If you are ill, go see a doctor. Skip the travel, spiritual enlightenment, and other ad-hoc treatment; cut to the chase - visit a psychiatrist. If you wouldn't treat your own diabetes, you shouldn't treat your own mental health.
Often times an afflicted person would not have the energy to make the visit, precisely due to the condition that needs treatment. If this happens to you, ask your friends for help.
I treat my physical health on my own all the time. I take DayQuil, I take time off, I lay on the couch and watch TV. Heck, I injured my arm 3 months ago (tendonitis), and after 2 months of self-treatment, I felt like I wasn't doing enough, so I went to the doctor and they told me I was doing everything I could and there was nothing more they could do for me.
I absolutely treat my mental health on my own, and I recommend everybody do it. It's not some bright line that you cross where you're all of a sudden "broken" and need a mechanic to fix it. It's the fuzzy art/science of medicine that absolutely requires patient cooperation and introspection to fix.
- My arm. Did I mention this is the 3rd time I've hurt it this way? Since I'd seen this scenario before, I had heard professional opinion on how to treat it.+
- The cost. Time cost is real. In my case (and most founders), time is more valuable than money.
Should we encourage more people to talk to more professionals than do today? Sure, yes, I do think so. But we should also encourage people to self-educate and self-treat. Those aren't at odds with each other.
In England it's a bit complicated.
IAPT (Improved Access to Psychological Therapy) should provide easy access to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. People should be able to self-refer without using their GP. But it's different in different areas.
And while CBT is great for some people it doesn't work for everyone, and if you need a different therapy you're going to have to be referred. This will involve potentially very long waits - ideally at most 18 weeks from GP to start of treatment, but in practice people can wait for over a year.
It's perfectly normal for folks who are motivated and driven to succeed to be getting medicinal assistance with being the former. Bearing the stress and strains are often dealt with in a similar fashion.
The pill may not be the "fix" but it's a way to keep up for those who may fall behind and get ahead for those who are only par normally.
I'm not saying that this is the ideal situation, it's just what is.
A statement like this presumes all psychiatrists are equally good and roughly interchangeable. That hasn't been my experience at all. The variance is quite high and seems to be patient-dependent.
So better advice is, "visit a series of psychiatrists until you find one that works well for you".
- Ask your friends for a referral. If you're ill, chances are that many of your friends are too - age, environment, and upbringing are contributing factors.
- Ask a doctor in an adjacent field whom you know is competent. Rinse, repeat. This is also know as 'optimistic routing'. Works wonders in any field of medicine, and likely beyond.
- Ask the local medical board. (Never tried it, but it should work).
The problem here is that the very condition that needs treatment makes people seek excuses for not seeking help. This is why I advise leaning on friends - they won't look for excuses.
And by the way, the "open enrollment" period is open right now: https://www.google.com/search?q=health+care+plan+finder
The travel, etc was the catalyst that helped me clear my head to think about what was going on and finally ask my psychiatrist "What if I had X". I saw him maybe 10 times prior to that and the subject never even came up.
Shit's hard, yo.
The problem is that the mood issues were always just... "me". It just seemed like an aspect of mild depression that was always manageable. The daily internal dialogue would go: "My mood is absolutely awful right now. I have zero energy and feel depressed. But, this is just a fleeting feeling that should go away in an hour. I'll just deal with it. Coffee should help a bit for now, at least." In other words, I would swing between moods similar to bipolar II.
Turns out that's the wrong way to look at it. Some major life events caused me to re-evaluate many things, so I took a major vacation by myself without contact to the world to gain a lot more self insight. Eventually that led to me asking my psychiatrist about bipolar/schizophrenia as a possible cause of my problems. (Some article on hacker news on mental health actually led to bringing up the specific questions.)
When I brought it up, he even looked at me like I was trying to completely self-diagnose and initially shrugged it off. Technically, yes it's self-diagnosis, but it led to a more-correct diagnosis, but only after sending me to a research program that gave me a full psych evaluation. One of the doctors even mentioned multiple times "you're the perfect candidate for this study..." Go figure..
Mild aside - Similar doubt happens when I ask about lead poisoning as a possible attention/mood root. I used to shoot rifles competitively for years without taking care of washing my hands and such, so it's not a completely awful theory. Every doctor I brought it up to looked at me like an idiot and would just send me to get a blood test as if that's even a valid test. Still no answer there.
(edit - editing)
The second hardest thing, after getting yourself to the office, is conveying your problem in all its gruesomeness. I have a hunch they aren't allowed to lead you with questions, and if you think its "normal" you won't describe it in enough detail. It's too easy to start thinking that you are of bad character, or "it's just life". You aren't and it ain't - a healthy person, especially with a good skill set, can easily focus on his work, or put effort to find better work. Timid acceptance of suffering, absent an actual terminal disease, is the hallmark of a mood disorder.
The key trigger with doctors is to describe both how you feel and how that affects your life - e.g. you can't do your work in the afternoon, you can't sleep at night and feel tired during the day, your relationship unravels because you can't put any effort into it, the trash is piling over your house, the bills go unpaid more than they have to be, you get riled up about inconsequential things and can't calm down, that sort of thing.
I'm glad you found proper help. Tenacity pays.
Things are definitely better these days. I'm currently in the process of switching careers (starting today, actually) to remove as many stress points as possible, which definitely has a major effect on my mental health. No more on-call ;)
Absolutely on the tenacity, btw.