Tag: psych hospital

About depression that I have to get off my chest

There has been a LOT of talk lately about depression being treatable. Let me say first, that for some, it is. Therapy has been helpful to some in dealing with it. Medications and therapy still prove to be useful in treatment of depression or actually any mental illness. It was once thought that schizophrenia was a medication only illness. But I learned through one of my suicidologists that isn’t always true, as there was a paper written by him about he helped decrease an individual’s suicide risk by seeing him weekly or more if suicide was more present. It helped the patient feel cared for. If I find the article in my files, I will share it if you care to read it.

I am in no way saying you should NOT get help if you are feeling depressed. But my experiences (which are not the same to the whole depression population) beg to differ. I have yet to find anything that helps the mood shifts. Since my long time therapist stopped seeing me for reasons I have still yet to learn, I have been the most unstable and hopeless I have been in the 16 years I was in “treatment” with her. We had our disagreements about treatment. Transference and countertranferences were helpful at times but were no long lasting. She stuck with the way she was treating me and I stuck to being, well, depressed and suicidal.

What I have to get off my chest is that sometimes, depression is untreatable in a small percentage of people. There is such a thing as treatment resistant depression. Despite ECT (“shock” therapy), medication, and therapy, one can still feel depressed. There are a trillion reasons for this. Sometimes it has to do with the trauma one experienced. Some has to do with biology itself, that the genetic predisposition of a person makes them depressed. Other times it has nothing to do with a trauma or situation. It just happens that you start withdrawing from life, slowly at first and before you know it, you can’t go back to things you loved because, frankly, you are too depressed. Sometimes you maybe too depressed to seek help and a friend or family member needs to push you to get it. The thing is, depression still exists despite treatment. Some people have suffered depression for years and have never told a single soul. They are the small percentage that still go on with their episodes after they pass. They are less likely to die by suicide. Hell you don’t NEED depression to end your life. It has happened. Look at the Shawshank Redemption movie. The warden was “well” mentally and rather than be arrested and humiliated, he killed himself. Would anyone have thought he would do such a thing? No. And that is what my point is. Although we know what the risks are for suicide, depression and mental illness is only a small window into those risks. There are some people who die that have no history of mental illness yet die by suicide. I won’t go into more discussion about it because this is a loaded issue. I suggest reading the Myths and Facts of Suicide by Thomas Joiner. It is a really good book about what I am talking about.

I can only talk about my experience, no one else’s. I have been depressed since I was 8, maybe younger. I only know this because I started thinking suicide was a good idea at that age. I was 10 when I tried to end my life for the first time. I suffered from depression and after taking Prozac, became bipolar because the medication caused mania like symptoms. Not once during my years of being on medication AND therapy did my thoughts of suicide leave me fully. Neither did depression. There were brief times where I felt contentment. I honestly don’t believe in happiness. Like anger, it is a fleeting emotion and doesn’t last. But feeling contentment does happen for me and I sometimes feel comfortable in it. I know it isn’t going to last long. It never does. The depression always finds a way back, maybe not right away but it does come back. Despite some of my successes in life, graduating from high school, getting my Associate’s degree, publishing two books, I still was depressed. I was elated for a little while but it was fleeing. Just like when I wrote the article for the New York Times. I couldn’t believe and still don’t, that it happened. I still have the check that one day I will frame along with the article. But soon after all the paperwork was filed and I was waiting for it to be published, I was intensely depressed. The New York fucking Times was publishing something I wrote and instead of being happy as a pig in shit, I was depressed. I learned that no matter what my success in life was, no matter how much money I made, good job that I had, I was going to always be depressed. I could do one of two things. I could accept that this was the way it was always going to be or fight it. I chose to accept it.

I knew I had been fighting it since I was 16 that I would always have to take medication for my mental illness. It wasn’t easy but I knew if I was to avoid a lifetime of hospitalizations, I would need to take medicine to hold off the demons. Yet despite this theory, I was still hospitalized. Many times. Some times it was like a revolving door during my worst episodes. In 1994, I suffered a huge major depressive episode. I was hospitalized almost every two weeks and then for two months because I tried to end my life. It was one of the lowest periods of my life. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything. Showering didn’t matter. I gained a ton of weight from the meds I was put on. I started living an almost double life. The life the psychiatrists wanted to see and who I really was at home, when I was by myself. Hopelessness was rampant and totally lost on me. I can’t say that I got better. I just got better at hiding from myself, to keep the darkness at a minimum so I wouldn’t be committed at the age of 19 to a state hospital. Even then the façade I built was hard to put down. I just did what I was told to do and when I felt like acting on my feelings of suicide, I told my therapist or psychiatrist, which inevitably led to another hospitalization. But the hospitals in the 1990s were different than they are today. Today they are nothing but holding pens. Two maybe three days you are in and then you are out. If you need more help and have an outpatient therapist, you see them. You don’t need to be in. Maybe you stay for a week or two. But never more than that. Insurance won’t pay for it. And you don’t really get “treated”. You are watched 24/7 to make sure you don’t harm yourself. You might find a “treatment team” that listens but that is ALL THEY DO. They don’t help you in what you came in for. That is for you and your outpatient therapist to work out. If you don’t have one, you might get referred to someone. I’ve never been in that situation so not sure how that works.

I have lost faith that my illness is “treatable”. Seems no matter what I do, I end up depressed or just stay depressed. I am okay with that. I’ve known for a while that there is no longer an antidepressant out there for me. I am grateful my mood stabilizer still works. I just hope that it does fuck up my sodium levels and I need to some off it. Then I will be really screwed. In that sense, I still take my meds because they help. I no longer have commanding voices every day and the accompanying paranoia and delusions. I have to take a med for that every day. But therapy is still elusive. I honestly don’t know if it helps. Talking with someone honestly, like writing this blog, has been useful. Sometimes it feels good to talk to my therapist and leave knowing that someone understands, even if he thinks I am crazy. He said that he is “taking my lead”, which I am not sure about but it is a learning curve like anything else. And I will stress again, that if you aren’t comfortable with the person you are talking to, if they make you uncomfortable or just not getting it, find someone else. There are a lot of different therapists out there. A lot of different degrees as well (but all should be licensed by the state you are in, if they aren’t, I wouldn’t see them). It will take some time to know if they fit with you. The average is about 3 or 4 sessions. Any more than that might be a waste of time if there is no connection.