gingerb Forum Posts (4,139)

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

Where I come from - you sat in queus a mile long and waited hours for your number to be called - and sometimes you had to come back the next day before the sun rose to get back in the queu! ............

Funny hey ..... in SA all the recovering foreign nervous breakdowns would come on holidays to relax at the seaside ... while the locals sat in queus at the hospital waiting for their pills..... and sitting on the phones for hours to be counselled by volunteers!

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I am sorry things are not so good there.

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

I don't know where you got the impression that they don't get that here. I work in conjunction with their psychologists and councellors, and the social centre is for meeting other patients and ex patients informally and discussing shared problems if they want to.....giving them a place to socialise, have holistic therapies, evening classes etc., or whatever they vote to have as a theraputic relaxation. They go on tours, join bands, have theatre nights out, have hairdressers and manicurists in, have classes in art, crafts, writers evenings, sign-language classes, jewellery making classes, poetry groups, the list is endless......

Their worst enemies are actually their families and friends who haven't a clue what reaql depression is, because they have never had it.........well meaninged idiots.........

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

Your intentions may be honourable but the people in your life most likely have not got the same kind of depression as each other never mind Robert's.

Many things are diagnosed as depression that are not., and mis-treated as a result. Like giving prozac to a healthy person will drive them insane, and get them addicted, and yet cure someone with an illness that is diagnosed properly.

There are many wanna-be depressives and hypochondriacs out there, who convince doctors they are ill when they are not and then complain about drugs not suiting them or damaging them.

Well intentioned as you are, you cannot blanket diagnose people whom you have never met and are not qualified to diagnose.

It has been an almost lifetimes' work for me, working in the admissions unit of my local psychiatric hospital and in their social centre for recovering people with mental illnesses.

I have seen both sides of the coin, and to be truthful, the biggest single cause of suicides among the people there was, "well intentioned" people telling the patients that they didn't need their meds, or not to take them, or destroying the patient/doctor trust.


There are people, of course, who are allergic to certain meds, and resistant people, but that is worked out over time here, in consultation with their doctors, and alternatives are found that keep them safe and help them recover.......

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

I like your attitude Robert. Hope you are a wonderful evening out.

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

Ray I think that what you just did here is nothing short of criminal. You are posting heresay, beause that is all it is, to try to influence someone who is already on meds that work for him.

You do not know his particular history or diagnosis, nor, I'd like to bet, have you had any personal experience of ssri's to the point that they damaged your mind..........

ssri's are not the only kind of anti-depressant either, and you don't know what he is taking.

For your information St John's wort, if taken in wrong doses, or for long periods, is extremely damaging, causing paralysis and liver and kidney damage......

Dotors in Europe are not like Doctors in America, in that they are not in it for the buck and as a general rule cannot be influenced by hearsay. Drug standards are also much higher here than in the States, so your scaremongering of vulnerable people doesn't apply.

I am so mad at you right now it is tangible, and that rarely happens. Pushing your agendas on to people with mental illnesses is a disgrace and not to be tolerated.

What you are saying is directly influenceing a vulnerable person's life, one that if he tok a chance that you were right, might leaave off his meds, (which. by the way may not be ssri's), and end up killing himself. You are beneath contempt.

You are not a psychiatrist. How dare you!

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

As with alcoholics, regular well balanced food and exercise are vital in recovery from depression.

If you don't feel like cooking, (and chances are that you don't), then at least take a vitamin pill every day, along with what you do manage to eat, or have a liquid meal like Complan, or something similar, to help keep your energy up.

Wine, especially red, is A DEPRESSIVE, as is all alcohol, and though some can tolerate certain kinds with few ill effects for a while, it can be a life or death issue for depressives of all kinds, in the right circumstances.

I lost a few friends who thought they knew better on this one.

As to your meds, Lithium is not something anyone wants to take, but small doses do work very successfully in many cases. If the anti-depressants work for you then use them, but if you feel bad while still taking them, then get them adjusted regularly.

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

There are many kinds and levels of manic depression or bi-polar illness Robert. One size doesn't fit all in this instance. What worked for Richard Branson may well drive you or others nuts.

I know it is frustrating living every day with this really terribly debilitating disease, but it really is a matter of meds and measures. Literally going out of your mind in your mind.

Getting the right meds in the right dosage is really imporant, and again what suits one will not always suit another. You have to just keep going back to the hospital and being reassessed over and over until you find something, (some meds that is), that you actually want to live with.

It is worth doing though. I have a few good friends who are manic and manage it well so that it never interferes or tips the scales to extremes that are dangerous for them or others.

