<p>My philosophy on life is “Wherever you go, there you are”, which is kind of the same feeling you have I think. Transferring isn’t going to help much if you’re still feeling sad and not up to seeking out new friends and all. I do think you need a change of scenery, at least for awhile, and something to sort of bring you out of your funk. It sounds like you’re convinced that medications are bad (not all are, but it’s a personal choice too) and that counseling isn’t the answer and, if so, it probably won’t be much benefit to you right now. Would you consider doing some traveling, perhaps as part of a student or volunteer group? Maybe even doing a backpack type tour for the summer would help - something about alot of excercise, plus nature, and the casual camaraderie of other people you meet along the way is always uplifting to me. </p>
<p>If you have a spiritual leader, have a conversation with him/her and see if they have any ideas. If you don’t, many pastors are very good listeners and the door is always open, regardless of your actual affiliation.</p>
<p>nysmile - It wasn’t until beggining of 2008 that I started feeling depressed. My feelings of being “inferiory” or not smart enough stem from the fact that my parents and school placed high expectations on me and on how I would do on the SAT. When I came out bellow average, I vented out on here. But that and my more recent posts from 2008 are completely unrelated, and from two very different problems. </p>
<p>My teacher actually said “if you don’t pay attention now your going to come out with a bellow average score and come out looking like an idiot”. (I went to a private catholic school and most of the kids were pretty smart so I don’t think many people were ofended. I could give lots of examples of competition between me and my brother, and the lecutres from my parents, but if you saw from my point a view - scoring bellow average on the SAT was a big let down. </p>
<p>It was later that year by the end of 2007 that my parents told me that my dad had MSA a rare brain disease. Very quickly I saw my dead dieing. My dad worked till about the end of 2007. Before school many times he would pass out and I would jsut hear this big BANG and would find him on the ground unconscious. His eyes would be open, but he wouldn’t respond at all. Eventually my dad got worse and worse and soon he couldn’t work anymore. Eventually he stopped driving, stopped leaving the house, and for the last few months of his life couldn’t even walk. </p>
<p>But you know that wasn’t the worst part. His mind deteriorated. He often had seizures, ones that could have been prevented had I given him his medication faster. His blood pressure would decrease unexpectedly and I had to check on him a lot (really last few months I couldn’t leave the house much). And now that hes gone, my mom is not the same either. She is very irritable and not nice most of the time. </p>
<p>My brother is the same. This is one reason I’m mad at him. He wasn’t really affected. He even came out and said at easter “I don’t know why but I don’t really feel sad for dad, therse really nothing you can do about it do I don’t know why…” And then he stopped in the middle of his sentence. He realized what he was saying was wrong.</p>
<p>I’m going off on a tangent again. Well you want the truth why I won’t see a therapist? Here it is! I saw one a really really good one. I think shes a counseler. Anyway I had one hour talk with her, and she took all my info, phone numbers cell phones and everything. I cancled my next appointment because it was exam week and I needed to study. But I waited a week and she never called. Like she seems like a nice person (personally and professional). Like if the therapist was really concerned wouldn’t they call if they have all my contact info, and they have been notified that they can contact me.</p>
<p>It’s up to you to make the call. A counselor is not family member or personal friend. She is a professional who makes a living in the mental health profession. She cares for you but you should view the relationship as a doctor/patient relationship rather than a personal friend/friend relationship. If you felt comfortable with her then by all means call and schedule another session.</p>
<p>If you only saw the therapist for one session, she may have thought you were investigating a number of professionals for a good fit. It would have been expected that if you were interested in her services that you would call for another appointment.</p>
<p>“Here it is! I saw one a really really good one. I think shes a counseler. Anyway I had one hour talk with her, and she took all my info, phone numbers cell phones and everything. I cancled my next appointment because it was exam week and I needed to study. But I waited a week and she never called.”</p>
<p>She would not call because she probably thought that you had seen her only once to find out whether you felt comfortable with her as a therapist. When you cancelled your appointment, she probably figured that you had found a therapist you liked better or you had changed your mind about therapy. What happened is similar to what would happen if you canceled an appointment with your doctor. The doctor wouldn’t call back to find out if you’d like to schedule another appointment. The doctor would figure that if you wanted another appointment, you’d call back.</p>
<p>Therapists aren’t supposed to do anything that could be interpreted as trying to twist potential patients’ arms into using the therapists’ services.</p>
<p>If you still want to see that therapist, call and make another appointment, and do tell her why you cancelled before and how you interpreted not hearing from her afterward.</p>
<p>I know a therapist is a professional like a doctor. But it feels so much different. I mean you tell the therapist your inner most thoughts. Its a different kind of connection with a therapist, I think it is more personal then a doctor patient relationship. Its just different. If I don’t feel like the therapist cares, I don’t think she will be able to help. </p>
<p>But right now its not good for me to keep dwelling and even talking about my memories from the past two years. I just need to get to a better place, so I am better equiped to sift through my memories and make peace with them. But I cannot do this in my current state. That is right now all I need is some friends, I just need to have some fun right now. Will it take all my problems away? No, but its the first major step to my feeling better, like I used to.</p>
<p>Just so you know, a therapist can care deeply. At the same time, however, a therapist ethically can’t do anything that might indicate they are trying to force someone to be their patient.</p>
<p>bcarvings: Seriously, get yourself to a therapist, SOON. You have some fundamental misconceptions about depression, about therapy, and about medication. You need to be in the hands of a professional who can discuss this with you in person, address your objections, and work out a personalized treatment plan. We cannot do that for you.</p>
