Seek professional help for depression?

Seeing how my husband and my two best female friends all went to get professional help because of depression, and all benefitted massively from it: Yes.

You need the right professional, and you will probably need to try a couple to find the right medication, but once you do, the difference will be astounding. It's worth a shot, right?

Also, an extra note: make sure you ask someone else to monitor you when you try a new medication. The brain likes to believe that the way it feels in the present moment is the way that it always feels. This happens with depression and it also happens with medication. You may not realize how much of a difference it makes. Having an external party who can monitor you and tell you about any differences they see can help give you perspective you may lack.

I have seasonal affective disorder and have had on and off bouts of clinical depression which started when I was a teenager. I've been on a few antidepressants and have gone to therapy over the years.

I've been medication free for a few years now and therapy free for a few months.

Honestly, it's a very personal thing that is situational and depends on the person. If your day to day life is being affected by depression you need to seek help. I went to my doctor and he referred me to a therapist and wrote a prescription for me. I stopped seeing my therapist because our sessions turned into small talk and I knew all of my problems had been sorted out.

I still get episodes where I'll feel like I did when I needed medication to function, but it passes.

Hope you feel better soon :)

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It really depends. It seems half of the professionals don't give a crap and want money but you do meet the few who do care and want to help. I would suggest you research into one you want to look into and see what others say from there.

However for some people it helps, others it doesn't.

>>17488454
I am afraid of medication. I feel like if this is my mind naturally its something I have to deal with, I'd rather be naturally sad than synthetically happy ya' know?

I will consider it though, thank you.

>>17488460
That's why I stopped taking it, it made me feel funny and I didn't like feeling 'happy'. Personally the therapy worked better for me than the meds.

>>17488458
Can I ask what its like on an anti-depressant? Like do you just not think about the stuff that depresses you or like it doesn't affect you as much?
>>17488459
That's the vibe I get. Ill start googling I guess thank you.

>>17488466
It's hard to describe, it kind of...evens things out, I suppose. When I would think of the things that were the causes of my depression I wouldn't get as sad, more so ambivalent. It was the side effects I couldn't deal with. Prozac was the best imo but not being able to orgasm sucked. Cymbalta gave me tremors and brain zaps if I forgot to take it, and Zoloft turned me into a robot. I was also put on some other antidepressant that I can't remember the name of and it gave me suicide idealty and I had to go to the psych ward.

So, yeah... it depends on the medication.

>>17488460
A good medication will not make you synthetically happy. Instead, it'll give you the capacity to feel happiness like you normally should and are currently unable to.

You'll still have your normal mood swings and good days and bad days. A good medication raises the baseline that your emotional state deviates off of.

I understand the fear of medication. I was the same way. I didn't want medication to change me. And then I ended up developing insomnia so terrible that I would literally almost never sleep. It fucked me up terribly. I didn't want to use medicine, I tried to tough it out, but toughing it out just didn't work. I ended up needing to get something just to sleep. I rely on it now, and I realized how much of a blessing it actually is. We have the capacity to treat things that were entirely untreatable before. And seeing how much it helped my husband and friends has only reinforced that realization.

I definitely suggest giving it a try. If you don't like it, you can change medicine until you find something you like, or even drop it altogether. You have all these options available to you, it only makes sense to try them all. Life doesn't have to be like that.

>>17488466
I was on Anti Psychotics for a while off and on because I have schizo-affective disorder (Aka in legal terms a Crazy bitch) however I am more comfortable off medication. Too many side effects from the ones they used on me so I gave up on doctors for a while until I had a massive anxiety attack/breakdown that resorted in a ER visit before I killed myself. But I think that was just stress that was building up for years of not seeing anyone.

