Chris
Potato del Grande
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Holy shit what?
I had it untreated for at least 5 years with occasional brief relapses. So this forever because I've been trying to fix the damage?
Depression
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I had it untreated for at least 5 years with occasional brief relapses. So this forever because I've been trying to fix the damage?
Izo
Tranny Chaser
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No one can say for sure unless they had pre and post MRI of your brain. Depression has many causes and variable progression. 5 Years may not be so good for some if left untreated, might be nothing to others. The biochemical and physiological workings of depression are difficult to predict. Some research suggests the damaged areas related to the hippocampus may grow back - helped by antidepressants. The mechanism is not fully understood, but it is observable by MRI etc.
Bottom line is it's important to get help, and whether it is a proper individual treatment. Counseling and meds complement each other to that end. Talk to your physician about your status once in a while - don't worry so much about a little tissue damage
Famm
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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You're obviously going to be a comatose vegetable unless you seek counseling and meds like five years ago. Your brain is probably already shriveled to the size of a prune from all that depression you've been abusing all these years. Hope that helps cheer you up!
drmandolin
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TrollfaceDeux
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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i've been worried about this in my teenage years. I had an odd sensation of "losing" my edge and falling into complete end zone. Funny enough, it did happen and realized it was all my head and bullshit it was making up. Or i think it was the time when I realized I really should stop doing what I was doing and pursue other shit in life...because it was stressing me out beyond capacity...
drmandolin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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What Trollface is describing reminds me off a talkin-to I got a while back from a woman with bad coffee breath, but many displayed diplomas. It was related tolifestyle redirection, and if you can solve your depression in that manner, then you are really not very depressed.
I think she was saying that being in a bad place, even for a long time, is not true depression. The kind that can be treated with medication that is.
I think she was saying that being in a bad place, even for a long time, is not true depression. The kind that can be treated with medication that is.
Situational depression aka i hate my life or chem imbalance aka who the fuck am i
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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You ever go to their beer tasting? Next month is Oktober Fest style beers:
http://www.arborbrewing.com/events/
Have you tried starting a fight club?
All kidding aside, benadryl, melatonin? I dunno, it works for me, but ermmm, might not work for you.
Not sure what's your level of physical activity/diet like either, but if you tried all the obvious stuff like cutting coffee out, exercise, etc and nothing worked, then I suppose it's just obsessive thoughts keeping you awake?
Those are tough to quiet down. Only way I can cope with mine is to just stay awake, do something productive until I get exhausted and go to sleep then, or not (if I have to go to work and be a zombie throughout the day, so be it.)
Some therapy facts that many people don't know (I'm in a clinical psych program right now)...
Psychiatrists are medical doctors and nowadays generally focus on giving meds. If you see a psychiatrist, you're near guaranteed to have a medication-heavy treatment.
Psychologists come in PhD and PsyD varieties. Psyd spend way more time in training learning therapy, but most programs don't take a scientific perspective and instead rely on things like "it has been shown to work in practice". Many PhD psychologists, especially older ones, also do not value science much and rely on "experience."
Research shows that clinical experience is almost wholly unrelated to effectiveness of a therapist. Trained grad students are found to be just as effective as PhD or PsyD psychologists. Masters-level counselors are also found to be just as effective as PhD/PsyD psychologists when using the same technique.
About 33% of all patients experience full remission in therapy even with a "placebo" treatment. These are assumed to be due to nonspecific effects like expectation, having someone listen to you, unconditional positive regard, or sometimes just spontaneous remission. This fact is likely what makes bad therapists keep doing what they're doing..after all, its working for a lot of people.
Empirically tested and supported treatments have a much better treatment outcome. Prolonged exposure for phobias is around 80%. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression is something like 66%. These are manualized therapies that have been studied heavily in clinical trials. This leads to the last point...
Find a therapist who uses manualized therapies. Your treatment effect is not from the therapist being a good listener and blah blah. All therapists should do that. Yes it is important to find a therapist that you like and feel good around, but what most patients don't know is that it's also important to find a therapist that values the science and uses empirically supported treatments. There are "active ingredients" in good therapies. CBT for depression seeks to restructure maladaptive thought processes and behavioral patterns. Prolonged exposure seeks to create extinction for conditioned and reinforced fear behaviors. All good therapies have specific active components above and beyond the nonspecific treatment effects.
If you are looking for a therapist, call an office and ask if they use manualized therapies. That's the #1 question to ask. If no, call elsewhere. If you see a doctor, would you want him to use proven treatments or wing it based on "experience"?
Psychiatrists are medical doctors and nowadays generally focus on giving meds. If you see a psychiatrist, you're near guaranteed to have a medication-heavy treatment.
Psychologists come in PhD and PsyD varieties. Psyd spend way more time in training learning therapy, but most programs don't take a scientific perspective and instead rely on things like "it has been shown to work in practice". Many PhD psychologists, especially older ones, also do not value science much and rely on "experience."
