Long term depression

[Lol]

HEllo Stevewellam. I'm so pleased you heard no voices today that is brilliant and hopefully means your drugs are starting to work. I'm also glad to see that you have eaten. It has been difficult for you to find the motivation to eat and wash and it is a positive step that you have managed to do this today well done.

Doctors tomorrow, I hope it does you good to have a good conversation about it with your trusted GP and that she echos your back up plan or has suggestions of her own.

I hope you manage to accomplish some more positive steps today, but you have already done well so please don't over do it and find yourself back at stage one!

Take care and keep posting here if it helps.

[SteveW]

Went to my doctor and came back with a big bag of anti-psychotics which should see the back of the voices I've been hearing. I took the opportunity to ask her to increase the pain relief for my arthritis which she did and which will help. Being in pain constantly will make anyone depressed. I just wish it was as easy to get help with my depression. I got a phone call from my psychiatrist apologizing for telling me he would refer me for grief counseling when he hadn't realized that Cruse don't operate in our area. No grief counseling,no support groups. There is a crisis team in the area. With no support services I should think they need one.

[Lol]

Hi Stevewellam I'm glad your visit to your doctor proved fruitful. I'm glad you will soon be feeling relief frorm your voices and your arthritis. Pain is enough to depress anyone let alone the other things you are having to cope with. I'm so sorry to hear of your psychologists phone call and the hope that has taken away. What an awful thing to have promised then taken away! How did he feel the crisis team could help you?

[SteveW]

I have already had the benefit of the crisis team once- they only work with people for 6 weeks maximum. They used to come and see me twice a week and try to convince me of the benefits of not committing suicide. At the moment their involvement has started up again. They ring me on Saturday and Sunday. They ask how I'm feeling and whether I have eaten anything and suggest I eat if I haven't eaten. That's about it. I don't think I'm in the sort of crisis that they specialize in. Their main work is with schizophrenics who have come off their medication, broken down, and need injections of anti-psychotics or admission to hospital. They support all concerned through the process. I'm sure they do a good job, I just don't think depression is their thing.

[Zaf]

Pain is so tiring and debilitating, hopefully the increase of pain killers will help, being in constant pain definitely wont help your depression as I know from padt experience

[SteveW]

Posted a link to an article on treatment resistant depression. Hopefully to let people know that there are options to just taking a succession of single anti-depressants. Unfortunately from my own point of view there is a very ominous phrase in the article " despite aggressive treatment some patients never achieve an adequate response". I am working my way through all these options and getting nowhere. I am worried that I will come to the end of the list and still be severely depressed. There is such a thing as chronic depression-I just hope I am not part of it.

[Got]

Hi Steve, you are very knowledgable. The doctor told me I had chronic depression, after I told him the length of time I had been depressed for (about four years). In your opinion, does this mean that I have chronic depression? If so, will I be able to live a life depression free, or will it always plague me? I think I quite probably have been depressed for much of my life. I beleive I can make a very good effort to keep bad depressive symptoms at bay, but I am dubious as to whether or not I truly can kick depression out of my life.

I hope you start to feel better soon.

Steve

[SteveW]

There are different patterns of depression over the life span of the individual and the fact that you've been depressed for
4 years doesn't mean you can't get out of that episode and not have a recurrence. On the other hand you could get out of
it,be OK for a period of years and then have a recurrence ,which was my pattern. All your GP meant by calling your
depression chronic was the fact that it had gone on for a long time. I ,probably wrongly, tend to reserve the term chronic
depression for depressions that have failed to respond to drugs and therapy. You had long term untreated depression in my
terms.

I think its fair to say that the longer a depression has gone on the harder it is to shift by drugs or therapy. But that is
harder not impossible. It seems like you can still benefit from CBT -you can't have received the full benefit if your
therapist got scared and referred you back to the hospital at too early a stage. There's good evidence that CBT is good at
preventing recurrences as well as getting people out of their current episodes. You also still have plenty of drug options
left. All the treatment options in the TRD article whose link I posted are open to you.If you can get out off your present
episode there is every possibility that you could stay out. A lot depends on how life treats you. For instance I wasn't
doing too badly until my partner and my dad died and there's no legislating for factors like that. 

