[Gem]

Originally Posted by Just Tim

I agree with everything you said, but depression is an illness.

Neurologically, a depressed person "brain to body" connections are "slowed down". For example, let's say you're hungry, you naturally go and cook something for yourself. You just do it, you don't actually think of the gestures you'll have to perform and such.

A depressed person will want to do it, just like a non-depressed person, but the depressed person's brain is transmitting the signals to the body very slowly, and therefore the bit of light, aka trying to get up, move on, have a nice meal, takes too much time to happen, and dark thoughts get back on stage, litteraly blocking you from go and cook, because your mind went back in "dark pattern mode".


Therefore, one cannot get off their *beeeep* on their own, except extremely rare cases, maybe luck, maybe incredible will, who knows.

Antidepressants get the brain back to "normal rate mode", while benzodiazepines help keeping at bay dark thoughts. When antidepressants were "invented", doctors obviously gave those away like candy, willing to help but clearly misinformed. Then, depressive patients were able to act again, except their dark thoughts were still there ! So you can imagine what these people did... Until the whole thing was given a second thought, and add benzodiazepines to it.

All that is completely useless without the help of a psychologist/psychiatrist. The drugs fight the symptoms, but you need someone by your side, leading you to the core of what tears you apart !

Be well y'all

I'm skeptical of the drug approach, though it could be one component of a more comprehensive plan. I don't think there is much evidence to show the 'chemical imbalance' existed in the first place, and individuals are certainly not diagnosed on that basis. In practice they diagnose behaviours subjectively according to DSM categories which are arbitrary and try different drugs and combinations until something seems to work. I was trained in holistic approaches which consider the whole scope of a person individually, socially and environmentally across their lifespan. There is more to a person than a brain which is affected by chemicals. Because we are very medical-brain focused in this particular historical era of this particular culture, we find people are over-diagnosed and over-prescribed in general, especially children. If initially ineffective, the typical progression is toward stronger drugs and multi-med treatments which become deleterious rather than beneficial.

The case for skepticism is widely discussed by mental health professionals and academics. Drugs seem to take the edge off in the shorter term for people experiencing severe symptoms, so that can work, but you have to find out whats going on with people and go over various treatment options with them so they can choose the road that they think would help them most.