Could my depression be 100% psychological?
Tyri0n
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I had dysthymia and Anhedonia for a long time. Surely, I did.
But I didn't have awful awful depression until I did not get a job through on-campus interviews at my law school (on top of a chain of other stressful events, such as getting kicked out of the military, the first year of law school, and other stuff that lasted for 3 years of chronic stress). Then, suddenly, it hit. Then, I got an Asperger's diagnosis and heard nonspecific rumors of all these supports, therapies, and services available. It took me about six months to find that most of them were not suitable for me or didn't work. Then, suddenly, I had an even worse depressive episode hit, and I keep tumbling down further and further.
Antidepressants don't work; neither do bipolar meds, and neither do dietary modification such as cutting out candida triggers, such as yeast in various foods, and inflammatory foods such as gluten and dairy (although such fad diets have little support in science anyway with respect to autism and NLD, there were enough people in my family and hear yapping about them that I felt I had to at least try and rule them out, and I pretty much did). I've gone through almost everything the medical profession recommends and a bunch of things that alternative practitioners recommend: diets, allergy and intolerance tests (mostly negative), supplements galore, behavioral therapy, and vision therapy. For the last two, the problem was more that the practioners in charge told me they weren't suitable and I didn't really need them. My visual system is fine, and my behavior is perfectly fine during one-hour sessions too. That doesn't mean that people in real life like me or care to spend time around me. They do at first, but they get tired of me after about two weeks since I am a very boring person who can't do anything (Anhedonia and NLD will do that to you).
Before, I blamed homeschooling and a possibly abusive childhood environment for all my troubles and thought I would outgrow them eventually. That was proven false when I got my Asperger's diagnosis. Then, I blamed this semi treatable diagnosis, or that one, as I accumulated about eight psychiatric diagnoses that didn't really fit. The last one was Bipolar Disorder, which I think I have ruled out by the fact that lithium makes me want to kill myself, and the two other mood stabilizers my doctor gave me don't work at all.
Could my depression just be due to the fact that NLD means I can't really do much of anything well, and Anhedonia means I can't really enjoy much of anything, and autistic symptoms mean I really don't have human support in my life, and now suddenly, the hope that once existed of simply "outgrowing" homeschooling is no longer there?
I think my depression is solely psychological which is why it is so treatment-resistant and that no medication can really help it. Everything I've tried--everything--has the same effect of helping a little at first, but I think that's just a placebo effect because it wears off in a few weeks.
Counseling and the usual "suicide prevention" are pretty useless too because my mind tells me that it's my neurological condition that upsets me, and everything else is just fluff and noise. If something isn't addressing the root cause, it's not going to work for my depression at all.
I think you mean "situational". There are two types of depression, situational and clinical. Clinical is where your brain chemistry is out of whack, and you take drugs for it. Situational is where your environment and events in your life that you have no control over make you depressed. Situational doesn't respond to drugs, the only solution is to do something different. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, then situational depression is a mental illness, but one that's not treatable with drugs (which frustrates docs to no end, they want wonder pills for everybody) but only with lifestyle changes. I have situational depression because I have lots of debt and have to live with my parents until I pay off my dental bills. The only solution is to keep whittling away at the debt.
There's also atypical depression, which may show similar symptoms to bipolar disorder with the difference that the mood changes can be traced to events or a different perspective on your situation (because you think there's a promising therapy that you hadn't been aware of before, for example).
Interesting read on atypical depression: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2990566/
The rest of your analysis is pretty close to what I've started to think about my own situation as well - it's necessary to figure out the root cause(s) and find ways to address those, e.g. making conscious change in alignment with needs, goals and values that matter to you and minimizing other things as much as possible. Of course, that's a rather theoretical way of putting it and it doesn't begin to describe the difficulty of living life in such a way, being barraged by frustrations and your own individual set of neuroses every day.
_________________
What goes on inside is just too fast and huge and all interconnected for words to do more than barely sketch the outlines of at most one tiny little part of it at any given instant. - D.F.W.
Last edited by LookTwice on 09 Jul 2013, 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Tyri0n
Veteran

Joined: 24 Nov 2012
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,879
Location: Douchebag Capital of the World (aka Washington D.C.)
Very helpful. Thanks guys! Wow, this is so helpful! I am going to bring this up to the next doctor I see.
What I want is to try stimulants/ADHD medication and also to get some neurological/fMRI scans in preparation for (possible) stem cell therapy abroad, which beats suicide.
I have found that taking amphetamines (some of the legal ones that float around as "dietary supplements") and even coffee help me so much better than what doctors prescribe. But the difference is, these things change my brain chemistry to make me more functional. So that's what the key is: anything that makes me more functional is the best way to address my mood disorder.
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