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Old Sep 27, 2017, 01:48 AM
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Carmina Carmina is offline
Poohbah
 
Member Since: Sep 2017
Location: A Growlery in the UK
Posts: 1,158
How far have you got with psychotherapy or some other sort of therapy in the past - even just someone to vent to can be therapeutic? I am there with you at the moment, major depressive period on top of decades of depressive illness that has resisted all antidepressants, struggling to keep enough together to function at work, possibly (according to CPN) bipolar but still getting my head around that possibility. I have also had days where I could barely function even in basic tasks.

I am also highly skeptical of the mental health system and medication so am resisting that. One problem is the sheer inadequacy of how it deals with mental distress (I question the concept of illness) - everything is focussed on risk management and containment, human responses to distress are minimal and cursory, generally people get drugs thrown at them, and the only alternative, and that itself is harder to access, is IAPT (access to 'talking' therapies) which in my experience is often too low level, too brief, too CBT focussed, and too often delivered by inexperienced practitioners, to have been of any value to me.

On the other hand I have managed to get some really good psychotherapy twice through external sources, once during the period of my marriage breakup and severe clinical depression I was able to join a gestalt therapy group which was marvelous, and as I said before I also accessed a really good art therapist through MIND (I tend to prefer 'doing' therapies like art and occupational therapy to 'talking' therapies anyway). Maybe if you are cautious about drugs (which I would agree with personally although I am not knocking how they work for some people) then that could be a way forwards? I suspect if you have had experience of the low level 'therapy' available through the NHS it probably wasn't worth writing home about and may put some people off.
Hugs from:
Fuzzybear
Thanks for this!
Fuzzybear