Saw a Doctor two years ago who Instantly put me on a medication for Schizophrenia. He did not give a fuck that every time they increased the medication, I tried killing myself. However I gave it a chance for a year and a half, despite the medication causing me to cease swallowing in the middle of eating, and finally when it was obvious they didn't care about me (Not refilling orders that I called in weeks in advance before I showed up and finally not calling me to tell me my order had arrive after telling me they would do such) I just stopped. I can tell my triggers which set off the Hallucinations and when i'm about to "crash" so it's pretty easy to maintain myself so as long. The anxiety is a bitch but i have to work through it

Long story short, It works differently for everyone. Medication didn't do well for me and I have done better off it then on it.

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>>17488443
you should seek help, I have some mental issues as well that I am not going to bore you with but I hid it for a long time and it only made things worse, but when I finally broke under the pressure and finally went to get help, it felt like a huge load off my shoulders, sure, there are some minor negatives, but nonetheless, it gave a chance to work it out so later in the future it won't bug me as much.

moral of the story: seek help, because it will help

>>17488460
I don't get this. Our perception of reality is fragile and fabricated. There's nothing more "real" about my sober worldview compared to when I'm on my prescription drugs.

Why go through life miserable when you could have taken something that'll make things look a little rosier?

When I'm on my antidepressants it makes me feel like I can handle those things that seemed too big before.

Just try it, Christ. You can always change type, dosage, and stop. You're not committed for the rest of your life.

Keep in mind it takes 4 weeks to get the full effects, and shopping around is important. It took me 4 years to find the medication that works best for me.

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>>17488548
The problem I have with living on medication is that in someway the experience is fabricated. I guess I am stubborn but I don't want to rely on a drug to blur my world. I don't see the induced effect as being true happiness so I'd rather just tough it out, at least then I know its real.

>>17488559
Clinical depression is caused by your brain not producing the substances it needs in order to function properly. Why would an experience caused by a lack of something be more real? Should someone try to tough out a hormone imbalance such a hypothyroidism, or type 1 diabetes, or an immune disorder, because it's more "real" than their lives on medication? The brain is just another part of the body, and like any part of the body its has quirks and problems that can usually me improved through care.

If you really don't want to try medication, OP, there are other things you can do that are proven to have an effect on reducing depression. If you have clinical depression it'll very likely not be able to cure it, but it will hopefully take the edge off and lessen it a little bit.

You need to make sure that you get enough of:
- sleep
- sunlight
- healthy food
- exercise
- social interaction
- money to live comfortably
- fulfilling and enjoyable hobbies

The more of these you can tick off, the more it will help. If you already are getting all of these, and your life is objectively good, and you're still depressed, then medication is your best option.

>>17489504
Yeah, fuck I have all those. What a hassle though

is it worth going if you refuse to take drugs

I'm trying to get help for it and it's just making me want to give up more and more because of all the fucking horseshit there is to deal with.

>try to get help
>constantly told "your insurance doesn't cover this"
>the one that doesnt tell me this wants me to wait 3 months so i can see a doctor, so they can send me to a psychologist, so they can send me to a psychiatrist

Why. Why in the fucking hell is this such an ordeal? I feel like the only way i'll get help is if i say i made an attempt on my life. Why can't i get help? All that'll probably happen is i'll get put on meds that fuck my dick up and make me feel like a zombie.

>>17490734

One of the big reasons I'd prefer universal healthcare is because I've been close to depressed people with no money for insurance to get treatment, and it's terrible. Besides the fact it is already hard to get them to get treatment a lot of the time, they also use the fact they don't have insurance as an excuse to just totally give up on the idea. Not that it isn't a big barrier, but that barrier looks 10x larger to a depressed person. It's unbearable as it is to see people you care about depressed, and made worse that they could probably get help but they don't have enough money to do it, and a part of the reason for that is their condition makes them unable to properly function.

>>17490912
I have family helping me to get help, but that doesn't change the fact that i have to wait until NOVEMBER at the earliest to get anything. Worse still, is I doubt this'll help, every med i've been put on so far has had an unbearable side effect