depression..pills...etc

[eikookmi]

for people who've used antidepressants. do they help? because dont they balance the chemicals in your head and affect your mood or something like that? but i mean if depressed people took them, the same thoughts would be in their head, so how would it truly help?

[Callwaiting]

They actually do work, it's kind of hard to understand at first how they do it, but I'll try to explain it.
Basically when you're depressed you have lower levels of some nuerotransmitters(chemicals) than normal.
These nuerotransmitters only have a short time to be transferred to another cell(passed along through the brain) before they're destroyed by enzymes(imagine little pacmen :P) or re-absorbed by the cell they came from.
When they get taken back they no longer have any effect on the brain, which controls your mood.
Anti-depressant medications slow down the process of re-absorbtion, allowing the nuerotransmitters to be more efficiently passed along through your brain cells, so they can spread out.
This results in normal levels of nuerotransmitters, which restores your mood to normal.

You were wondering why they wouldn't keep thinking the same things and stay depressed. Well just imagine when you weren't depressed, there would be no reason for them to think about the sad stuff because you'd realise it wasn't worth worrying over.

Remember of course that depression differs from normal grieving. Anti-depressants won't help you if a loved one has just died, or you've suffered a traumatic experience, because feeling down is normal at those times. This may be the trigger for depression, but in a normal state of mind you'd realise that continuing the grieving process months or years after the initial event has happened is not normal at all.

I hope I could help you understand, I know it's a weird concept that chemicals affect the way we act and feel.

[eikookmi]

Yeah. If i was diagnosed im pretty sure it woould be depression. And i would say its been about a year. But no traumatic experience of deaths. But anyways thanks for the explanation. I've really been wanting to try it, but lately i've seem to be getting a little better but we'll see how i turn out in january where i need to enter the real world again.

[Sapphire]

The cause of depression is very rarely completely biochemical which means that anti-depressants help ease the symptoms so that the individual is better able to cope and deal with the other stuff they're experiencing.

Avoid taking them if possible. There have been frightening links between teenagers taking prescribed anti-depressants and increased risk of suicide and suicide attempts. One of my friends has experienced this first-hand and regrets taking them at all.

[byee]

I think you've got half of it right, sorta. The meds rebalance things in your head responsible for some of the feelings and symptoms you have. The other half is the talk therapy that (hopefully) would accompany the meds. It's been shown that in most cases, the combo of meds and therapy = best results.

People get depressed for a lot of reasons, some of them purely biological, the chemicals in the brain just go out of balance. For most cases, though, it's some event (usually some loss or perceived loss) that causes the depression, and over time, that chronic feeling causes the chemicals in the brain to go out of balance. sSo, while the meds readjust them, the therapy helps you to understand and come to terms with whatever caused it in the first place, as well as find better ways of dealing with it.

[Cindex]

It depends on what caused the depression if they'll work or not. If it was traumatic they'll usually do nothing. From what you said, they'd probably help. I would avoid them unless it become necessary.

[eikookmi]

Ok thanks for the replies. I havn't had any loss. I would say this has gone on for about a year. Its always on and off. Mostly on. I cant even gather any thoughts as to why. Nothing bad is happening to me.
But i won't take them. If things get really bad then i'll go get help. But it just really depends on January when i reenter the world

[Callwaiting]

There's nothing wrong with using prescribed medication for help, in many cases it can be an effective side to counselling/therapy. Your first course of action should be to speak to a therapist anyway, they can determine whether or not meds would compliment your counselling.

[Sapphire]

http://www.fda.gov/cder/drug/antidepressants/QA20070502.htm