One of the most frustrating things when your really low is people giving advice like do exercise to feel better - please don’t do this.
This is a debatable. As far as I understand things: 'chemical imbalance' has no tests to confirm that's actually true, That's just a story they tell to relax people.
Which is orthogonal to the point that antidepressants can work for some people.
We don't know how depression works. It very well may be many little things dressed in a trench coat.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
https://www.neurocaregroup.com/news-insights/the-death-of-ch...
Always remember, being true is not the same as being helpful.
People talk about depression all the time.
The difference between depression and sadness is sadness is just, you know, from happen stance. Whatever happened or didn't happen for you...
... and depression is your body saying fuck you, I don't want to be this character anymore, I don't want to hold up this avatar that you've created in the world. It's too much for me.
So, a friend of mine who's a spiritual teacher has a really good take. His name is Jeff Foster, and his take on it is that they should change [how we think of] the word "depressed" as "deep rest"
deep rest - your body needs to be depressed, It needs deep rest from the character that you've been trying to play.
Context: I'm "using" SSRIs, talk therapy, psychotherapy, strength training and endurance training -- all in parallel right now.
EDIT: For a recent overview, see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
But I have to say the "chemical imbalance" theory either means no more than "depression responds to an antidepressant (sometimes)" or it is false/meaningless. Neither neurologists nor psychologists have a sufficiently detailed understanding of the workings of the brain to make such a claim.
Again, I'm glad drugs work for you. I would note that there three ways drugs can go for people; working with few problems, not working, working but with significant physical and/or psychological side-effects. Especially, taking any substance daily for the rest of one's life can stress the organs responsible for digesting/processing regardless of whether than substance is otherwise a great fix.
So I think we need to look beyond a glib "this fixes it for everyone" rhetoric even if this fixes it for you (and yeah, some of my friends should at least drugs, I'll admit).
Exercise was how I stayed mildly sane for a good majority of those years, but when I started taking medication it was like the entire world changed. I wish I had started earlier in life. It helped me to become a lot more introspective as well, being able to better examine why I was feeling the way I did.
There are some things that no amount of exercise or "healthy living" can fix, that's unfortunately just the human condition. It's nothing to be ashamed of.
And yet many other times, it can be caused or exacerbated by situational and psychological factors, including "being stuck at home all day".
> One of the most frustrating things when your really low is people giving advice like do exercise to feel better - please don’t do this.
Worse, antidepressants actually cause significant harm to many people who take them, often without even improving their depressive symptoms. This is very bad, and I would say significantly worse than giving general advice that might be inapplicable to some people.
There's no one-size-fits-all solution, and some people probably are legitimately just in need of more motivation to go running or biking or whatever else will get them the exercise they need.
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jul/analysis-depression-prob...
I take sertraline (Zoloft in the US I think) and that is cheap - $20/30 month.
I had to pay $3K for an MRI in cash one time, which yeah you get what you pay for but my buddy pays $2.8K/mo in insurance for his family, like that's a big chunk of his monthly pay
Oh I want to be clear no snark towards you this is the cliche topic of healthcare in US
Regarding the topic at hand though, yeah I lift 5 days a week and do a half hour of maximum inclined walk for those days as well. Mental health but also I want to be ripped. Helps my job has a gym and I'm the only one in there in the mornings. We also walk like 2 miles at work, in circles around the parking lot, talking to co-workers 4 days a week.
My main problem is anxiety, like I wish I could walk downtown in a city and do street photography but I fear that someone will ask me for money or get robbed. The funny thing is I'm a big guy, like 6', I bench almost 300 lbs. I'm not like a stick. I have a fear of crowds too I can do shopping but sometimes in like a WalMart that's a lot of people and of course I'm terrible with women, the fear even if I have the bod. I'm just scared of eye contact and low self-esteem even having a six-fig job my self-determined value is whether a woman will say yes to me or not, it's funny. I don't have a fear of speed I can drive 160mph+ on the highway, helps to have a good car.
But for the moment I'm working towards freeing myself from debt and then being able to live a life where I'm not in fear of losing my job. I'm a privileged person, this is brought on by myself eg. dropping $1.2K a night at a strip club or $600 Venmoing a band to play song requests. I'm complaining about therapy cost lmao.
As long as you don't factor in your taxes.
You're not factoring in the most critical piece of financing - the mental burden. You don't want to be stuck figuring out how to get enough money to pay for mental health services when you need them the most. That's when your earning potential is at its lowest, and every minor obstacle to getting help gets magnified ten fold.
That may as well be a death sentence unless you're privileged enough to be able to easily pay for it with savings. Realizing that you need help, figuring out how to access it, and actually following through is hard enough as it is without any added financial burden.
The £9 is for the administration of the prescription - if th drugs are super expensive heart medication or whatever, it would still be £9 (or free).
I stand by NHS being the only great thing we have left.