I know you're off the idea of NHS therapy but I'd say don't give up on it yet. CBT is too powerful a therapy to write off.
And when you go back to your psychiatrist you may need to widen your drug choices and start thinking of yourself as
treatment resistant rather than simply depressed.

I had episodes of depression all my life but even I went 12 years completely OK. Why shouldn't you ? And plenty of people
have one episode and that's it.

[SteveW]

Still struggling to keep on going. The anti-psychotics have coped with the voices but nothing seems to improve the depression. I am having great difficulty in looking after myself-eating,washing and the like- and my mood is on the floor. My problem is that I have never had a depression complicated by grief before and am in unfamiliar territory. It looks like I won't be getting grief counseling now which is a blow. All that leaves me is swallowing anti-depressants and hoping they help the grief as well as the depression.I wish I could see some small signs of progress but I can't as yet.

[Lol]

Hello Stevewellam. I am so sorry you are feeling this way it is so difficult isn't it. I too am grieving and finding it very difficult and complicated to get through. I am having trouble with belief and acceptance and I can't for the life of me see how I can ever get past this. My logical brain does however tell me, along with a lot of people including most on here, that it is time that will heal. I understand this but it is not making me feel any better about the here and now. Some one told me 'chin up' the other day which, as I'm sure you can appreciate, is possibly the single worst thing a person could say in times like this. I came so close to actually clumping him one. I shifted body position and everything which actually frightened me a bit because I'm not like that AT ALL.

If it is time that will heal, we must focus on doing whatever we can just to get through the day. You are finding it very difficult just to look after yourself. I understand. Have you eaten and washed today?

[SteveW]

Thanks for your kind words. I had forgotten from reading your posts that you were also grieving.The advice that time heals doesn't help much when you are in a virtually intolerable situation in the here and now. I am doing my best to keep on going. This depression seems to be hitting me physically and I have completely lost all appetite. The weight is dropping off me and I keep having to put new holes in my belt to cope! All I feel I can do is keep struggling on. When they say time heals they never say how long do they. All I can see is the present stretching out into an indefinite future. I'm not confident that anti-depressants do much for grief either. I've reached the point where I don't really care whether I look after myself or not. It doesn't seem that important.

[Lol]

I understand. I have felt the same. I'm so sorry.

[Got]

Thanks for the advice Steve. I have managed to make some progression using Buddhist philosophy and meditation ( I dont beleive in the religous side of it). It has helped me recently because I feel as if I have found something that I can use myself to make me feel better, and hopefully prevent future catastrophies.

I am sorry to hear that you are finding it so difficult at the moment. I have been to the stage where I have stoped eating and lost all will to do anything, a few times, and it is only the last two weeks I have started dressing and shaving properly. Is there anywhere you can travel to for a while, people you can go to see? I don't know if this will help you feel any better, but it could just, even for a very brief moment, change the monotony a little bit. 

Please take care,

Steve

[Zaf]

Time does heal but its a long and painful process in my experience and anyone that thinks that you can snap out of it really can never have experienced true devastating grief.

Its great your meditation has helped Stevie, I find it helps me too but I know its not for everyone, strangely enough in the past it was my responsibilities that helped me recover from depression but now its responsibilities that have caused it.  I guess its finding something positive to grasp on to, however small, to edge a bit closer to that light at the end of he tunnel?

I'm sorry to hear you feel so grim Steve, I wish I knew what to suggest

[SteveW]

Good luck with the meditation. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one on the forum who gets so down they can't look after themselves. Unfortunately as well as depression I suffer from bad arthritis. I have reached the stage where I'm struggling to get the 2 miles to the village shop. I kept in touch with a few friends when I moved to Lincolnshire to look after my dad but they are so far away there is no way I could get there at the minute.