Robert, all I will say to you is, that it cannot be done without the meds. That is a certainty. Anyone who tells you differently is lying.

A chemical imbalance causes it, and it takes chemicals to balance it again, in strict amounts, at regular intervals.

RE: Words that MUST contain the letter Y

Yeomanry

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

You're welcome Robert.

RE: My dilemma

Hi Konigsberg Hope you have a wonderful day.

RE: My dilemma

That will work too Morgan. Everything depends on the personalities and the situation and its severity.

RE: My dilemma

Told you, subtlety isn't my forté, and I always tackle things publicly. Hate subterfuge.

RE: My dilemma

It can be done anywhere, but preferably in front of the people she was dissing you to. I tried to explain it a bit better above, since you said that work and socialising mix.

RE: My dilemma

Ok, this is where subtlety comes in, (not that I have much of that....), BUT,

When you are in a situation where she is saying something nice about you at a function or whatever, (two-faced), then you say something like.........that wasn't what you were saying the other day, and quote, right there, in public, in front of the person she is trying to impress by being nice to you, what she did say.........

Challenge her up front.

Stop letting her away with it because of social conventions. She is playing on that. Be nice, but call her out. Replace what she says with what you have heard that she said, every time, and face her with it, right there and then, preferably in front of the people she said it to in the first place. Force her, very sweetly, to retract publicly....

She will stop doing it.........guaranteed.

RE: My dilemma

Well said Morgan. I have employed many people over the years and learned that lesson the hard way.

RE: My dilemma

Hi Lago, Morgan, everyone...

Wishing you all sunshine in your hearts.

As to giving unwaranted advice, just can't help myself some days.

RE: Depression...What is it? How do you turn the corner?

Here is a link to a site that cites the 13 most prevalent forms of depression...although it doesn't seem to have recognised the kind you get after having a heart op, (heart meds and heart ops also cause chemical imbalances in the brain that causes depression).... or serious illness...


All I can say overall about depression, is that it is like a psychological cancer. It needs to be fought with various and often multiple forms of treatment at the same time. Depending on the type and severity of the depression, people function or cease to function at varying levels.

It can NEVER be snapped out of. It always requires treatment to heal. It is impossible to "think" your way out of it.

RE: how many feel they have been damaged by uncompassionate parenting?

No end indeed. Hi Kid Hugs

RE: how many feel they have been damaged by uncompassionate parenting?

There you go again assuming what you think I know or don't know, what I have expereince of or not.......You are full of it, and just looking for attention.

Comparing yourself to Einstein now huh? What idiocy will you think of next?

RE: Just curious.

Are you looking for personal ideas on the word, (not real defintions), because there are several dictionaries online with accurate definitions in them, if you wanted the real thing.......???

RE: how many feel they have been damaged by uncompassionate parenting?

Yep that makes perfect sense........NOT!!!

RE: how many feel they have been damaged by uncompassionate parenting?

Can't understand where you get off trying to get me to agree to any of the unadulterated crap you are writing here.

I was not expressing anger. It was hilarity and your presumptuousness, and you cannot take any credit for anything I decide to express......even your ego can't be that big....

It is testemony to my generosity of spirit that I answered you at all......

RE: how many feel they have been damaged by uncompassionate parenting?

Well if you expect me to actually agree with any of the gobbltygook you just posted, then you are in the wrong twilight zone!!!!..........

I made NO reference to bi-polar or any other particular mental illness........YOU DID......again, from your outer limits, or other planet........

Please don't reply, so I don't have to waste my time trying to make sense of rubbish.

RE: how many feel they have been damaged by uncompassionate parenting?

Hope he didn't discolour your day too much.

RE: What kind of noises at your place?

Silence, except for the very faint hum of the laptop.

RE: Ladies only: Is it ok for a guy to smoke pot for pain relief ONLY if they have severe arthritis?

Strangely enough it is possible to be allergic to painkillers, or even resistant to them as I am.....They don't work on me at all.

However.....opiates do not work as painkillers for everyone either, (pot, morphine etc,) as in my case too......

Sometimes people just use them as a good excuse to use, not necesarily because they work to kill pain, and they are addictive.

RE: Desperation

That was a good example of the concept. Well demonstrated Stress! Hope your team do well and accomplish all you set out to do.

RE: Desperation

They can both be shades of the same thing.

Desperation is neither good nor bad.

It is a perceived need, with a percieved urgency.

Determinaton is not good nor bad either.

It is the degree of will used, to attempt to accomplish a task.

Neither guarantee accomplishment, success, or failure.

RE: "Intelligent or Machiavelli"...

Tell any university that you want what it teaches for free, and see what happens.........