Will I ever lose my depression?

[SpinningEm]

I've been suffering on & off with depression for the last 10 years or so but recently it has got alot worse - it seems that I've also been on a multitude of different AD's including citalopram, prozac, setraline & am currently on 10mg escitalopram. Three weeks ago I was signed off work for 2 weeks cos I was at total meltdown but to be honest that didn't really help & I just had more time at home to dwell on things.
I am living under a huge black cloud and every minute is a struggle to get through. I really hate myself as have let myself go & am drinking too much to try & escape my feelings. I know this is not the right answer long term but at the mo it is helping me to get through the days. I am back at the dr on Tuesday & am curious as to what she can do to help me get out of this depair.

Have you had any kind of therapy? Or just drugs? I've suffered from depression for most of my life, and these days it is much easier to cope, largely because I recognise when things are going pear-shaped, and the tablets tend to work fast. I have found therapy of one sort or another has helped enormously, and I almost feel like a member of the human race.

I've had psychotherapy on the NHS, and I've been part of a trial therapy thing. It's really worth asking what help is available and pushing for it. Hard to do when you're feeling awful. Having a good gp is the most important thing.

You know that you will see it through and the sun will shine again. One of the most important things, I've found about therapy, is having someone to listen. It takes time, but I think it's worth it.

I hope you feel better soon. I've started smoking again, which is a real blow.

Hi Plonky - thanks for your reply - I've been put on the waiting list for CBT.
Wish I could take up smoking again (it makes me feel sick thou') - it would probably stop me from eating everything in sight. Don't feel bad about it if it helps you!

Ask what else they offer. CBT is the hot thing at the moment but there are other things that are as useful. The NHS likes it because it's quick, and limited. It can be very helpful, although it's really worth going for any kind of help you can get. Keep swimming. I've had times when I've felt as though I'm treading water forever with no land in sight. I think that weight gain or loss is part of the illness. Are you getting other physical symtoms?

Another long term depressive here, who has had amny different treatments and therapies .... glad I am not alone - maybe we should be checking in here with each other.

I'm on 200mg of sertraline at the moment (topdose) and really suffering the side effects but don't seem to be improving - I kind of hope they will change me to something else, actually.

I don't like my psychiatrist which is a problem, I got on very well with the one where I used to live and this is my first depressive episode since I moved ... new psych is a bit of a cold fish and very timid sounding - so to me sounds like she's not sure what she should be doing with me. I had a nasty reaction to ads a few years ago which makes me incredibly nervous about taking them.

I too am on CBT list but it is long. I have a CPN but he is about 12 years old!! ANd I'm not happy being visited at home - I feel like they are checking up on me. Which they probably are!! We have employed a cleaner to keep on top of the house for me and allow me to focus on the dcs more - at least they are all at school.

Before this episode, I always had a 'reason' to be depressed - mainly badly postnatal. This time it crept up on me without me realising and scared me - I sometimes wonder if I will ever be able to come off the tablets/just be normal.

SOrry - have gone on about me. But I do understand how you feel cos it is pretty much where I am right now as well.

Another long-term depressive! I am on 60mg Prozac per day. I am in a bad way at the moment, so won't post more or I may bring you down even more. BUT, there are lots of us, so you are not alone!

One more long-term depressive, wish I had some answers, am on 150mgs/day Venlafaxine and also in a bad place. Can't see the light at moment and thinking of changing doc, have been with current one for many years and his advise for everything is 'a brisk walk'! I WALK everywhere, have no car, work full-time, still can't find the meaning of all this. Sorry, don't want to bring you down either.

I think it takes a long time to untie the knots. I used to think that everyone else who was depressed had a much rougher time than I did, and far more serious problems. I frankly didn't think I was worth listening to. It has taken a long time to start opening up about my life.

Last year, I lost my temper with my father for the first time. I should have been proud of myself - I was finally chosing a moment to be angry about very real issues to the right person instead of getting angry with everyone else. I think I made him jump. It took a long time coming.

I think that everyone is different, but there are often things that we don't like to think about that fuel feelings of uselessness and gloom.

Thanks for your replies - depression is just so horrible - tbh I don't really hold much hope for dr visit tomorow.
I'm sorry to hear all your situations - if anyone wants to talk or off load more maybe this would be a good place to

I think this would be a great place to start a sort of "long term depressive - am I ever goign to get better? support.

I was first diagnosed at 19 - the psych I saw then was sure I had been depressed since 14. My mother left our family when I was 12 and it has always been an issue - getting worse with each dc, till I had 3, which is what she had when she decided my Dad's best friend was more important to her than we were.

I struggled when dd1 reached 4, the age that my youngest sib was when mother left us. I struggled again when ds (dc2) was 4, as that was the age my little brother was when she left. Dd2 turning 4 was OK!

I dread the day that dd1 is the age I was (12y3m) when my mum left (she's 9 now). These are all bad occasions for me, no matter what.

By the time I was the age my dd1 is now she wa s already having an affair with her now husband, and y denying ti to my Dad.

