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Does anyone else chose to go unmedicated for depression? Specifically on the premise of not trusting or being interested in pills that alter mood/emotions?
Ive gotten quite far in my journey to managing major depression by spending time making peace with the array of human emotions, and what each of them feels like to me. To build a connection to what I am feeling, how deeply, and to understand what I need based on my emotional state. If I wake up craving a cigarette and to be deep deep below the ground exhaling my last breath, I note it in my journal. I understand that the day will be one where I am gentle on myself. I allow my feelings to come and to embrace them, if something makes me cry, I lean into it, thinking about every detail that makes the crying worse, sometimes inducing full panic. This helps me feel like I have released the feeling after the episode. Not hiding how I feel or pretending to be happy has been monumental. I have unlearned that there are “good” and “bad” emotions.
I can’t help but think our society has led us to perceive sadness as negative. Depression can affect ones ability to perform or show up to work, it can have a domino effect and make other people sad, both dangerous to the fragile nature of the labor dependent- late stage capitalism we find ourselves in.
Depression is lumped in with sex in terms of “topics too taboo to discuss despite them being completely natural”. In both cases we have evidence that a lack of conversation and education has serious repercussions. When it comes to depression, are we really talking, or are we saying, at large, “I acknowledge you have depression, and we will make it go away with this pill”, behind a closed door.
I am curious for others opinions, especially those who have been diagnosed with depression or who work in the psychology field. Do you think that people could benefit from building emotional intelligence and understanding, from the unlearning of sadness being something that needs to be corrected? From alternative treatment methods like therapy and inpatient programs? Do you think that depression rates rising are due to the growing gloom awaiting in the futures of generations to come? Are you worried about what’s happening in peoples brains who spend their whole young life on ssri’s?
Just to be clear I understand that this probably wouldn’t work for everyone. My perspective comes from someone who is uncomfortable with the human populations growing reliance on pharmaceutical drugs to be “happy”.
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Arius
Hey Frances! I love this post.
Psychology is a passion of mine. I have a social work diploma and most of a BA in psych, but I’ve studied it independently of school for over two decades now. I’m extremely critical of western psychology, and western medicine in general, which too often fails to get to the roots of problems and instead deals in symptom suppression... which is sort of like pulling the battery out of your smoke alarm instead of putting out the fire.
At one point I was creating a course on how to treat depression naturally, but my chronic illness got too bad and I haven’t been able to do the work necessary to finish it.
Since my early teens, I’ve had more of a dysthymia than full-blown major depression. It seems to run in my family and I suspect I’m actually genetically dopamine deficient, which makes it difficult to take pleasure in anything.
I’ve taken pretty much every anti-depressant drug on the market. None of them did anything good for me. Most of them just made me feel weird and disembodied and fuzzy-headed. Usually they came with lousy side-effects.
The truth is that, when you factor out the studies bought and paid for by pharmaceutical companies, anti-depressants aren’t much better than a placebo. St. John’s Wort is a lot more effective than your typical SSRI for a lot of people. Exercise that gets your heart pumping is WAY more effective than SSRIs. I don’t want to tell anybody to go off their medication if it works for them, but I do believe that if you treat the underlying cause, you won’t need it anymore.
IMO depression is super complex and can be caused by one or more of a number of factors. Social isolation, lack of purpose, lack of exercise, diets deficient in Omega 3s or other vital nutrients (modern farming practices produce food that has almost zero nutritional value... and nutrients are the stuff our guts use to build neurotransmitters and hormones etc), stress, poor sleep, lack of hope for the future, and so on. We need to feel like we’re doing something meaningful with the gifts we have, but most of us are stuck doing menial bullshit jobs that waste our potential.
Have you seen Dr. Stephen Ilardi’s Ted Talk, “Depression is a Disease of Civilization”? He goes over various factors that lead to depression and offers simple and practical solutions for all of them. The big take-away is fast walking or some form of cardio for at least 30 mins 3x week (obviously hard if depressed, but basically getting as much movement happening as you can) and supplementation of Vitamin D + Omega 3s, plus spending time with other humans. Getting into nature can really be therapeutic too. We’re still basically apes, and we belong in nature eating animals and fruit from the trees, not in loud noisy cities working in factories and subsisting on fast food. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drv3BP0Fdi8. He’s got other longer-form content out too, and his book with Dr. Andrew Weil was really great too - “Spontaneous Happiness: A New Path to Emotional Well-being.”
Personally, my mental health got a lot better when I started eating a paleo diet and taking Omega 3s and Vitamin D. It wasn’t an easy transition, especially for the first 6 weeks, but it was 1000% worth it. I have been paleo for almost a decade now, I love it and how it makes me feel, and I’ll never go back. Not necessarily recommended for people with histories of disordered eating though.
Meditation and gratitude journalling have also been amazing mental health tools for me. I feel relaxed and happy almost all of the time now.
Lately I’ve been interested in depression as a freeze state induced by trauma. Are you familiar with Pete Walker’s book C-PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving? If not, I think you might really enjoy it.