Myths of "Dependency," Self-Reliance, and Clinical Depression ?
Q.For many folks this just is not true. Most people occasionally become depressed due to the viscissitudes of life: death of someone close, loss of job, divorce, moving to someplace different, all are recognized at situations that may prompt situational depression in almost anyone. Normally this kind of depression will resolve after some amount of time with or without intervention. It is not pleasant, but it is not clinical depression. [Forgive me if my terminology is not medically correct.
A.A lot of doctors still do not seem to think this way. They want patients to use meds temporarily with expectation of stopping it. That may be appropriate if the disorder they are treating is situational, but not for patients who relate life histories of repeated depressive episodes. It is surprising but unfortunately true that doctors frequently are slow to learn of research developments in undertanding of depression and the available treatments for it. They may convey the attitude that patients ought just pull themselves up by bootstraps. THis is likely just to make the clinical depressive feel worse, since we are unable to pull that maneouver off. We need our medications, and probably always will. Even if we have good periods, going off the meds seems to be dangerous for us, too often leading to major crashes with accompanying crises. Being able to proclaim ourselves to be "drug free" may not be worth the apparent consequences. i think people's attitudes are changing, albeit slowly, to understand the illness. there seems to be a duality now in many people's thinking about depression - on one hand, they understand intellectually how endogenous depression works but they also have ingrained beliefs and ideas about depression that they have heard all their life. Another thing that I think complicates this is the fact that the two types of depression, situational and endogenous, do exist. They must look very similar to most people. I'm sure we must all hope that our depression will be just an episode, that we will recover from it, and that we will "go on" with our lives. I think it can take years for a person to accept that their depression is likely going to be a life-long problem. I also think that there is psychological denial by people in general, depressed or non-depressed, that any kind of chronic illness even exists. I suppose this is because of fear that if it can happen to someone else, it could happen to them.
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