Hope in tomorrow

My struggle with depression in life has been a long and hard battle. Since I was at a very young age, I had been depressed. To the point I wanted to run away from home. My teen years were filled with depression in severe levels that were debilitating. Compounded further by struggling with my identity as a transgender woman.

In 2009 while I was attending university, my doctor there tried me out with a few different antidepressants. Such meds included Zoloft, Prozac, and Effexor. None of them worked and Prozac and Effexor gave me a horrific side effect profile. After leaving these meds I remained medication free for a few years.

In 2012, while attending another university I had my first psychiatric hospitalisation. Shortly after my pdoc put me on Lexapro. It resulted in a great improvement to my depression and anxiety. It made things better for a couple years but it did not last.

In 2015, I reached a massive breakdown resulting in 3 hospitalisations within a 4 month period for depression. I remained on the same medication combination, and was prescribed Lamictal for my mood swings. It helped those but not my depression.

After moving to Finland, I was hospitalised again a number of times and eventually I confronted a pdoc in outpatient to try me on a new antidepressant. We tried me on Zoloft again, gave it another try. Add in the switch to estrogen patches both gave an incredible improvement to my mood.

Depression self tests administered by my therapist resulted in scores placing me in severe to extreme depression for a long time. But today after a year and a half of stability in depression has dropped me down to normal mood changes; no longer even clinical depression.