schopenh
Specialist
- Oct 21, 2019
- 385
I was reading a post on here earlier where someone linked their own personal blog on which they expressed feelings of depression and suicidal ideation. In the comments section there were comments like, "I hope you get the help you need." etc.
If there's a news article about a suicide, you can bet the comments section will also (as in the afforementioned blog post) be littered with people expressing sentiments about how it's sad these people, "didn't get the help they needed." Suggesting that if this person had better or more access to mental health treatment, they would presumably not have committed suicide. In these comments we see a clear and widespread ideology - positive perspective of mental healthcare treatment.
The fact is though, that most suicides are not suicides of transient mood disorders (like the depression, which can be quite strong, of an otherwise happy person that follows the ending of a longterm relationship). Most people who commit suicide do so after a long time of predication and trying many conventional (and oftentimes non-convetional) treatments to consitent failure.
I'm not saying that modern mental healthcare treatment access is adequate - it's not; it's really, really not. I just think that what does exist is massively overvalued by the general public. I suspect that the average person truly believes that all, if not a lot of depression and suicide would be erradicated if depressed people had more rapid or regular access to anti-depressants, counselling and other lesser used forms of mental health therapy. Most psychiatrists and psychologists, in my exerience, tend to be massive zealots, but I doubt even they rate their skills as much as the general public seem to.
I can tell you what the gold standards (anti-depressants and counselling) did for me personally. (But keep in mind, my depression is a symptom of severe, chronic pain, so without that resolving that, one couldn't reasonably expect to treat the depression.)
First, the anti-depressants (I tried venlafaxine and amitriprtyline - amitriptyline being the best anti-depressant we have according to our extremely low quality evidence base) took my stable misery and made my emotions wildly oscillating. Instead of just being down I was now breaking into fits of crying for hours on end. I also experienced a few unpleasant side effects and found tapering off to be a very difficult process that took months (something which the medical community currently pretends isn't real).
Second, counselling. Anything I do makes physical pain worse. The psychiatrists aren't knocking on my door to help me, I have to go there to talk to them, which is extremely painful. What happens in the counselling session? Nothing. You have an unproductive conversation about whatever you want and then you're given some useless advice and mostly just pressured to take medications. It ultimately ends up being an exhausting mental gymnsatics game if you actually want to get something objectively helpful from them (like sleeping pills). All the extra physical pain for what objectively amounts to a chat is simply not worth it.
None of these things will change and I offer no solution (seeing none; due to various systemic problems of the david vs goliath varieties), I just felt like sharing the insights.
If there's a news article about a suicide, you can bet the comments section will also (as in the afforementioned blog post) be littered with people expressing sentiments about how it's sad these people, "didn't get the help they needed." Suggesting that if this person had better or more access to mental health treatment, they would presumably not have committed suicide. In these comments we see a clear and widespread ideology - positive perspective of mental healthcare treatment.
The fact is though, that most suicides are not suicides of transient mood disorders (like the depression, which can be quite strong, of an otherwise happy person that follows the ending of a longterm relationship). Most people who commit suicide do so after a long time of predication and trying many conventional (and oftentimes non-convetional) treatments to consitent failure.
I'm not saying that modern mental healthcare treatment access is adequate - it's not; it's really, really not. I just think that what does exist is massively overvalued by the general public. I suspect that the average person truly believes that all, if not a lot of depression and suicide would be erradicated if depressed people had more rapid or regular access to anti-depressants, counselling and other lesser used forms of mental health therapy. Most psychiatrists and psychologists, in my exerience, tend to be massive zealots, but I doubt even they rate their skills as much as the general public seem to.
I can tell you what the gold standards (anti-depressants and counselling) did for me personally. (But keep in mind, my depression is a symptom of severe, chronic pain, so without that resolving that, one couldn't reasonably expect to treat the depression.)
First, the anti-depressants (I tried venlafaxine and amitriprtyline - amitriptyline being the best anti-depressant we have according to our extremely low quality evidence base) took my stable misery and made my emotions wildly oscillating. Instead of just being down I was now breaking into fits of crying for hours on end. I also experienced a few unpleasant side effects and found tapering off to be a very difficult process that took months (something which the medical community currently pretends isn't real).
Second, counselling. Anything I do makes physical pain worse. The psychiatrists aren't knocking on my door to help me, I have to go there to talk to them, which is extremely painful. What happens in the counselling session? Nothing. You have an unproductive conversation about whatever you want and then you're given some useless advice and mostly just pressured to take medications. It ultimately ends up being an exhausting mental gymnsatics game if you actually want to get something objectively helpful from them (like sleeping pills). All the extra physical pain for what objectively amounts to a chat is simply not worth it.
None of these things will change and I offer no solution (seeing none; due to various systemic problems of the david vs goliath varieties), I just felt like sharing the insights.