Alan said :
Quote:
Anti-depressants dont 'make it all go away' though, nor are they 'happy pills. They pretty much put a cap on your emotions,both upwards and downwards, which in itself is not a very pleasant phase, but it's meant to be transitory. They put your body in a position whereby you can begin to manage your moods. It sounds ridiculous unless you'vebeen there but I would go in to work and end up almost crying over nothing.Literally nothing. Out of the blue. The tablets didn't cure me, but they helped me get out of bed in the morning and make it to counselling, which was what really made the difference. i haven't cried in almost two years now, and haven't looked back since.
I saw this thread last week and was going to post but didn't have the time to do this justice; I tried looking for it again at the weekend but couldn't find it and have just stumbled across it again.
It's amazing to see how many of you have experienced this condition; I'm one of the lucky ones who has never really succumbed to the Black Dog but my partner of 20 years has suffered intermittently from severe depressive episodes since he was 16 - he is now 44. He too suffers very physical symptoms and this is one of the things we now recognise early on. He's had a number of different treatments over the years... at 16 he was referred to the Tavistock Clinic in London which is quite well respected, where he had therapy, group and one to one, he's been diagnosed as bi-polar (not correct) and prescribed lithium, he's taken Stellazine and Prozac , none of which helped much. When he was 21 he had another breakdown which took him about 3 years to recover from - he couldn't work at all during this period. I met up with him again when we were 25 (we'd been at school together and I knew about the episode at 16) and things started looking up; he got a job, we bought a house and he was OK for 7 years.. in fact, he used to refer to the earlier episodes as " when I was mad..." he thought it was all behind him... WRONG ! a year after our daughter was born he had a major breakdown, resulting in loss of job, more treatment, different drugs , CBT and even psychotherapy (which was on the NHS, just shows you how bad he was to get that !) I can't even remember what medication he was on then, its all a bit of a blur. Again he recovered, but after being made redundant 5 years ago it happened again... we were living in Essex this time and he was referred to a crisis intervention team who were really good. This time he appears to have been prescribed the right medication for him, Efexor, which has proved the most effective. Some people do come out of their depression without medication, but for him it actually stops the major dips - but like Alan says, they do put a cap on your emotions and he said to me that he feels he doesn't FEEL things like before. Its had a major effect on our life - periods of unemployment and gaps in the CV which we've managed to gloss over but he's a highly intelligent bloke now working for £5 an hour in a factory . Its been very tough, watching him go through this and also the effect its had on us as a family.
Its amazing though, how many people have similar experiences but we all keep it bottled up - like I said, I haven't experienced it myself but have lived with it for almost half my life. A very misunderstood condition, especially for men...