If someone who isn't experiencing life with a mental illness only believes what they hear on television, they would think that there are several medications available by prescription that can help you get out of the dark hole of depression.
These advertisements are paid for by pharmaceutical companies who are nothing more than legal drug manufacturers and really are just the makers of modern snake oil. They hire college educated representatives to go out and solicit their drugs to doctors who in return for pushing the pharmaceutical reps drugs on their patients are treated to expensive dinners and even vacations.
Meanwhile, the unsuspecting public, who are often desperate for help, fall prey to the endless cycle of trying one drug after another in order to make their "pain" go away. Dosages are increased until the patient achieves a zombie-like existance where they feel nothing. They are then able to "deal" more effectively with their depression.
Is this really how mental illness is supposed to be treated? Depression is not something that a person can just snap out of by taking a bubble bath or participating in a favorite self-indulgent activity. Treatment should be more than just experimentation with different anti-depressants until one is found that does the job.
True clinical depression when left untreated makes the sufferer cry for no apparent reason, lose interest in life itself and feel hopeless and often have thoughts of ending the pain and suffering by their own hand (suicide).
Anti-depressants aren't magic pills that wipe depressive symptoms away. Many make you feel like you have the flu with side effects like headaches, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea and sleepiness. Other side effects can cause you to feel "seperate" from your body and make you lose concentration.
Sometimes these symptoms will begin to fade as the medication and the chemicals in your brain begin to "mesh" together. You may even start to feel better. Your depression may lift and you might experience a general feeling of well-being for several months. You feel as if a miracle has occurred. Six months to a year later, the bottom may begin to start falling out from under you. Your former miracle drug is not performing as well as it was.
Your doctor will increase the dosage and the game will begin. After several days of "adjustment" your body may or may not "take" to this new dosage. Maybe your doctor will add an additional medication to help boost the effects of the first. Again, more side effects as your body adjusts.
In the meantime while all this tweaking of medication is going on, you are supposed to be able to be a responsible adult and deal with work, relationships and keeping yourself afloat financially.
Depression is a serious illness. The problem is that no definitive medical reasons for depression exist. Yes, there are theories and if you listen carefully to the commericals they state "Scientists BELIEVE depression is caused by not enough chemicals being produced in the brain" Research is constantly being done on treatment such as pharmaceutical "fixes" but maybe if we knew the why and how of it all, people who suffer from depression would not feel like a guinea pig when it comes to medicinal treatment.
Often people get so frustrated by the endless cycle of medications that they give up and begin self-medicating. Alcohol and illegal drugs are certainly not fixes for chronic depression. In fact, these substances make chronic depression worsen and create more problems for the patient.
There is not an easy fix to treating depression. Yes, a healthy diet and a regular exercise routine along with a good therapist and support system can help a patient cope with depression. Relying on medication alone is the mistake that far too many people make. Many of us allow these egotistical doctors to turn us into former shells of ourselves by creating "Stepford-like" patients who take their medications as prescribed even as we notice (or not) ourselves become numb to it all.
The person who is prescribing your depression medication SHOULD be encouraging you to attend regular therapy sessions. They should be in contact with your therapist in order to make sure that they have made the proper diagnosis of your condition. In the real world, many psychiatrists do not work with their patients therapist. Sometimes there is no communication between the two mental health professionals. This is the real world.
Going out and "finding" a better doctor is not so simple. With limits because of medical insurance, locations and areas of specialty, a patient cannot always "shop around" for a psychiatrist. If you are not fortunate enough to have medical insurance that covers mental health issues, a clinic may be suggested. In my experience, I have not yet come across a clinic that employs competant doctors. Many are still students and lack the experience to be effective listeners.
The thing that a depressed patient wants more than anything else is to be well again. Depression swallows you and binds you in chains that feel impossible to free yourself from. When you get sucked in too deeply, you almost do not care to break free.
The average depression patient looks to the medical professional for help but when that "professional" is blinded by their own self-righteousness, how can they really have compassion and understanding of their patients suffering?
Mental illness is a field of medicine that needs better regulation. The monetary connection between the psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical companies dirties the integrity of the mission.