After she left, my Dad was a fabby parent and brought us up brillliantly! I was so glad when he married my stepmum when I was almost 15 - he has been so happy!!

But ... I stil suffer from periodic major (in a clinical sense - needing psychiatric intervention, consultants, CPNs etc...

I no longer speak to my mother due to her toxic influnce. But I do wonder is I will ever be well, and what I am passing on to my own dcs!

Its a bugger, isn't it!

and me..........i've tried citalopram, venlafaxine and fluoxetine and then mixed in mirtazapine. Am currently on priadel 1000mg, 40mg fluoxetine and 20 mg of liothyronine but i just can't see/feel any sort of change....................i feel like i'm letting every one down nor can i see a time when i'm not rattlingwith pills

Weegiemum what a lot you've been through - I'm exactly the same as you in worrying that I'm going to pass my depression onto my 3 dd's. What makes me feel worse is that my dad has had 2 major mental breakdowns, each resulting in being sectioned & having ECT, also his mother had severe depression & was in & out of a mental home.
Blushingm I've just been prescribed venlafaxine but don't really hold much hope. Have you had any CBT or counselling?

yes i had some cbt but i didn't really connect with the cpn - i'm convinced she fell asleep in one session - i'm on the waiting list for some more though (just hoping i don't get allocated the same woman)

I found coming off venlafaxine the worst experience of my life - terible electtric shocks type feelings with every heart beat, spiralliing depression sickness and headaches but my friend came off cold turkey (i know not recommended) but she didn't have 1 side affect

My nana also had awful pnd after both her boys in the 50's and ended up in hospital and has had problems ever since - numerous ect sessions and drugs, she's now got dementia and doesn't recognisde her own children. My dad has been on and off ad's for years too - what have i done to my kids?....are they doomed???

blushingm - I wouldn't butt in, as I don't get depressed myself, but I thought it might make you and SpinningEm feel better to know that even though my Mum is being sectioned at the moment and will soon start her 5th course of ECT since the 1980s, none of her 3 daughters or 11 grandchildren (aged 8 to 21) have had any mental health problems. I really don't think it's hereditary.
I do hope both of you soon feel better.

i think one thing you can do is pass on what you've learned of coping strategies etc. to your kids and speak to them openly about your illness (age appropriate info, obv.). then if/when it does hit they're at least prepared in some way. i have a family history too, so it wouldn't surprise me if one of my kids inherited some tendency that way. i've tried to gently introduce some of the things i've found helpful (diet, exercise, yoga/meditation, etc.)

i'm another long term depressive, although not needed inpatient treatment. i find that my episodes last between 6 & 18 months, and it just runs its course, although the meds make it more bearable in that time. i try to manage it inbetween times and prevent recurrences with lifestyle stuff, which i think has made a big difference actually. i have an incredibly supportive partner which has been my real lifeline, and we've made deliberate choices to reduce stress (e.g. to be sahm while kids are small).

had a short course of cbt but didn't get anywhere with it at all and the sessions were so far apart there was no way to build on one session in the next. i've found buddhist meditation techniques more helpful i'd say. i've recently started running too, and that seems to be having a very beneficial effect on my mood (although obv. i'm inbetween episodes right now, can't say what help it might be during).

the focus for me is a) surviving during episodes: reducing ongoing stresses/demands makes biggest difference to this, plus personal support from friends/family and dp's work, and - believe it or not - hobbies! last time i went down i started learning guitar. it helped to have something to obsessively bury myself in and to take myself out of my head at least temporarily.
and then b) extending the length between episodes: this is where i think diet, exercise, meditation, (trying!) not to drink etc. and your cbt type techniques come in.

i'm in a very fortunate position that i have a very supportive family and no financial or other difficulties, plus no lingering issues, it's about 80% chemical for me i'd say. i'm hopeful about my future, although i expect it to involve more episodes, and it's more limited than it might otherwise be. part of that is not really expecting anything to fix me for good, and not having any expectations of the medical establishment.

sorry this ended up a bit longer than planned! hope some of it might be reassuring/helpful to somebody.

I39 thanks for that - I do hope you're right about it not being heriditary!

mwff - that was a really helpful post thanks! I think you're right about the exercise being helpful - unfortunately I've just been too low to even have the energy to think about doing anything lately - I used to be a very keen runner & did a 10k race last year but now don't even think I could manage 1k.

How are you blushingm & weegimum?

