly helpless. I have found in the past with councelling that I became very emotionally dependent on the councellor. Frankly managing the transference has been more of an issue than the intial problem.

I think there needs to be a more scientific approach to monitoring if medication or councelling are working.

"Learned helplessness" feels like a dig to me.

I would like to be able to work out what is actually true and what I have told myself is the reason I feel XYZ.

I have never paid a therapist which might make a difference? I finished with a therapist recently and I was really sad and worried I had relied on him too much but in reality I don't really miss him at all, I just needed someone to talk to. I am working with a clinical psychologist now which is a different experience but positive so far. I think you have to find the right person and the right therapy. I had one session of person centred counselling and it was just rubbish for me because I need to be challenged and supported to reshape my thinking. But some people just need to get it out and or them counselling might be useful.

Blighty thanks for your empathy and so sorry that you too suffered, only much worse I think. Yes I think you should have lodged a complaint about her, but sometimes we don't have the emotional strength do we. I know I didn't, but I did write her a very long letter once I felt a bit better, telling her what I thought of her. My DP had sent her a cheque for what I owed when I was in hopsital and a note saying what had happened and no response at all. In my letter to her I ended with saying "I took your lack of response to R's cheque and letter as an absence of any kind of care, concern or courtesy" and of course I got no reply to that. I don't usually harbour ill will against any one for any length of time, but I do with that therapist because I am convinced that if I had not given up the meds I would not have relapsed after 15 years and then spent 3 months with her, instead of seeing my GP and getting back on the meds.

FDG are you feeling better - I am assuming you are out of hospital. I absolutely agree that it is a matter of finding the right person who you feel connected to and trust to confide in him/her. I too am seeing a clinical psychologist now (on the NHS) and she is very credible with just the right balance of care and gentle challenging. She has restored my faith in therapy. I actually needed therapy to get over the experience of the awful one!

NanaNina was your theraphist part of any professional body? Did you make a formal complaint/ I feel its morally shocking discouraging someone from taking medication if they have severe depresssion. Telling a severely depressed person not to take medication is like telling a cancer victim forego chemo and puely rely on homeopathy. Such a person should not be allowed to practice.

Still in hospital NanaNina but I am ok :)

'learned helplessness' doesn't sound like a dig to me; it makes a lot of sense. I think it is definitely a major factor in my own depression, and something that CBT is helping me to deal with.

Hi RT - yes the therapist was part of a professional body - can't remember which one though. I didn't make a formal complaint because quite frankly I just didn't have it in me to do that (I am usually quite assertive) but after a 3 month stay on a pysch ward and being discharged before well (although still after 2 years have intermittent dep/anx) I just couldn't get it together though I thought about it. The thing is she was recommended to me by someone who I trusted on such matters (my old Manager at work) and when I told him what what was happening he said he thought she must have "lost it" and was probably coming to the end of her career (she looked about my age - late 60s.)

Re meds, she told me that in all the trials on the effectiveness of meds in depression, it was proved that, there was no difference in numbers between the people who got better on meds and those on placebos. People agreed to the trial but didn't know whether they were getting ADs or placebos. I swallowed it all tbh as she sounded so confident.

My other close friend who is an art therapist and works with people who are mentally ill was also horrified and said that I was bringing something out in this therapist, known as counter transference. Transference is when the therapist brings something out in the patient (she may remind you of someone you don't like) and psycho-dynamic therapists are always going on about transference, so anything negative I said about her, she said it was transference. Once I shouted at her and said "it isn't transference, it's how I feel about YOU" - Counter transference is when the patient brings something negative out in the therapist and this my friend said was happening. All therapists have to be supervised themselves (mind this one was such a bloody know all I doubt she thought she needed it) and aparently the main thing they "take" to supervision is counter transference.

You are quite right she should NOT be allowed to practice.

FDG - sorry you are still in hospital, and remember your back story of course, so glad to hear you are feeling OK as you were in a very bad place a few weeks ago if I remember rightly . Also glad that therapy is working well for you.

Can't remember who said some counsellor had told them depression meant "learned helplessness" but it is just about the biggest insult I have ever heard, and how demeaning it is. Aaaaaaaaargh just feel angry thinking about it !

I took "learned helplessness" like it was a choice issue.

