thank you!

I'm so glad I saw your article. I wasn't aware of the national screening thing, but I agree, it's horrible. I've struggled, myself, with depression this past year and found out what a bad thing these drugs can be. After losing my mom to cancer (within a week of finding out she had it) when I was 7 months pregnant with my youngest son my doctor told me we might want to use some anti-depressants after I had the baby. I did give them a try, but HALF of the pill knocked me out!! I tried twice, but just couldn't function on them...and with a newborn and a 2 1/2 year-old to care for! Since I just couldn't lay down and sleep I just walked around in a daze. When I told the doctor I couldn't take them anymore I asked him "do half the population just walk around feeling like this?" He told me that you have to build it up in your system & get some tolerance to it first. Don't get me wrong, I love my doctor-he's a great guy, but I don't think they TEACH them other alternatives to drug treatment. So since then, I've just been trying to shake it by telling myself to! That's not working! Also, I know a couple different gals that went to their doctors for something completely unrelated to depression and came out with a prescription for anti-depressants, going "but I don't FEEL depressed!"
Now I have HOPE that I can find my old self in here without the help of drugs! (which I didn't think made sense anyway!)
Thanks so much!

by kfooce (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 9:04:21 AM
 

careful

Not to say that education equals expertise, but when reading an article about psychiatry written by someone without any higher education in the field, red flags start going up. It is one thing to say that people are over-medicated and quite another to say that medication is wrong all the time. The first can be clearly supported, while the latter is simply reactionary. In fact, there have been several studies done ascertaining brain chemical levels and the role they play in the creation of mood. While physical health including exercise, is a necessity in helping mental health (an artificial duality used only in this discussion), not everything is so easily cured.

In addition, using the dictionary to define depression as an emotion misses a major point: what is emotion but a chemically induced reaction to perceived reality?

by David Teachout (3 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 21 comments) on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 11:54:45 AM
 

Anybody who isn't depressed

hasn't been paying attention to what's been going on in this country for the last six years.

What are you supposed to feel when your pension plan goes unfunded, your job is outsourced, your kid is killed in a war based on lies, and you find out that big corporations and the rich don't pay any taxes? Joyful? Elated? Euphoric?

What I've found in my personal life is that the harder I work to fight injustice and support democracy, the better I feel. Cindy Sheehan lost a son in Iraq and instead of sinking into depression and despair, channeled that grief into building opposition to the war.

A REAL mental illness might be knowing what is going on in the world, blocking it all out, and going about your life as if nothing at all were happening. I think that would be called schizophrenia. And in a case like that I wouldn't rule out medications or even a milder form of shock therapy like a good shaking and a bucket of ice water on your head.

Wake up America! Don't get depressed, get organized!

--Mark

by Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments) on Wednesday, October 4, 2006 at 7:39:37 PM
 

walk in my shoes instead of condemning

Anti-depressants saved my life, literally, and they've saved many other lives as well. Painting any treatment with such a broad brush is wrong.

by JanetT (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 9 comments) on Monday, October 9, 2006 at 7:54:59 PM