One of many
Saturday, 30 March 2019 19:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juzo_kunSome time ago I was making my everyday check on Instagram, and I see a post of one of the artists I follow. They didn't upload anything for a while. And then a post with a remark on how they fell of the grid for a few months, and the lack of posts was due to depression.
It was a casual, matter of-fact explanation, then they closed the paragraph, and got on what they are preparing and doing now.
I'm privileged enough that I can go public with the same thing: I suffer from depression -- I said this on one of my past Inktobers, here, and fortunately I found a combination of doctor/therapist/medication that is working, and I have the economic means to get all this.
Regarding the item of dealing with mental health, welfare system here in Italy is... quite stretched for resources and somewhat spotty in quality, so to say. And I'd rather leave a place to people who really hasn't any economic means to get it.
What I can't get, and this is a stab to something I read around waaay to often, is why certain people is obsessed about the fact of using medication for mental health. As it's be some kind of shame o whatever stupid conspiracy thing is trendy this month.
It's just like taking medication for any other kind of disease or condition. Or using glasses when shortsighted/farsighted. Or using a weelchair when a health condition prevents a person to walk/stand for long periods of time -- or at all.
It's not easy -- all medications need calibration, thorough checks and tests and such. As you need tests and such to get glasses that exactly correct the vision problem, or get the correct antibiotic for a specific infection.
Medication for depressive states isn't a "happy pill". It's a "make me function at baseline status" pill. My brain lacks the drivers for that "feeling happy and motivated" stuff. These "just try to be happy" platitudes, albeit coming from a position of good intentions (mostly), is nearly parallel to saying "just try to walk"... to a person without legs.
One of the various checks for syntoms of depression is "the person doesn't enjoy anymore an activity he used to enjoy" and this is exactly what happens: the "enjoy" driver of the brain stops to function, for various reasons that's way above my knowledge to try to explain, and more often than not are still under research.
It could be kickstarted by external event (stress, traumas, comorbidity with other issues, etc) or it just can be genetic. It can happen to people going through a lot of other crap, or it can happen to people with everything they aspire in their life.
It can be occasional, or chronic. I happen to be in the last group, so medications will be in my arsenal to cope with depression for a long while. These medications, as ALL medication, even the tiniest dose of aspirin, have side effects.
I take regular bloodworks and ECGs to check on the side effects and I deal with that. I was given something that can be used for long periods of times. There's not any magic bullet, just a system that has to be calibrated to work as the best efficiency for the person using it, and it's also something that has to be periodically recalibrated. It's always a work in progress. Learning to recognize intrusive thoughts, and behaviours, and developing coping strategies.
And here I am. Sufficiently productive to deal with some of the things life throws at me. A family with a collection of eight different chronic diseases and disabilities. Living in a country with the second shittiest government in its unified history (the first being the one between the two world wars). The event horizon of my incoming menopause. An entire spectrum of autoimmune diseases waiting to get to me as it got every 23XX person in my direct line of ascendants, as the one I have already is not enough.
Always a work in progress. Still learning, and accepting.
Accepting that I have the resources I have -- resources vastly inferior to the average of neurotypical people have -- and learning how to deal with this scarcity. Accepting that I'll have days that will be good, and productive; and days that will be... not. Choosing the battles to get and the ones to avoid.
And trying to explain to people why, exactly, that "try to be happy" narrative is bullshit.
It was a casual, matter of-fact explanation, then they closed the paragraph, and got on what they are preparing and doing now.
I'm privileged enough that I can go public with the same thing: I suffer from depression -- I said this on one of my past Inktobers, here, and fortunately I found a combination of doctor/therapist/medication that is working, and I have the economic means to get all this.
Regarding the item of dealing with mental health, welfare system here in Italy is... quite stretched for resources and somewhat spotty in quality, so to say. And I'd rather leave a place to people who really hasn't any economic means to get it.
What I can't get, and this is a stab to something I read around waaay to often, is why certain people is obsessed about the fact of using medication for mental health. As it's be some kind of shame o whatever stupid conspiracy thing is trendy this month.
It's just like taking medication for any other kind of disease or condition. Or using glasses when shortsighted/farsighted. Or using a weelchair when a health condition prevents a person to walk/stand for long periods of time -- or at all.
It's not easy -- all medications need calibration, thorough checks and tests and such. As you need tests and such to get glasses that exactly correct the vision problem, or get the correct antibiotic for a specific infection.
Medication for depressive states isn't a "happy pill". It's a "make me function at baseline status" pill. My brain lacks the drivers for that "feeling happy and motivated" stuff. These "just try to be happy" platitudes, albeit coming from a position of good intentions (mostly), is nearly parallel to saying "just try to walk"... to a person without legs.
One of the various checks for syntoms of depression is "the person doesn't enjoy anymore an activity he used to enjoy" and this is exactly what happens: the "enjoy" driver of the brain stops to function, for various reasons that's way above my knowledge to try to explain, and more often than not are still under research.
It could be kickstarted by external event (stress, traumas, comorbidity with other issues, etc) or it just can be genetic. It can happen to people going through a lot of other crap, or it can happen to people with everything they aspire in their life.
It can be occasional, or chronic. I happen to be in the last group, so medications will be in my arsenal to cope with depression for a long while. These medications, as ALL medication, even the tiniest dose of aspirin, have side effects.
I take regular bloodworks and ECGs to check on the side effects and I deal with that. I was given something that can be used for long periods of times. There's not any magic bullet, just a system that has to be calibrated to work as the best efficiency for the person using it, and it's also something that has to be periodically recalibrated. It's always a work in progress. Learning to recognize intrusive thoughts, and behaviours, and developing coping strategies.
And here I am. Sufficiently productive to deal with some of the things life throws at me. A family with a collection of eight different chronic diseases and disabilities. Living in a country with the second shittiest government in its unified history (the first being the one between the two world wars). The event horizon of my incoming menopause. An entire spectrum of autoimmune diseases waiting to get to me as it got every 23XX person in my direct line of ascendants, as the one I have already is not enough.
Always a work in progress. Still learning, and accepting.
Accepting that I have the resources I have -- resources vastly inferior to the average of neurotypical people have -- and learning how to deal with this scarcity. Accepting that I'll have days that will be good, and productive; and days that will be... not. Choosing the battles to get and the ones to avoid.
And trying to explain to people why, exactly, that "try to be happy" narrative is bullshit.