What Is Clinical Depression
Q: I've been diagnosed with clinical depression. 3 weeks ago I was
put on sertaline and there was improvment until today when I
feel as black as the ace of spades. Can anybody tell me much
about clinical depression - medication generally and how I can
help myself out of this dark hole. I have noticed that this
group has a Cambridge meet. I am moving there next month.
A:Get therapy, even if you have to pay for it. The drugs are effective - after
a delay of at least a month - but they do not cure depression on their own.
They will, however, lift it off you for a while and this will save your
life - not necessarily in the sense of averting suicide, but in the sense of
giving you some life back.
Be warned that the initial lifting of depression is accompanied by a
re-emergence of character and a strengthening of resolve that allows some
depressed people to finally make the decision and carry through their
suicide. At the very least, the depression will lift unevenly and
sporadically, and you'll *never* have felt so vulnerable.
All of the problems associated with early-stage SSRI treatment, as you will
have seen and heard about in the media, arise in a failure to engage in the
*treatment* of depression by careful assessment, diagnosis, counselling and
monitoring. Standard clinical practice in the UK is "Take the pills and
bugger off" and the usual outcome is a lifting and stabilisation of mood
that lasts for about a year, in which some patients get their lives back
together and the rest will slip back into deep depression after wasting a
window of opportunity in which therapy might have done some good.
What if Sertraline is exposing problems that were 'greyed-out' by your
depression? Depression isn't 'being sad' - it's a pervasive condition and,
with hindsight, you're going to be shocked when you discover just how much
it's taken away from you.
i suffer from clinical depression, am currently taking olanzapine,
lofepramine and amitriptyline for it. my trick cyclist has suggested