What care is there out there for depression

[Yorkshirebornandbred]

I've suffered with anxiety and depression for over 15 years, whenever I see my gp she just increases the dosage of antidepressants or changes to another one, just once I was referred for counselling but it was at the local uni and I didn't feel a 22 year old could understand the problems I was dealing with.

I've also once been referred to the primary care mental health team but after a few appointments she told me I was clever enough to know what I had to do and discharged me.

The problem is I know I appear quite together a lot of the time but at night I just don't want to go through this anymore. My life is meaningless and I can't do anything due to anxiety and lack of motivation. My insecurities and low self esteem have caused relationships to end.

Is there anything else I can do? Anyone else who can help? Anything I can ask my gp for?

I would be tempted to go down the councelling route again. The councellor doesn't necessarily need to understand your problems to help you move through them. And if they are students they will have an experienced therapist supervising them. Also subjects such as councelling are often attractive to mature students with more life experience.

Personally the thing that I have found most helpful was doing an nlp ( neurolinguistic programming ) foundation diploma. It was a truely transformational process which has perminantly changed my way of thinking.

I got CBT for both, and it was life changing. I think each was about six weekly sessions of an hour and a half.

I've never been offered any cbt

I would push for cbt too. I agree, it transform lives. And it's common sense approach makes it all so understandable. Gps should be referring you for this as it is recommended in NICE guidance for both anxiety and depression. Primary care should be offering you this, not discharging you based on your intellect. CBT is very effective and your intelligence will be a great advantage through therapy but should not mean this is not offered. Good luck. You deserve to be offered evidence based treatments.
Also, have a look at the "overcoming" books on anxiety, depression and self esteem. They are all excellent

I wasn't recommending gin by the way...my smile came out wrong!!

A lot of the time gin seems like the only option

I'll ask about cbt when I'm next there.