| > such as talk therapy and lifestyle changes The places where anti-depressants are applied vs talk therapy are applied are fairly different. The idea that there is a cohort of mustache-twirling doctors and pill pushers trying to shove pills down the throat of every person who'd be better suited to talk therapy is about as ridiculous as I made it sound. For many people, talk therapy is simply not effective or possible. And in many situations there are social forces which MUST be taken into consideration because they can cause lead to more anxiety and depression. > perhaps the bigger mistake was not going off SSRIs (at which point the die may have been more or less cast for you, in the short- to medium-term) -- but agreeing to go on them in the first place. I get so angry reading this. Hot under the collar even. If you think that SSRIs don't help people then you simply don't understand what a true and chemical despair feels like. The difference they can make, both short term and long, is counted in human lives. Many people like me who used them to bridge a short term gap could barely comprehend days without despair, fear and pain. To have some smug anti-medicine comment oh-so-politely walk up to someone who says, "Hey I treated my mental illness like a real illness and it worked" and respond with scorn an derision? You simply do not understand what real, clinical, and life-threatening depression is. If you think you do, if you had a mild case that you talked through? Congratulations! I wish the disease on no one. But that doesn't give you license to skulk about making everyone else with a less treatable form of the illness question everything they've done to secure their right to experience happiness. |