“Anti-depressants don’t work!”
“The $15 billion hustle!”
“Not based on science!”
“There is little evidence that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in our brains.”
That’s been my world since I saw this story on the BBC website. Everything I believed in regarding the medication I get for my clinical depression has been thrown into doubt. For all these years, have I been showing faith in, and relying on, a placebo that makes me think I’m taking something that works when it actually doesn’t? I’ve long understood the corrective nature of anti-depressants, in that they increase levels of the “happy hormone” serotonin. Now it appears they don’t, but nonetheless the report doesn’t suggest anti-depressants don’t work.
That appears to be a bit of a relief until you dig deeper into the BBC article: “Research suggests antidepressants work only a bit better than placebos.” Hang on then. The report says anti-depressants don’t really work but it also suggests that they do. Confused? How could you not be?
I’ve seen the stuff suggesting that therapy and counselling should be tried before whacking people on drugs, which is certainly a realistic possibility, but only if you are wealthy and can afford to hand a wad of cash to a parasitic run-for-profit private health business. All the NHS provides, via of course private health company providers, is limited and basic counselling. Yesterday, my world was turned upside down by this report and its likely consequences.
I had a big dip yesterday and until today I hadn’t realised what had caused it. When things go tits up in the mental health department, the person in the middle of the storm can’t always put two and two together (other numbers are available). That was me yesterday. Things went downhill so quickly, I wasn’t able to think logically, which is one of the ways in which depression works. In the cold light of day, I’ve worked it all out now. Yesterday’s major crisis is today’s return to bumping along the bottom.
The most damaging thing yesterday was the headline: “DID WE ALL BELIEVE A MYTH ABOUT DEPRESSION?” I am guessing the author of the headline was not a clinical depressive and was writing for an audience they believed wasn’t, either. As someone who is always half a block away from another meltdown, I’m not sure if I’d have been any worse if they had written, “OFFICIAL: DEPRESSION DOESN’T EXIST. PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER AND STOP FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF.” To me, that’s basically how it read anyway.
I briefly lost my mind yesterday, hence this blog which I didn’t at the time share on social media. I’ve left it up because it was how I felt at the time, which was the worst I have felt for a very long time.
“The pen is mightier than the sword”, goes the old proverb. And considerably easier to write with. That’s because words matter. And words that suggest that the drugs don’t work, when you feel that the only thing keeping you from insanity are those very same drugs, has made me question every aspect of my mental health. And there’s nothing I can do about it.
