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Originally Posted by
TheFifthElement
Virge, I wasn't aware of your mother's situation. That must have been hard on you growing up. It is good that she now has things under control. From the sounds of things your Mum's case must be systemic, which is not the case for all people.
Actually I was already grown up. If it was as long ago as 25 years I would have been 22. I never knew of her personal history until I was an adult.
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I still think it's a shame that drugs are the only answer, in fact I don't think they are the only answer, but one must work with what seems to work, I guess.
It is ashame. Only because of the possible side effects. But morally I see nothing wrong with prescription drugs to fix an ailment. Do we rush in with drugs too fast? Possibly but you know life has been extended and made healthier in the past 100 years. When in discussions like this I always think of poor Jane Austen and Emily Dickenson and the Brontes. My goodness they all died at an early age (Emily was the oldest of the ladies reaching 56) and all died of diseases we would have probably cured today.
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I think they are the easy answer. It is easier to give someone a pill to pop once or twice a day than to help them to think differently. I think if your Mum was just being diagnosed now then the likelihood is she would be given drugs and some sort of psychological therapy, such as CBT, working in compliment with each other. Well, she would in UK if she had a decent GP, though I can't speak for US. CBT is very effective in treating depression, not just anxiety, and can be more effective than anti-depressants, though obviously it isn't going to work for everyone. See here:
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealt...ments/cbt.aspx
Interesting. Thanks. Well, perhaps this is a break through.
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Well, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss, though I can understand why you might think that in the circumstances. I don't think that thinking about it alone is the answer. I think that when people get into a depressive state they need something to kick them out of it, and the drugs do that. But to stay out of it you might need something in addition to the drugs. At a root level the brain is just a bio-chemical computer. The computer has a faulty hard-drive and for some reason whenever the computer encounters an outside action the electronic pathways automatically send signals to the faulty hard drive and you get an 'error'. To fix the computer you need to fix the faulty hard-drive but if it's only possible to temporarily fix the hard-drive then to get a complete fix you need to also re-programme the computer to send the signals to a different hard-drive which works better. That way you don't have to keep tinkering with the faulty hard-drive, you can forget it because you're not using it anymore. Drugs fix the hard-drive, but thought is our tool for re-programming. It makes sense to me to do both, particularly if by doing both you might eventually be able to ditch the drugs.
Well, at her age now (she's 75) and with the way the celexa has been working, I don't think it makes sense for her to change. I see the logic in behavioral therapy now. It's not this superficial Freudian "you have to open up and confront the issue and it will go away" psychobabble. But I would have to think that behavior adjustment is very hard to accomplish. Look at people trying to stop smoking or adjust their diets.
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Anyway, I agree on one point: crying or not crying has no impact on depression. People who cry are neither more nor less likely to become depressed but expressing your emotions, or rather acknowledging and dealing with them can have an impact in preventing depression, when depression is caused by a particular stress and not a systemic underlying problem. Phew, that's a mouthful :D
Great! Public expression of emotions is a cultural phenomena. I don't think it has anything to do with one's mental health state.