<p>Several people here, myself included, have posted about their own past depression. As I said before, I have been where you are. I can now clearly see how clouded my thinking was at that time, how little I understood what I needed, how much help I received from professionals who knew how to do their job – which was to help ME. Please take advantage of the resources that are available to you. This message board is NOT one of those resources, except to hopefully badger you into getting the help you need.</p>
<p>Therapy alone is not going to make me feel better. Drugs are dangerous. Anti-depressents the second generation ones are relativley new. Many people report long-term side effects like memory, vision and stomach problems. Many people experience “brain zaps” when getting off SSRI’s. How do we know the effects of this? We don’t. What we do know is the drug companies don’t care to investigate these “brain zaps”, and I’ve read frequently doctors will deny that SSRI’s can cause memory problems even though it would statistically appear that they do.</p>
<p>I don’t want my intelligence decreased. I know therapy alone won’t work. The therapist is just a person, like myself, flawed and human. I don’t beleive I have any misconceptions about how drugs and therapy work, I beleive I know how doctors expect and think it works, and how it actually works. The money spent on drugs and therapy has increased as a percentage of total income on the average person, yet depression and mental illness problems continue to soar. I wonder why that is?</p>
<p>Research has indicated that often the best treatment for depression is therapy plus medication. That is the combination that worked for me and for many of my friends who have suffered from depression. This includes friends whose depression was due to grief over the illness and death of a loved one.</p>
<p>Depression itself appears to cause physical problems as well as problems with memory and other mental functioning.</p>
<p>Says the chair of Emory U’s psychiatry dept.: " There is absolutely no doubt that depression results in a major increased risk for the development of cardiovascular disease and stroke.</p>
<p>That is depressed patients are more likely to have a heart attack, to suffer from congestive heart failure and to have a variety of other cardiac abnormalities than individuals without depression…"</p>
<p>"Memory is but one of a suite of higher or “executive” brain functions hobbled by depression. In addition to becoming forgetful, a person suffering from major depression may have trouble initiating tasks, making decisions, planning future actions, or organizing thoughts. This is thought to trace to imbalances in the chemicals, called neurotransmitters, that enable individual brain cells to “talk” to each other and store new memories.</p>
<p>One of the ways that depression affects memory is by skewing the types of memories people tend to recall while in the grip of melancholy. We all tend to remember happy events when we are happy and sad events when we are sad, explains Norman Rosenthal, MD, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School. A depressed person tends to recall mostly the negative, unhappy experiences. This can appear to family and friends as a loss of memory. It also reinforces the person’s drab and negative view of life, fueling the depression…"
[Depression</a> and Memory](<a href=“http://www.memorylossonline.com/summer2001/depression.html]Depression”>http://www.memorylossonline.com/summer2001/depression.html)</p>
<p>“e money spent on drugs and therapy has increased as a percentage of total income on the average person, yet depression and mental illness problems continue to soar. I wonder why that is?”</p>
<p>It could be that depression is being recognized and treated far more than it was in the past.</p>
<p>I think doctor are overdiagnosing it, or misdiagnosing it. Drugs are no way to treat a mental illness induced by trauma and stress. Although feeling low does interfere with memory, there is evidence that drugs cause memory problems. I’m talking about depressed people whom after taking the drugs have substantially lower short-term and long-term memory. </p>
<p>Suicide has increased over the past few decades. Depression has increased as well; not because we are diagnosing it more accuratley, but because more people actually are depressed.</p>
<p>“Drugs are no way to treat a mental illness induced by trauma and stress.”</p>
<p>? Please cite some research that says this. </p>
<p>If you don’t want to use therapy or medication to address the suffering you’re experiencing, that’s your choice. I do wonder, though, why you’re continuing to post because you seem to be rejecting all help that people are offering. If your way of dealing with your grief, stress and depression is to move, then go ahead and do that while realizing as someone else here pointed out, you’ll take you wherever you go.</p>
<p>You seem to think that moving and having fun will cure your problems. It’s impossible to have fun if one is seriously depressed. After you move, you’ll still be dealing with grief issues as your dad still will be dead. You just won’t be surrounded by constant reminders. However, you’ll have to adjust to making new friends and the other hassles that come with being in a new environment. Your depression isn’t going to magically vanish because you’ve moved. However, it’s possible that you may need to experience this before realizing that geographical cures don’t work if the problem is inside oneself.</p>
<p>I was in the middle of a lengthy post outlining my objections to medication- and the reasons why despite those objections , I became desperate enough to try them anyway but my computer got a kernel panic and shut down.
Just as well- it was TMI.</p>
<p>OP proves the old adage that those who could most benefit from treatment for emotional/mental problems are the least likely to put the effort in to do so</p>
<p>However- since the OP is continuing to try and convince us ( as well as her/himself) that " fun "is all that is needed- no other treatment.-I suggest laughter therapy.
[More</a> Hospitals Embrace Laughter Therapy - wcbstv.com](<a href=“http://wcbstv.com/local/hospital.laughter.therapy.2.875341.html]More”>http://wcbstv.com/local/hospital.laughter.therapy.2.875341.html)
But
NSM is very wise- after the fun- your underlying issues are unchanged and you run the risk of a pattern of seeking fun and relaxation as an escape from them. ( which is why those who look for good times in a bottle, a new pair of shoes or at the crap tables have such difficulty changing that pattern)</p>
<p>** No- using prescribed medication to treat mental illness is not in same category **
The prescription will not make you " high" but it will help to permit more " normal" functioning and healthier patterns.</p>
<p>For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, and that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.~John 3:16</p>
<p>If you give your heart to Christ, your eternity is secure, and you’ll have something (more like someone) great to live for love, and be loved by. I’ll pray for you.</p>