symphony
surving hour-by-hour
- Mar 12, 2022
- 779
Even years into unsuccessful treatment after unsuccessful treatment this is literally all I hear. All anyone ever wants to talk about is how the majority of people respond to antidepressants! And therapy is even more effective! And failing that, the majority of people respond to ECT!
Yeah, okay, and that's great. If someone has depression and is encouraged by those stats and gets help and recovers, I will always celebrate that. But like, what about the rest of us? Do we just not exist? I've just about never seen anyone honestly acknowledge that some people maybe just don't or can't recover from depression. It's only implicitly acknowledged by phrasing these statements as "the majority of people recover" vs "all people recover". Even in the context of treatment resistant depression, the discussion is always centered around treatments that are really super effective and great and innovative - not the reality of life for people who try treatment after treatment after treatment and at the end of it all are left suffering all the same but with a less hope and less money.
There's no talk about the people who just get left behind. I guess at some point it's not worth bothering. We're a lost cause to just about everyone except perhaps TRD researchers. Beyond that? I've had multiple mental health professionals tell me in one way or another that they don't know what to do with me anymore, my options left are pretty bottom of the barrel. I just get told to keep going to therapy, they throw more meds at me, even sometimes recommend I try ECT a second time. Like there's some implication that if I've done everything they've recommended and still not gotten better, it must be my fault, I should just get over myself and suck it up and live through the pain.
But it gets better, depression is treatable, hope is just a phone call away~
Yeah, okay, and that's great. If someone has depression and is encouraged by those stats and gets help and recovers, I will always celebrate that. But like, what about the rest of us? Do we just not exist? I've just about never seen anyone honestly acknowledge that some people maybe just don't or can't recover from depression. It's only implicitly acknowledged by phrasing these statements as "the majority of people recover" vs "all people recover". Even in the context of treatment resistant depression, the discussion is always centered around treatments that are really super effective and great and innovative - not the reality of life for people who try treatment after treatment after treatment and at the end of it all are left suffering all the same but with a less hope and less money.
There's no talk about the people who just get left behind. I guess at some point it's not worth bothering. We're a lost cause to just about everyone except perhaps TRD researchers. Beyond that? I've had multiple mental health professionals tell me in one way or another that they don't know what to do with me anymore, my options left are pretty bottom of the barrel. I just get told to keep going to therapy, they throw more meds at me, even sometimes recommend I try ECT a second time. Like there's some implication that if I've done everything they've recommended and still not gotten better, it must be my fault, I should just get over myself and suck it up and live through the pain.
But it gets better, depression is treatable, hope is just a phone call away~