[darien]

Even though I suffer from mental illness, I am quite an intelligent person and I am severely allergic to ********, and frankly the psych industry is filled to the brim with it, but so is most things in this world.

I spent many years desperate and reaching out to help because people always said that I should seek help, but in return I always got condescending advice and sarcastic remarks and useless platitudes in the form of "tough love", but I feel like nobody truly empathized with what I was dealing with, and even in various psych facilities across the country, nurses and doctors just wanted to take pot shots at me in a way of saying "oh, well just you just need to do XYZ, you have nobody to blame but yourself for your life..."

Ever notice how people's advice always begin with "oh" then a comma, then "well -" ? And hearing those kind of feedback when I was already was depressed ended up making me feeling hundreds times worse, because in addition to feeling like my life was hell and that I should die asap, having their cruel words only reinforced those feelings and made me even more depressed and feel like nobody truly cares.

And it sucks because when I feel completely desperate and then people give me "advice" but really it's stuff that I have tried hundreds times over and then they get offended as if they had the golden advice sent by God himself, and say "oh, well you just don't want to listen to good advice" or "oh, well you just don't actually want help..."

So nowadays I have pretty much isolated myself in a way, and I am actually doing a lot better, I have been out of the hospital for 2 years now. And its funny because if I tell anyone the say "oh, well actually isolating is bad, you need to go out more" - but really I've seen how much worse things are when I do that.

Hello, I'm glad you found this forum to help you vent your feelings and frustrations with the psychiatric system, and some people in general I'm sure have not helped with the words they choose. It is tough out there with mental illness, but I think people are becoming more open minded. If what you are doing is working for you, that is good. Best wishes to you.

[shadow2000]

Hi Darien, and welcome to Psych Central.

What you wrote resonates with me quite a bit. I myself spent 14 years in the mainstream mental health system trying various talk therapies and medications, and although I wouldn't necessarily write off every treatment that I received as being 100 percent useless, I tended to find the interventions to be of little benefit, especially in the long run. I currently follow an orthomolecular treatment protocol, and even though this protocol isn't as effective as I would like for it to be, I do find it to be more helpful than any of the more mainstream treatments that I've received. But as different treatment approaches tend to have different effects on different individuals, I'm not saying that orthomolecular treatments will necessarily work for you or for anyone else as much as I'm saying that it's helped me up to this point.

I do think that many in the mental health system tend to overvalue the interventions that they offer for depression and other mental health conditions. Sure, some people are helped by psychotherapy and/or medications, but a lot of people don't benefit substantially from such treatment strategies, and some are even harmed by the so-called treatments, especially the medications. I also think that some in the mental health system have a tendency to blame the patients when they don't respond well to the treatment interventions that they use. And maybe in some cases, those in the mental health system have a point in assigning some of the responsibility for getting better to the patients. However, some in the mental system to seem to be too quick to judge and too quick to jump to conclusions about things that they don't understand. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions too quickly myself, but from having read what you've written, I don't think it's the case at all that you don't want help, because if that were true, you never would have sought out treatment in the first place. It sounds to me like it's more the case that you do want help, but that the treatment interventions that were offered to you were, for whatever reason, not truly helpful.

Finally, I'd like to say that even though mental health treatment interventions aren't always helpful, I'm not saying that there's no chance that you'll ever find any interventions for your depression to be beneficial. As I said, I seem to be benefiting from orthomolecular treatment at the moment. A lot of individuals benefit from all sorts of different mainstream and alternative interventions for depression and other mental health conditions, and I think that each of us needs to find out for ourselves exactly what's best for our individual needs.

[darien]

well actually guys, i am doing astronomically better now with my own techniques of coping, compared to going in circles in the mental health system as a drugged up cash cow....Yes i still suffer from heavy depression, but I feel better knowing I can still be free and suffer my depression on my own terms, rather than be locked up in a facility and be hundreds times more miserable.

Before I was getting hospitalized in the psych ward every other month, but after I started realizing how it is BS, I have been out of the hospital for 2 years now.