It was me who mentioned it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness Ignore the bit about dogs!. I don't think it was about having a go at someone who is depressed, it was more about how in the past, when people had tried to control things beyiond their control had eventually given up trying. This meant that when confronted with a difficult situation again, they behaved in the same way. It was a way of describing a depressed state, not a judgement on a depressed person

However I prefer depressive realism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism. This is where depressed people are actually percieved as having the correct amount of control over a situation, whereras an optomist has an incorrect view of a situation

I don't think the causes of depression are clear cut. There are a hell of a lot of discrete conditions that get linked together.

Certainly for me the hormones associated with breastfeeding and childbirth screwed up my brain chemistry. I also believe that broken nights can make people ill.

Anyway if depression is caused by learned helpless how does that explain biopolar depression or people getting better from depression with nothing but medication.

I believe that teaching people strageries for coping with life like social skills, assertiveness, anger managment, thinking styles, relaxation can help with general health and happiness. However clinical depression is something very different to general unhappiness or sheer laziness.

I am a fan of the theory of human givens. It explains what people need to stay well. It also explains why some councelling makes you worse (you relive bad emotional experiences which make you more stressed), why depressed people are so tired and need so much sleep. (Ie. depressed people get too much REM sleep, anti depressants can correct this)

I believe a fair amount of depression is caused by physical illnesses that GPs don't bother looking for eg thyroid (which I have probs with), parathyroid (my sister). My sister has been fobbed off for five years with antidepressants, counselling, psychiatrists. Shame noone bothered running a few blood tests first

I believe a fair amount of depression is caused by physical illnesses that GPs don't bother looking for eg thyroid (which I have probs with), parathyroid (my sister). My sister has been fobbed off for five years with antidepressants, counselling, psychiatrists. Shame noone bothered running a few blood tests first

I think we only have to look at this thread to see that there are so many different beliefs, attitudes etc about the origins/treatment of depression. I have read so much (too much) really about depression, ranging from psychiatrists who do not believe there is any evidence supporting the notion of change in brain chemistry in depression (which is what my therapist believed) which she called the psychologogist model and scoffed at the medical model. I have read others who are fairly and squarely in the medical model, and yet others who think in terms of the combination of the two. I read a book called "The Manufacture of Depression" which is written by a sufferer whose emphasis was on the fact that the huge profits that were being made by the drug companies.

Likewise I have had the basics of CBT explained to me by my CPN - I had the psycho-dynamic model of which I have spoken in another thread, and a CAT therapist (Cognitive Analytical Theory) a supposed combination of CBT and more deeper analytical theory. Now I have a clinical psychologist who is ver nice and free cus it's on the NHS. However she (nor anyone else) can throw any light on why I get so many "blips" (lasting between 2 and 7 days) and I am well for approx 60/70% of the month, sometimes better, sometimes worth. No one seems to be able to believe that these blips come out of the blue. They all want to relate them to some trigger, and I have to listen to my nice therapist and some close friends, saying what they think my latest blip is related to..........aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. It drives me mad (sorry bad choice of word there) I wish I did know the trigger, so that I could stop doing whatever it is that is causing the blips or start doing something to stop them.

The only person who told me that these blips were to be expected was the consultant psychiatrist (but needless to say he was glued into the medical model) when asked if they eventually went away, he replied "sometimes, and sometimes not, you have to work around them." I suspect he was right. These blips/dips whatever have been going on for over 2 years and I am not reliable - I can't control my life - can't book a holiday or arrange to care for my grandchildren. Sorry I know I am moaning - and playing "poor me" when there are so many thousands of people who are far worse off than me.

I suppose all I can say is that no-one really knows the orgins of brain disorder - it's all trial and error and different remedies working differently on individuals. Obviously if something (meds or therapy or combination of both) bring relief for people, they will have a justifiable belief that this could be the way forward, but for me I reckon what the psych said is about right and I have to acknowledge that this is how it will be for me, though of course I might eventually recover.

Sorry I am just rambling a bit, but have had a horrendous day and am just (now it's time for bed) starting to feel vaguely human again.

There's some really interesting stuff on evolution and depression, ie why depression happens.

Another theory! People with depression withdraw into themselves and don't feel like venturing into the outside world, In cavemen days, these people may have survived longer than those who went out to hunt or whatever.So depression can be viewed as a survival technique. This theory doesn't cover the suicideangle though!