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Starting the debate: antidepressants or dandelions
Posted Saturday 13 October 2012
Has mental health become over-medicalised? Are we driven down paths to treatment more by busy doctors and powerful pharmaceutical companies than by individual need? These are difficult questions that I have struggled with as I bring a mental health book to publication, and a recent survey by Mind has highlighted the importance of being open and frank about how we, unique as each of us is, take responsibility for our health needs.
I am a writer and researcher, experiencing depression and anxiety for much of my adult life, managing symptoms with antidepressants. Talking therapies offered to me on the NHS were ineffectual and short-term. I paid for CBT, which had little effect and am now in long-term counselling. At last I am coming to terms with why I respond in particular ways to particular circumstances and it is helping.
I was made redundant two years ago and since then have at last been able to pursue my first love – writing. My blog gave birth to a book – an anthology of prose and poetry expressing the real-life experiences of more than twenty people who live with mental illness. Dandelions and Bad Hair Days: Untangling lives affected by depression and anxiety aims to raise awareness and beat the stigma attached to mental health and raise money for charity.
I started a debate on the book’s website in a post entitled Mental Health: where do we draw the line, the responses to which struck me in light of some of the statistics produced in the survey.
The survey indicates that those like me, who have been taking anti-depressants for more than two years, feel they are less well-informed and are less likely to have been offered talking therapies than those first diagnosed within the last two years.
We are regularly told that antidepressants are not addictive but we have to be honest with ourselves; I know I am addicted to these drugs not because of their chemical ingredients but because I am afraid of what will happen if I stop taking them.
A significant number of people completing the survey are no longer reviewed by their GP so like me, many may be taking them for years without considering alternatives.
Responses to my piece on the website came from therapists and lay readers, many of whom felt antidepressants are not readily promoted by the NHS. The pressure from drugs companies is debated but I would be the first to say that there ARE benefits for many from antidepressants, myself included. But experiencing depression is NOT like having a broken leg which, for most, is a similar experience that can be cured with a plaster cast. Mental health issues are quite different, however helpful campaigns are at using the physical illness or injury analogy to reduce stigma.
No one experience described within Dandelions is the same as another, no one treatment more or less successful. Medication suits some, talking therapies others. CBT is not the cure-all that many NHS professionals rely upon and a combination of therapies is often most beneficial. For some, finding a way to manage their own symptoms with the support of alternative therapies has been liberating but that is not something the medical profession are always comfortable with. Others – and I am becoming someone who can appreciate the importance of this – find the only way to make a lasting change is to examine their most difficult experiences with the help of a counsellor and take steps to alter entrenched patterns of behaviour.
The author of the title piece in Dandelions and Bad Hair Days, writer Vivienne Tufnell, compared dandelions to those issues we must face in order to deal with our depression and antidepressants to weed-killers. It might be possible to stop addressing these ‘weeds’ with chemicals and start accepting them for what they are – issues that can be addressed by other, more holistic methods that treat us as individuals. It is hard at the moment to see health professionals accepting this but it might be time to change the analogies…
Suzie Grogan
Suzie Grogan is a freelance writer and researcher based in Somerset.
After many years in the public and voluntary sectors she now writes on
health, social history and poetry. Having been published in a variety of
local and national magazines she is now working on two books -
Dandelions and Bad Hair Days; Untangling lives lived with depression and anxiety (launched on 10 October) and Shell Shocked Britain which will look at the legacy of the First World War on mental health in the 20th
century.
Did you take our survey over the summer? Read through the results.
Find out more about antidepressants, how they work and their side effects. If you, or someone you know, is thinking about coming off, read about how you can come off these drugs successfully and the difference between relapse and withdrawal.
10 Comments
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I myself over the years have been prescribed anti deppresants all different kinds, personaly I feel doctors prescribe these too often as a meant to be way of fixing our mental health along with emptying their waiting rooms, I have always with each type came across friends also on the same type as me now surely this is not right . I have now came to the conclusion they are definetly not the answer to my problems so I am now on my third week free from any type of anti deppresants, after a rough couple of weeks I feel my mood has started to lift a little although I am still suffering from agraphobia.but to the delight of my children I have now once again started to sit downstairs with them and communicate with them more instead of locking myself away in a bedroom something that I've done for many years so I would say anti depressants are not the answer to everyone's mind state doctors need to be looking more at each individual more and stop treating us all in the same way
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Thanks for your comment - I think you are right and sometimes it is up to us to take control of how we feel. It is so important to treat everyone as an individual and it is so hard for GPs to find time to do that. Good luck and I do hope you soon start to feel you are in control of your recovery.
