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Do You Think??

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in Health & Wellbeing
Do you think that depression stays with you all your life?? or do you think it can go away and not have to talk tablets??

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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    in someways it does stay with you for the rest of your life because you've gone through such emotional hell that you wouldn't be the same person if you hadn't gone through it, but no, if your meaning would you be depressed for the rest of your life, then no, you don't always have to take ADs and you do sometimes come off them as you improve
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    in theory, major depression is a cyclic illness and you can go through an episode, recover and be well again for the rest of you life, or have periodic replases.

    it doesn't work much like that in practice though, for a lot of people.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    in my personal experience i've had two episodes of severe depression requiring medication (and with other issues occurring at the same time, like anxiety) i messed up my exams and a few jobs because of the illness, but what i've gained is a level of empathy, understanding and respect for mental health issues that i don't think i would have if i didn't go through those episodes.

    I have no idea if i will have more episodes, but i have learned that i'm very susceptible to develop mental health issues when i'm stressed, and so i always try and practice my coping techniques and the biggest one- monitoring my moods, knowing when they are not right, and asking for help when i get to a stage i can't cope on my own -not pretending everything is ok or bottling my feelings up.
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    Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    ijusthavntmeetyou wrote: »
    Do you think that depression stays with you all your life?? or do you think it can go away and not have to talk tablets??

    It really depends on what has caused the depression. In my case I have a family history of it, and fundamentally it comes down to the levels of chemicals in my body. My body doesn't seem to make enough happy chemicals - which 90% of the time is fine. But get me in a stressed and despairing mood for long enough (exams, god damn), and the lack of really any happy chemicals means I can plummet further than the average person and feel depressed and suicidal, and need some help to deal with that to get my chemicals balanced again.

    But now I know that, I just work on the things I have learnt that improve these chemical levels naturally and easily, mainly; diet, exercise and routine. My keeping these chemicals up, I am 'self medicating' as it were. But just because of my genes, I could always be susceptible to falling into anxiety and depression, so it's about making proactive changes to my lifestyle to ensure that doesn't happen. So in a way, for life I have to be checking on myself because of this possibility, so in a slight way, I do have it for life.

    But I don't think it's much different from someone whose got a family history of say diabetes and going easy on the sugar 'just in case'. Everyone has different things that will affect them and their health and we just have to be mindful of that :).
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