Research shows that clinical experience is almost wholly unrelated to effectiveness of a therapist. Trained grad students are found to be just as effective as PhD or PsyD psychologists. Masters-level counselors are also found to be just as effective as PhD/PsyD psychologists when using the same technique.
About 33% of all patients experience full remission in therapy even with a "placebo" treatment. These are assumed to be due to nonspecific effects like expectation, having someone listen to you, unconditional positive regard, or sometimes just spontaneous remission. This fact is likely what makes bad therapists keep doing what they're doing..after all, its working for a lot of people.
Empirically tested and supported treatments have a much better treatment outcome. Prolonged exposure for phobias is around 80%. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression is something like 66%. These are manualized therapies that have been studied heavily in clinical trials. This leads to the last point...
Find a therapist who uses manualized therapies. Your treatment effect is not from the therapist being a good listener and blah blah. All therapists should do that. Yes it is important to find a therapist that you like and feel good around, but what most patients don't know is that it's also important to find a therapist that values the science and uses empirically supported treatments. There are "active ingredients" in good therapies. CBT for depression seeks to restructure maladaptive thought processes and behavioral patterns. Prolonged exposure seeks to create extinction for conditioned and reinforced fear behaviors. All good therapies have specific active components above and beyond the nonspecific treatment effects.
If you are looking for a therapist, call an office and ask if they use manualized therapies. That's the #1 question to ask. If no, call elsewhere. If you see a doctor, would you want him to use proven treatments or wing it based on "experience"?
Tangential, although predominantly supportive, lazy abstract citing:
Therapeutic alliance was found to have a significant effect on clinical outcome for both psychotherapies and for active and placebo pharmacotherapy. Ratings of patient contribution to the alliance were significantly related to treatment outcome; ratings of therapist contribution to the alliance and outcome were not significantly linked. These results indicate that the therapeutic alliance is a common factor with significant influence on outcome [1].
Be careful citing single studies. There is a massive literature on therapy outcomes, and it's easy to find a study that supports almost any claim. You are right, however, in that meta-analyses of therapeutic alliance find that it accounts for about 7-9% of the treatment effect (ie 7-9% of the improvement can be directly tied to quality of therapeutic alliance).
TrollfaceDeux
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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yes just obessive thoughts. gotten worse over the years. usually i am aware of worsening conditions before it strikes me over time. some months it gets progressively better. and so on.
been like this for a long time. before it was just angry and confusion. now it'\s about getting them over and conflicting perspectives and sides...
I think its a very good thing to acknowledge the fact that you are depressed. But the only person who can give a proper diagnosis is a doctor. It maybe a clich? but it really helped me to hear from a doctor that there really was something going on in my life. That it was something real, a sickness if you will.
That helped me make the first step in the healing process. I acknowledged the fact I was sick. that gave me some peace in my heart.
After that it took a while before there were signs of betterment. This is a process that takes time. As mentioned before, when you are depressed your brain is 'damaged' you need to rebuild that. And it can take weeks, months for your brain to make new connections, that help you see things in different perspectives.
Another thing that helped me is steadiness in my life. Regular times to wake up, eat, go to bed. It may sound dull but it's just my experience.
There are good advises/advisors in this thread but on the internet there is also a lot of rubbish. Beware of that.
I wish all of you good luck in your struggles and the processes that will happen in your life.
Also, it may be too soon for you hear this, but in my case my depression made me make other choices in life which, when I worked my way through the depression turned out to be good for me.
I hope it helps.
That helped me make the first step in the healing process. I acknowledged the fact I was sick. that gave me some peace in my heart.
After that it took a while before there were signs of betterment. This is a process that takes time. As mentioned before, when you are depressed your brain is 'damaged' you need to rebuild that. And it can take weeks, months for your brain to make new connections, that help you see things in different perspectives.
Another thing that helped me is steadiness in my life. Regular times to wake up, eat, go to bed. It may sound dull but it's just my experience.
There are good advises/advisors in this thread but on the internet there is also a lot of rubbish. Beware of that.
I wish all of you good luck in your struggles and the processes that will happen in your life.
Also, it may be too soon for you hear this, but in my case my depression made me make other choices in life which, when I worked my way through the depression turned out to be good for me.
I hope it helps.
Very beyond my scope of practice.
Good suggestions have been offered here, but, again, sometimes it's really difficult to explore more without context and of course, this is up to you how to handle it.
Best of luck.
Hopefully you got some decent support around you and not just us forum horz and such. It's alright to have this kind of response and advice, but you might need more than this to overcome whatever is bothering you.
Better yet, some overpaid type might tell you it's not too bad and work things out with you.
Just don't come to Dr. Inverse's practice. I always prescribe hookers and blow!
drmandolin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Heya, I was wondering how your Dad was progressing in his treatment, and how you are holding out? You haven't said much in this thread to catch us up; I hope things are going as good as possible, under the shitty circumstances.
It's also found that without the therapeutic alliance, you can't accomplish very much (that is, you can't directly attribute it to failure but a therapist who doesn't give a fuck isn't a successful therapist. No brainer, I know).