I'm new to this site, but reading about all of you makes me feel like I am back in re-hab....... but in a good way.
Support is the key with depression, no matter how many different pills you try, there is nothing like relating with others and feeling like you are not alone. I was sent to a clinic in arizona for 6 weeks to deal with my depression and trauma issues. It was intense and difficult but gave me tools to deal with things. Unfortunatly I can't take AD because I suffer from the side effects, and having just had my 2nd daughter 15 weeks ago and back into another post natal depression I feel really challenged. I am starting CBT next week. I had a few before the birth but my pregnant brain couldn't cope!!!!!
Crying baby on my knee and toddler moaning in my ear so need to go now.

have you tried different meds maxy? i realise if you're e.g. bipolar ad's can induce mania, but otherwise surely there must be others you could try?

hi all - all i want to do is sleep and sleep and sleep..........i just don't have the energy for anything at all....i just don't know what i'm doing wrong why hasn't any of this medication worked

I'm OK today thankfully - just finding most days a bit of a struggle right now. But I managed to cook from scratch for the kids this evening - even though they were all off for half term!! so I am feeling like a good mum right now!

blushingm, i've never found meds actually return me to a "normal" baseline, just take the edge off it iyswim and make it more possible to cope. it's the coping strategies - family, friends, time off (for your h/p if you're at home with kids), being kind to yourself, sleeping if that's all you want to do - those are the things that get me through day to day.

do you have a psych? or is the gp just trying stuff at random? presumably the cocktail of meds is for different aspects - anxiety etc.? looking at your list i don't know about the others but citalopram and fluxetine are both ssris - have you tried the other families of ads at any point? my ad of choice is a tricyclic, one of the older types. there's another type they can also try after that, but i think you have to follow strict dietary stuff with those (i seem to recall no cheese... maybe?).

take care all.

Hello all

I too am a long term depressive, my mother was and is one too.

The one thing that kickstarted me in getting effective treatment was the fact that I didnt want my boys to see me like I saw my mother or feel the same way about me as I do her.

She was absent (mentally) for most of my childhood and my father played the most active role in the family. His dying triggered my depression.

I have been very lucky and have received very good CBT at home for 6 months and also had a CPN for 18 months after DS2 was born.

I am currently on 225mg Venlaflaxine (just gone back up from 150mg) and I also take quetiapine (50mg) to get me to sleep on a night.

I have just had a double mastectomy and failed reconstruction and can feel the black dog tugging on my heels. Infact I see the mental health team next week, to start some takjing therephy to help deal with things.

The CBT made a maaive difference for me and turned me much more postive, almost back to my old self.

I am lucky in the DH has stood by me through thick and thin and helpped me avoid an admittance during my last major eppisode by taking a month off work to help with me and the children.

I agree that knowing you have an illness and treating it like one really helps. If I get a good nights sleep, plenty of fresh air and sunshine, I do feel a little better.

My children are the things that keep me in this world and also give me the strength to takle this head on

just looked your meds up blushingm, i'm guessing you must have a pysch to be on lithium, in which case my previous advice was somewhat superfluous how long have you been on your current combination?

tmh, that's a hell of a lot to deal with for anyone, it's not surprising you're finding things difficult at the moment, but it's so good to hear you have good medical and emotional/practical support at home.

i'm interested in how exactly you feel the cbt helped. i only had a few sessions, maybe half a dozen, and i found it impossible to get past the notion that "negative" thinking was the cause, rather than the effect of depression. now maybe that isn't what cbt is/should be about, but my counsellor never managed to explain that properly to me.

i find the buddhist technique of mindfulness more helpful - recognising thoughts/feelings and allowing them to be there but not to react to them (poor description sorry, closest i can manage) rather than trying to push away thoughts/feelings which cbt feels more like to me. there's a newish counselling technique based on the same kind of principles isn't there, anyone had any experience of that?

ah this is the stuff i was thinking of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy

I think CBT highlighted enable me to identify my irrational feelings and catorise them. Kind of like seeing which are the weeds and the flowers in a meadow. It helped me realise which things I could change and which I could not, therefore, enableing me to change me rather than the "thing" if that makes any sence. So now I see those issues as rubbish in a river and move my boat out of its way.

Also it opened my eyes to the fact that I have too high expectation of myself and that I wouldnt expect the same of a friend.

I also realise "that I am not responsible for my mother happiness or unhappiness" only she can be responsible for that and me for mine and my boys.

I have power thought cards, take time out to smell the flowers and realise when things are getting hard.

At the moment I am like a coilled spring, infact DH has just rung to say that he will try to get home early as the boys are being challenging.

I think a lot depaends on the support and treatment you receive from your GP and Mental health team. As I said I am lucky in that mine are wonderful and I really connected with my phyc and nurse.

I also think the thing with CBT is you have to work really hard at it and promise yourself at the beginning to be truthful. It makes me smile now to look back on some of the things that really bothered me back when DS2 was littler. I actually walked out of a shoe shop and left them for 5 mins as I had a panic attack. The ladder I used to be able to actually take them back again was intesting, as it walk past the shop on my own, walk past with DS1, walk past with DS2 etc. It seems common sense now, but it was like walking through treacle at the time.

I found the sessions somethimes exahusting, but they were done on a lunch time when at the time both boys had a nap.

I think of my depression as a shadow that will always be with me, but not always visable to me or others. I need to mlearn to live with its constanr companionship and deal with effects on my life

hi wmff- yes i do have a psych - he's really good and well respected but i feel like i'm letting him down, he's trying to help me but nothing he tries is working. I have been on the fluoxetine for about a year now and he added the lithium last cotober and last week added the liothyronine