Depression and medication ?
Q.I have been back and fore to the doctor re the exhaustion and she thinks it is because I am depressed and should go onto medication. I am pretty sure that there is a physical reason for the tiredness and I feel that given what I have been coping with nonstop for so long it is hardly surprising I am depressed. Being AS I am very sensitive to medication and have had bad experiences in the past, I have also been told in the past that I was depressed when later a physical reason has been found for my symptoms.
A.I also suffer depression so I understand this dilemma well. Unfortunately, it seems that most doctors don't. They want to fix you, to make you feel better, and the only way they know to do that is pills. I have now learned that "zoning out" or "decompressing" is a common stress reaction for ACs. In my case, this can look almost like narcolepsy, with my falling asleep at the first provocation and sleeping maybe 14 hours per night. I now realise it's just my body saying to my brain "I can't take it any more" and switching off. The only thing I've found truly helpful for my depression, given that anti-depressants are ghastly things with me, is cognitive therapy, whereby you learn to look at things in your life in a more positive light (so-called "re-framing"). According to my psych (and my own experience partly confirms this) "appropriate" or "reactive" depression *can* be helped by medication, too. It may not be the *first* remedy to think about, but in some cases a chemical "crutch" is a necessary aid to get your head over the ice again. Could it be possible that *both* you and the doctor is right? Depression can be quite debilitating physically also, no matter what the *reason* behind the depression is. Ask yo psyche which areas in the brain and what there are exactly to do with what there is termed depression and you might find out this psyche does not understand much about the areas of the brain and their subprograms that are suggested to be crippled with drugs not to function O.K. anymore.
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