Antidepressants: you're doing it wrong

[azurelunatic]

Every last one of you peeps who have never been on an antidepressant: the next time you are tempted (whether out of ignorance, fear, or some other non- evidence-based reason) to dismiss the entire category as "happy pills", pipe the fuck down.

Of course some people have shitty reactions to antidepressants, either a specific one or entire categories. This includes shitty emotional reactions. Also, a health provider who pushes pills without other treatments is an utter shithole of a system.

However, for the people for whom it works right (with or without other treatments), this is what it does:

Stops the self-reinforcing cycle of shitty life events bringing down brain chemistry and shitty brain chemistry hindering recovery.
Makes it possible for other brain tinkering to work.
Allows a normal range of emotion while preventing the deepest lows from sticking. (Me off St. John's Wort looks a lot like me on, until I get in a shitty mood and don't recover.)
Saves people's goddamn lives, jobs, relationships.

"Happy pills," my ass.

Comments

[katieastrophe]

Thanks for writing this, someone really really had to.

I wouldn't necessarily agree that ADs allow a normal range of emotion, at least all the time - they certainly didn't for me. The anti-depressant part worked a charm, but as I put it to my doctor: "I'd rather have the lows and the highs, than not have any highs at all." - that was after two years of trying different meds and eventually finding one that worked on the lows, but meant I never felt like smiling... and life without smiles is no life at all, for me.

I have been known to call them happy pills, in an odd mix of affection and cynicism - they didn't work for me, but I know they work for others, and for that I'm glad, because I have so many friends and acquaintances who literally depend on antidepressants to make it possible for them to get up in the morning. As another commenter said, they're "happy pills" in that they make it possible to be happy, so I see them as a bloody good thing, because what's a world without happiness?

So, yeah, it fucks me off something chronic when I see ADs dismissed so readily, especially "because so many people take them" and "depression is the nation's illness". Here's an idea, maybe people are depressed 'cos this world is full of fucked up people who dismiss anti-depressants and criticise the mentally ill, as if they have some kind of choice about their brains playing silly buggers. Maybe what we need to do is stop dismissing people's illnesses, and make the world a happier place to be in. Depression and anxiety can be genetic, but they're environmental too; for a lot of sufferers, mental illness a product of the stress we place on ourselves every day, and that sucks.

(Can you tell this is a bugbear of mine?)

[azurelunatic]

*nods*

I have no issue with someone who's on them or who's tried them using whatever term (affectionate or otherwise) that works for them. It's the folks who have no interest in trying them using the phrase to brush them off that gets substantially up my nose.

If they don't allow a normal range of emotion, then I'd say that they're not working right for you, and you're likely better off without them.

There's some famous quotation about checking first if you're surrounded by assholes before seeking treatment for depression, which is all well and good if you can then actually escape the assholes. (This is much more difficult if you're, say, 16 and maybe financially dependent and legally tied to the assholes in question.)

[katieastrophe]

Quite. (Turns out that, lately, I've been surrounded by assholes - or one in particular. Now that I've broken up with him, I'm feeling a lot happier. But yeah, not so good a hint for a 16 year old stuck at home with a crap family who make them depressed, and ADs could quite possibly help them not feel so desperate about their situation until such a time they *can* escape.)

[azurelunatic]

I just watched Tangled, the Disney Rapunzel, this week, and I'm impressed that there's now a commonly-not-censored kids' movie that not just illustrates, but explicitly acknowledges the poisonous and villainous nature of the parent who claims to love you but really is controlling and demoralizing.

[shadowspar]

So, yeah, it fucks me off something chronic when I see ADs dismissed so readily, especially "because so many people take them" and "depression is the nation's illness".

Hear, hear. I get my back up when I see alarmist "news" articles decrying the increase in prescriptions of antidepressants, particularly since they usually give no context and somehow make this out to be a problem in and of itself. Mental illness is drastically undertreated -- the figures vary depending on who you ask, but roughly half the people with mental illness aren't receiving treatment. Since 1 in 5 people have a mental illness, and anxiety & depression make up a goodly chunk of those, it's possible that the increase in antidepressants is a good thing -- that more people are getting the help they need.