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In the early days I was prescribed several drugs on and off including, tranquilizers, amitriptyline, one or two others but ended up on Prozac for a couple of years. This was when Prozac was hailed as the cure all (do you remember that). Well Prozac did absolutely nothing except completely dull my sex drive. The side effects of the other drugs at times were horrific but did nothing for my situation. Nothing was really explained by the doctor other than 'I'd like you to take these'. It was left up to me to find out the ins and outs about these drugs. When I reported side effects, there was no sense of urgency, as there was no senses of urgency about the effects of my illness it seemed to me. Many years past with me battling my illness when I finally was reffered to CBT. There was a drive on a few years ago where CBT was pushed by the government as an aid to getting people off the dole (do you remember)? Anyway, CBT for me could have perhaps been more effective if I hadn't had the knowledge that, for the most part, it was being delivered with pre-ordained outcomes in mind, i.e. to get us off benefits and into the jobs market. This was what I felt was being done to me.
I have always concluded that it is of the utmost importance to understand the root cause of my depression. I realise some people become depressed through social circumstances. The fact is social injustice, bullying, lack of parental love, social ostracization and isolation through lack of money through illness, the disparity of wealth and opportunity, the socioeconomic background you are born into can all be real forces in an individuals depression. No pill has been invented yet as far as I know to combat this. And the fact is, these disparities are becoming worse. What with governments wanting to return to the days of oppressive mill owner mentality, the poor being blamed for the price of houses, the sick being denied treatments, all becoming ever more acceptible. No wonder theres so much depression.
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I've been on (and off) anti-depressants for the best part of 12 years now and finally got diagnosed bipolar (as well as BPD) about 2 years ago.
never have i been offered any kind of therapy on the nhs. when i've asked about it i was told that cbt would not be suitable for me as my needs were too complex and that i couldn't have psychological therapy as i was too "functional" for it and it was only for worst case people (FYI - the service has since been withdrawn completely in my area as it was thought to be ineffective).
I paid for a year of therapy myself but found i couldn't open up to the guy and left in the end. sometimes i think about going back but finding someone i can trust is going to prove difficult and probably quite expensive.
now i take a cocktail of lithium and duloxetine having tried most anti-depressants that are currently on the market over time. i'm stable. medically anyway. none of it has addressed the issues and none of it cures the bpd - my local CMHT don't believe it can be cured so they don't try - and i've given up and discharged myself from my cpn as of this week as she was never any use.
while i'm well, i know that i will be on my medication for life. i hate it. but i've been off meds enough to know that i can't survive without them
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I have been on antidepressants for many years and a recent 'blip' caused a change in medication to one that actually enhanced my illness rather than helped. Thankfully I am slowly returning on another medication to a better place.
I have always been skeptical of the recent push for CBT as A) It is often short-term and B) It is a post code lottery.
If antidepressants help then a really good treatment to aid well being is incorporating peer support and peer self-management alas still not funded by many trusts. Medication and CBT still medicalises mental ill health when what is really needed is meds if they hep that person and a positive NHS service that really focuses on moving forward and really gives people a positive future. -
Rachel, I too have been diagnosed with BPD, GAD and Depression. I have had some psychological intervention which has been a rocky road as it is very difficult to 'trust' people, especially people in 'authority'.
It's not so much that BPD cannot be cured and yes they do believe this, but it has been proved that people can get to the place when they no longer meet the diagnostic criteria or have symptoms which are required for the diagnosis of BPD. Isn't this therefore a cure or recovery ? They need to do more research !
I was, for a long time kept as a number and a statistic in the outpatients department attending the mandatory 6 monthly appointment and receiving no help whatsoever, being told I had complex needs and that I was not responding to treatment. I am stable at the moment and wish you luck. Take it one day at a time.
TO SUZIE - I also want to thank the author of this blog as so many of your words struck a chord with me and reminded me of a story I recently heard about accepting the 'Dandelions' in one's life which is possibly the beginning of 'coping' and accepting life as it is and the beginning of a road to recovery.
I hope this makes sense as I am fighting to keep my eyes open ! GOOD LUCK with the book. -
I am schizophrenic and I am all for medication - recently i had a crisis as they were trying out newer drugs and only going back on my old medication plus an antidepressant helped - people may not like taking stuff I know - I remember once a long time ago I persuaded my psychiatrist to take me off all medication and I wound up in hospital after 6 months for quite a long time - they had beds in those days. During my crisis I did rebel a little as there was a medicine which had dreadful side effects that eventually I refused to take.
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All these comments are really interesting and support my belief that we all have very different experiences of mental ill health that we cannot be treated on the NHS in any blanket way. |I know this makes it really difficult for statutory services - talking therapies and alternatives to anti-depressants are expensive. However, to focus on the one talking therapy - CBT - over others is also going the wrong way as the techniques did not work for me in the way psychotherapy and counselling have.
So thanks to everyone who takes the time to read this. I think the debate needs to be honest and open and there is a lovely piece by Lucy Nicholls in Dandelions and Bad Hair Days. She talks of 'Moments of Truth' in mental health and as Daisy says, perhaps for some (myself included) 'acceptance' can help takes those first steps to recovery rather than relying on long-term drug therapy.
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I am on antidepresents and high doeses of antipsychotics for years. Deagnosed BDP and now I have pain which is probably because of the amount of medication ive taken over the years
i really hate myself for not being normal, mental illness is evil and never stops
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