Counselling or Antidepressants?

[jenny_]

When i saw my gp last friday, i was finally honest with her about how i've been feeling since coming of meds a couple of months ago.  What she said was that she'd put me back on meds, or refer me to a counsellor.

This is the first time that i've been offered counselling on the nhs instead of just being put on SSRIs, and i was wondering what people had found more helpful for dealing with anxiety and/or depresson?

[pennyjane]

hi jenny....i don't think that's and either/or question.  both can be very helpful if used properly.  our biology can and is affected by our chemistry and our emotions contribute mightily to our chemical makeup.  we don't have to be born with certain chemical deficiencies or abnormalities, we can develop them, we can create them out of our emotional health or lack thereof.

the drugs can redirect the chemical balances to levels more compatible with good health and the counselling can redirect our emotional health to a platform more conducive to natural chemical health.

i would suggest doing the counselling and not rejecting out of hand the possible uses of the drugs.  God bless with...

[sneakersjay]

I've been on antidepressants and I've seen counselors.  I'd say it depends on the severity of your depression.  I took Zoloft when I was so clinically depressed that it affected my life such that I did not want to get out of bed, felt worthless and hopeless, etc and it was ongoing.  Lots of stressors in my life at that time.  I absolutely needed medication to fix my brain chemistry just to feel normal. 

OTOH when I've been more mildly depressed, I found that counselling helped.  I've been pretty much off antidepressants for awhile now and rely on my therapists.  If I ever were to get that depressed again I'd take meds no question.  So for me it matters the degree.  Sometimes diet and exercise can help along with therapy.  Other times nothing but meds is going to help.

Jay

[jenny_]

Thankyou everyone for your advice.  Its mild depresson/anxiety so i was thinking of going with counselling to start with, now i'm more sure!

Hopefully the waiting list won't be too long.

[Aiden]

Good luck with it.  I've been taking anitdepresents since I was young.  Want to get off of them  I feel like I was screwed up by them rather than helped.  So hopefully counciling helps you out.

[Gracie Faise]

Anti depressants are not a replacement for counseling. They are designed to help you cope enough to get yourself to therapy in order to be taught how to cope with depression on your own without medication.

I know way too many people who are stuck doing nothing with their lives except waiting to refill their next anti depressant prescription. Hopping from one medication to the next, and STILL being terribly depressed. Wanna know why? Because they don't work like that.

Please don't hook yourself in those silly cycles.

[pennyjane]

we don't want to make blanket statements about things like this.  sometimes certain medications can be lifesavers.  sometimes antidepressants are not just bandaids to get you to therapy, sometimes they ARE excellent therapy.  there can be and certainly are at times congenital chemical imbalances in the body that cause alot of pain and stress that can be treated specifically with medications that can and do work very well and over long terms.

aiden, if you feel yourself that the medications are "screwing you up" then you most certainly do need to take a look at it.  talk it over with your perscbriber, tell them why you feel this way and see if there are alternatives.  just because medications CAN work very well doesn't mean at all that they ALWAYS do.

jenny, i think you've made a wise decision.  God bless with...

[Aiden]

I've been through a number of psycologists and medicans and therapists in my life.  Problem is when I was younger I was labeled as Bipolar.  I don;t think I'm really bipolar and only recently after coming out as transgender and having a new psycologist working with my GID therapist and having a new one that actually *listened* instead of just prescribing.  I'm finally getting a second look at the diagnoses.  Problem is i only get to see my phycologist every 3-6 months so it's difficult to get anything worked with very fast.