Is Clinical depression curable?

[rov1200]

Or does it come and go? Is it a lifetime affliction and only curable with tablets?

[MarkRae]

Generally speaking, it's not curable. It's controllable with medication and therapy, but that's not the same as curable.

There are, of course, many reported cases of people being "snapped out of it" by various things, most commonly meeting their life partner for the first time after which "it all seemed to make sense"...

[tamborine]

it's a state of mind that can be overcome. imo.

I haven't seen a £m lottery winner CD, they may be after the winnings are squandered.

[craft1948]

I fail to see the connection between clinical depression and money........

[MarkRae]

There is none. Adam Ant is proof enough of that...

[237SJ]

Depends if it`s depression brought on by life events or if it`s clinical where the levels of seretonin in the brain are uncontrollable in which case it`s not curable but containable with the right balance of medication

[j0nb0y]

So according to tamborine, there are no rich people with clininical depression!!!!!

TWADDLE! erm Robbie Williams is worth about £100 million and still suffers from it.

Curable? probably not! Manageable? defintely.

[jno]

I believe Emma Thompson suffers from it, so money and fame are no protection. It does come and go in the sense that you can have good days and bad days; but I think you always have it, like you always have alcoholism.

[rowanwitch]

First diagnosed at 13, had bouts all through my life, because I know how I feel when it starts it gets easier to manage, Docs would prefer me to take medication all year round but I tail off in spring and don't need it in summer as I can work in the garden which I find is a better therapy, You can have single episodes as a result of life events eg bereavements, redundancy, relationship issues, this kind is reactive depression and may respond to counselling as well as medication and may never return,

Snap out of it/pull yourself together does not work exercise, and changes to diet can help a lot and psychotherapy can be valuable, funnily I found acupuncture helped during the worse spells but sometimes like any other medical condition you just need to take the pills and understand the alternative is worse

[ummmm]

Another Tamborine classic...!!!

[Greedyfly]

I believe mine will be a lifetime affliction, I am still quite young but have had this on and off for about 15 years or so... I have done the medication route and the therapy route, I am comfortable in the fact that this is me and the way I am and I cannot be 'fixed'. I have mush better the last couple of years even though my life has been through a lot of upheival.

Like Markrae wa ssaying I think I 'snapped out' of my deepest depression myself, I had been taking medication for years and seeing therapists and nothing improved. I got so sick of being miserable, I quit the medication and went about it all my own way - I improved. But it is always there, I think some people are luckier in being able to live with it, although sometimes it does get the better of you.

[LoftyLottie]

Quite honestly I think 'No'. It can't be cured but it can be controlled.

[jno]

rowanwitch, could that be SAD? In other words, the sunlight rather than the actual digging of gardens helping?

[ann_h]

Based on my own experience, I believe in a lot of cases it can be substantially relieved by the right counselling or insight. I have struggled with depression (stress reactive) for 25 years, and last year some things happened which forced me to re-evaluate everything. Unfortunately, no therapist had done this - I think they mostly use the wrong sort of approach and don't actually get to the nub of it, so to speak. Although once I had had my insight, a course of counselling helped me to understand, accept and progress.
I'm not talking about any religious experience or anything bizarre- just that I was able to be brutally objective, and allow things that had been suppressed or accepted to be brought out and dealt with.

Like the guy who had put up with nagging pain for years, only to be surprised one day by a piece of shrapnel popping out of his body that he hadn't known was there.

I do hope I'm making sense!

[Messalina]

Mine comes & goes - about 2 years this time & I'm just coming off the happy pills. It's not easy to treat clinical depression as there is usually no outside cause. So it' snot about money or anything else. It can be helped with time, drugs & just being kind to yourself. As other people have said exercise & diet can help. It gets easier to spot the warning signs after the first time & early treatment helps as well.

[rowanwitch]

I had thought of the SAD component but just being out in the daylight doesn'thave the same effect, I think it is the creative nature of growing things that works for me as I can get the same sort of lift from writing. painting, or sewing. My Bad spells don't usually hit until late Jan early feb as a rule and there are no deep seated psychological reason for them

[crisgal]

i agree with everything rowanwitch has said - very well put.

i except mine as a life time thing - it's just the way I'm made. I take all drugs they offer and am thankful for them!

I just thank my lucky stars I wasn't born 200 years ago - they would have locked me up for good!

[andy-hughes]

I have banged on about this many times - but will happily do so again.

The problem is the word 'depression', which in many people's minds, means 'depressed' which is not the same thing at all.

Being depressed is part of the human condition. We all have it, occasional days when we feel down and a bit fed up, but it's transitory, and it does not last, and it balances our emotions for us.

Deprression is a debilitating and often fatal mental illness. Sufferers may have recurring bouts with varying severity throughout their lives. With increasingly sophisticated modern anti-depressants, a lot of peoples' symptoms can be controlled with regular medication, which may be for life, and as has been advised, it is control, rather than cure, much like insulin for a diabetic.

To confuse 'being depressed' with 'depression' is to confuse a sprained ankle with a foot amputation with a rusty tin lid and no anaesthetic - the gulf really is that wide!

I for one would prefer a different noun for the condition - preferable one which has the same instantant chilling ring as 'cancer' - no room for misunderstanding there!

So, you can be as rich as Cresus and still be depressed, and have depression - the two are not lined, except by a similar descriptive noun.

Making people aware of the difference between the two helps sufferers to avoid the 'What ahve you got to be depressed about?' line which really does not help!

[rov1200]

No Andy, it was definately the real thing and verified by a Doctors visit with drugs prescribed.

[katmakenian]

Andy-Hughes I want to hug you right now....you've said it all in a nutshell and the more people understand that, the better this world will become with less ignorance and intolerance to those who have depression. I have had recurrent bouts of depression on and off for years and my first bout initially started after I had Scarletina, which was the cause at the time. Since then, I have had various sessions of therapy and been on and off of two or three different types of medication and I have now come to a very logical conclusion. I am meant to take a little pill every day and will do for the rest of my life. In my case, the alternative doesn't bear thinking about. It is certainly something that you never have to suffer in silence about and there is lots and lots of help out there. No one should ever have to suffer with this.

[boxtops]

In answer to rov's OP, yes it can go away. I had a severe bout of clinical depression in my 20s, "treated" with medication for many years and linked with an anxiety state. Over the years i slowly grew in confidence and the anxiety withdrew, and now I can confidently say that people who knew me then would not know me now. It's a long slow process and each step at a time is important - when I started to come off medication, it was half a tablet at a time. "Snap out" is not an option to the sufferer, and andy-hughes' words are wise. We all get depressed from time to time as life does things, but clinical depression is a different situation altogether. Like greedyfly - you also have to want to climb out of it, and thankfully, when the time was right, I could and did.