Hospital for depression has been useless, what else is there?

This is long, but I sort of needed a place to vent.

I've had varying degrees of depression for decades, and have moved cities, insurance plans and psychiatrists a bit in the past 5 years.

I'm a (somewhat aimless and career-confused) grad student, and went to the counseling center early in this semester looking for help when depression was getting bad. But they just referred me outside to someplace that turned out not to take the school insurance plan.

My psychiatrist tried switching meds, but I wasn't sure if the free trial sample she gave me was working or giving me side effects. Then she scheduled me for 2 months out.

I found a therapist for an initial appointment but then she wasn't available the next week.

By the time I got to the second week, I wasn't functioning with basic self care (getting dressed, eating anything requiring cooking and cleaning up afterwards) or with studying for school.

So I decided I needed a lot more help than I would get with one therapist appointment a week and decided to go inpatient, hoping they would be able to address some of my medical issues (my primary care doctor had retired) at the same time.

Inpatient psychiatric hospital didn't seem to care much about my medical issues, and posted a schedule with 6 therapy-ish activities per day, but we were lucky if we had 3 group sessions a day. And those were mostly giving status to the therapist so that they could pass on to the psychiatrist if our meds were working or not. It was mostly like the purpose of the hospital was to keep us from doing self-harm long enough for the meds to work. At the time I got out I thought the meds were working really well (or maybe the med they discontinued hadn't stopped working yet) but I skipped a dose after getting out and I was back to my life being a mess.

So I didn't get anything out of therapy during the week. in the hospital. They suggested transitioning into partial hospitalization, then to intensive outpatient for 4-6 weeks after getting out of inpatient.

I've been in partial hospitalization for almost 2 weeks. We spend 3 hours in the morning just going around the room getting status from each of the 10-15 people, sort of randomly talking. So the main idea might just be that hearing from other people with similar problems will help us feel better, or that we will have synergy and other people will come up with solutions and ideas. But there are support groups out on the outside that I could be going to for cheap/free, instead of sitting in a room for 4 hours a day and getting up earlier than I would otherwise and letting sleep deprivation add to my depression. It was advertised as being 6 hours a day, but we leave earlier than the schedule says, and then there's lunch. We have maybe 45 minutes of "Psycho-education" a day. That's the sort of thing that I thought we'd be doing for most of our time in the program but we sort of rush through it.

Today we went through 3 hours of our morning session of people "checking in" and we hadn't gotten to everyone (me and another person). So we got to the time that was supposed to be devoted to psychoeducation, and for my "check-in" I instead shared that I was annoyed that the therapist couldn't manage the morning time so that we'd be through with check-ins and get to the part where I might actually learn something. And that I was annoyed that the center listed a substance abuse PHP and a mental health PHP but were holding them in the same room. The therapist said that there were only a couple people doing detox during my time there. So then for the remaining time that was supposed to be psychoeducation the remaining person shared how she drank the previous weekend and then 4 people were talking about their difficulties stopping drinking.

If I wanted to hear about the difficulties of newly sober people I would go to an AA meeting. I've been in Al-anon off and on and have been to plenty of open AA meetings. Going to Al-anon in the past couple years would have been helpful but I moved back to my hometown where my parents are active in the program. So people ask where my mom is or recognize me as having been in Alateen with their daughter 20 years ago.

Anyways, my options appear to be wasting my time with outpatient/partial hospitalization where I'm just supposed to vent feelings (which I did in individual therapy for years but didn't solve my thinking problem) and/or relate to the other crazy people. Or I can go back to 1 individual therapy a week.

I have my third individual therapy scheduled tomorrow. I think I click with this therapist, and she's more experienced than the person I was seeing for years. That previous therapist had been in training at a reduced rate when I started. I'd asked for more tools, or structure or coping skills beyond deep breathing, but she said that wasn't her style. This one said she needs to know me a little better before giving me guidance on a workbook or stuff to work on on my own.

If I want to listen to sick people vent, I can go to a 12 step meeting, and might stand a better chance of encountering someone who's recovered.

Anyways WTF can I do to get better besides wait for a psychiatrist to change my medications again and have one therapist visit a week.

Life seems pretty hopeless, just in terms of my level of functioning at the present, my level of functioning in the last 5-8 years, and the likelihood that any medication will provide any significant long term boost.

I'm trying some google searches for outpatient depression programs and also looking through my insurance plan's list, but most of them appear to be part of the chain that put me through inpatient and partial hospitalization which I'm not that thrilled with.

I'm good at buying self-help books but not so good at following through, so that's not a solution by itself.

I know there are some state-run MHMR (Mental Health/Mental Retardation) programs, and Mental Health America (not many programs listed on their website) and a branch of a bipolar and depression support group, but what else can I try?

Seriously, if I'm paying (well my insurance is paying) for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, of a day program, it shouldn't be this useless or this time wasting.

So, that's my vent, any thoughts?

Hello ATexan: I see this is your first post here on PC. So... welcome to PsychCentral. Unfortunately I doubt I can be of much help with regard to your situation. Much of what you wrote sounds sadly familiar. (I'll spare you the details.) Personally, I've pretty-much given up on the mental health system where I live. That's one of the reasons I'm here on PC. My impression is there are quite a few of us here who are in that boat.

There's a lot of information & support available here on PC. The more you post, & reply to other members' posts, the more a part of the community you will become. Plus there are the chatrooms where members can interact with one another in real time. (You'd need to have 5 posts reviewed & approved before you can participate in the chats.) I wish I had something more to offer. But I'm afraid I don't. Perhaps some other members, here on PC, will. In the meantime, though, please keep posting. It can help. I hope you find whatever amount of time you spend here to be of benefit.

You might want to try a facilitated support group. Up here in Canada, the Mood Disorders Associations puts on regular support groups for people with various mood disorders and or substance abuse problems. But they're specialized, like one's just for depression, another for bipolar, another for people dealing with depression and addiction. They're facilitated by a peer, someone who is in recovery from the same problem, who has been trained in group facilitation. I think, that NAMI in the US has a similar concept and runs groups. There might be one in your city. It would be worth a google search at least.

splitimage

The medical system didn't really help me. I ended up diving into a massive amount of research. I nerded out over happiness and depression for a few years. I tried a zillion things and ended up concluding that different methods of retraining my brain was the way to go. And I did it, and now I'm all better. I am not depressed. I unraveled all the beliefs that made me sad, and then I unraveled the beliefs under that.

I write about it on my blog if you want to check it out. This is my most recent post.

A Million Moments of Freedom - Winterbritt

It explains how I started to find moments of relief and freedom before I got everything else figured out.

Keep at it and don't give up. Believe you'll figure it out, and you will.

I wish I knew ... I’m sending hugs