One aspect that I think most don’t talk about enough is functional disorders.
Like way back in the day, depression was seen as a sign of weakness and a character flaw. Then we swung real hard to the opposite end and said that depression is completely outside of your control and is just a physical chemical imbalance. And while it certainly can be influenced by inherent brain chemistry, this is still not a particularly holistic understanding of it.
Many disorders, both physical and mental, can instead be thought of as functional disorders that act more like feedback loops. Think about something like tendonitis, it causes swelling, which causes more rubbing, which causes more tendonitis… Depression amongst many other mental health issues, can function similarly. It saps your motivation which can prevent you from doing stuff or taking action, which makes you more depressed.
Anti-depressants can help you break this loop, but it’s also entirely possible for anti-depressants to just ‘even you out’ enough that you feel no reason to break the loop or make any changes, and then you just end up stuck in the same loop, and just kind of end up numb to everything as a best case scenario.
The research on the long term effectiveness of anti-depressants for relatively mild - mid cases of depression is also still up for debate. A recent Australian public health report was pointing out that most studies measuring the effectiveness sof long term anti-depressant use measure the negative effects from stopping them, but many of these effects are just withdrawal, and once you control for that, they don’t look more effective than therapy, but come with a slew of negative side effects.
My wife would tell me I’m depressed, and I’d agree about that.
However, she thought I should get meds, and I thought I should only get medicated for depression if the depression was chemical.
If you’re depressed because life sucks, then you should be motivated to fix what sucks. Unfortunately, that’s not how depression works.
Luckily, life started to suck slightly less.
One aspect that I think most don’t talk about enough is functional disorders.
Like way back in the day, depression was seen as a sign of weakness and a character flaw. Then we swung real hard to the opposite end and said that depression is completely outside of your control and is just a physical chemical imbalance. And while it certainly can be influenced by inherent brain chemistry, this is still not a particularly holistic understanding of it.
Many disorders, both physical and mental, can instead be thought of as functional disorders that act more like feedback loops. Think about something like tendonitis, it causes swelling, which causes more rubbing, which causes more tendonitis… Depression amongst many other mental health issues, can function similarly. It saps your motivation which can prevent you from doing stuff or taking action, which makes you more depressed.
Anti-depressants can help you break this loop, but it’s also entirely possible for anti-depressants to just ‘even you out’ enough that you feel no reason to break the loop or make any changes, and then you just end up stuck in the same loop, and just kind of end up numb to everything as a best case scenario.
The research on the long term effectiveness of anti-depressants for relatively mild - mid cases of depression is also still up for debate. A recent Australian public health report was pointing out that most studies measuring the effectiveness sof long term anti-depressant use measure the negative effects from stopping them, but many of these effects are just withdrawal, and once you control for that, they don’t look more effective than therapy, but come with a slew of negative side effects.
In my case, having my manager quit did more for my depression than any pill could do.