I also just have to constantly keep busy. I fill my time with work and activities with my family. I rarely take downtime because if I do the dread and flashbacks rear their ugly heads.
I highly recommend you read The Body Keeps The Score. Immensely insightful and well researched book that will change the way you think about overcoming trauma
Having such a bad reaction to it lead me down a wild goose chase toward finding out the way my body processes serotonin ala a gene test, helped me figure out what was causing the depression to begin with.
Another reply here talks about how it seems to be a crapshoot for finding effective drugs and a lot of trial and error. I think that there may be promise in doing drug targeting genetic tests and possibly microbiome sampling as a way to help people avoid the run-around. In my case, knowing this ahead of time would have helped me avoid a lot of suffering and 3 years of obsessively searching for answers.
On the other hand it can take 4-6 weeks to see if someone responds to a drug, and the drug can cause adverse events in addition to not treating the disease
So in this case it is cheaper, faster and safer to take the test before prescribing
The most obvious example of such would be the significant number of people who experience suicidal ideation or commit it/make attempts as a result of going on certain medications.
But at the less extreme end, you're likely looking at least a month or two, more likely 3 or 4 for each medication attempt. That's going on, taking it for long enough to have an effect, going back off, repeat.
With how severe the side effects can be for many, that's enough time to lose a job, fail out of college, etc. And you're asking them to potentially spend years in that cycle to maybe fine something that works.
But harsh side effects seem like they would be acceptable if depression is as problematic as you claim.
Plus we understand so little macro neurochemistry we don't even understand which apparently correlated biomarkers are causal and which are consequential. The same problem exists with other neurological diseases such as Alzheimers. With depression, as it seems to affect higher function, we even have difficulty (and treatment affordances) with non-chemical stimuli.
Still, it's very much worth working on -- people are suffering such serious debilitation.
Sadly so many people in a similar situation don’t have the flexibility, access and/or support to go down the path that I did. Often they will opt out because of the stigma associated with having mental health issues.
The fact that we know so little leaves tons of room for improvement in addressing mental health, but I worry that we have a very long road to giant leaps in addressing mental health unless we can destigmatize mental disabilities (and other neurological conditions)
It probably has more to do with a relapse back into depressive symptoms than anything in most cases
Given the well-known addictive nature of most anti-depressants, I have always advised my friends to steer away from them, or wean themselves off, and favor talking therapies instead. Everyone else should do the same.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228550299_The_Emper...
[2] https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Here's a response, using the same data, but getting different results: https://annals-general-psychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles...
> The results reported here conclude the debate on the efficacy of antidepressants and suggest that antidepressants are clearly superior to placebo. They also suggest that baseline severity cannot be utilized to dictate whether the treatment should include medication or not. Suggestions like this, proposed by guidelines or institutions (e.g. the NICE), should be considered mistaken.
[0]Here are links to critiques of both version of Understanding Psychosis: https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental-health/psychosis/u...
https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental-health/schizophren...
[1] Here's a link to critiques of PTMFramework https://www.nationalelfservice.net/mental-health/power-threa...
Even for a friend who is severely depressed, which medication will work? How long does each one need to be tried for? What is meant by ‘work’ exactly? Meanwhile, the serious side effects aren’t even fully understood, and you’ll be buying them from companies that actively denied and hid such information from legislators and the public.