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Does depression ever go away?

I have been in a deep depression for more than 8 months, been suicidal and have reverted to my old coping skills of self-harm.  I have made a lot of changes in my life which I thought would help me, but I have only gotten worse. I seem to have things happen back to back to back, either emotional or physical ailments, My stress and anxiety levels are high. My psychiatrist is trying to help with med changes but I still don't see improvement. my motivation is very low and I am trying to do things I like, but I am not getting any enjoyment out of them.  Any suggestions?
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973741 tn?1342342773
Ah sweetie, I've got great empathy for you.  That tiny spark of hope, I love it.  I hope it grows and grows.  We're here, and I'm here on different forums, all the time so you can get to know us and have a community.  I'll send you a friend request.  There is a wide variety of drugs to choose from.  Paxil has been a bad choice for some but a good choice for others. There is such an individual response to medication. I'd stay open minded. And adding on meds is the way things are done now to get an even greater response.  CBT and DBT therapy have both been shown to produce great results.  Mental health can be tricky especially with all the comorbid conditions you have.  I'm so thankful you are working with a doctor and you actually did the intensive therapy.  Hold onto your spark.  I'm happy to remind you always that it is there.  hugs
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I second what Mom says.  The devilish thing about Paxil and Effexor is they truly are very effective drugs for many people.  Maybe the most effective.  But they are very hard to stop taking, and one does have to balance that.  I always say, save them for last, but do save them in case nothing else works.  My problem with Paxil can happen with other drugs as well and it is very uncommon so I didn't mean to suggest you will have a problem.  My own experience has been that if a drug doesn't work, it's probably going to be easy to stop taking it because it probably wasn't take up all that well by your body.  I've never had a problem stopping a drug that didn't work.  In fact, the only drug I had a problem stopping was Paxil.  I admire your tenacity, and I wish I had been like that.  I got complacent while taking meds that didn't work all that well but were better than nothing, and I'm always trying on here to tell folks not to do the stupid things I did.  You have to keep trying to find that elusive fix, and it only exists with luck or therapy or some awakening I didn't have.  I stopped getting therapy while I was on the meds, thinking that was the best I could do, and that was a big mistake.  Y9u aren't making that mistake, you are working hard to find a fix, and because of that I think that you will find it.  It will take time.  You have my admiration.
Thank you specialmom, I would gladly accept your friend request, you as well paxilled.  You are both an inspiration
Avatar universal
Yes, for some it does go away.  For others it is episodic.  For some it doesn't.  Getting the right med can take some time.  Some depression is medication resistant.  In other words, it comes in all sizes and colors, basically, depending on the individual.  If you want to cure it, you have to do that in therapy.  Medication only deals with symptoms.  I would say, if you're getting bad results, get a different psychiatrist.  As with any human, some are better at what they do than others.  But are you working at it in therapy as well?
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And I would add, it does no good to believe it will never get better, because it probably will.  Again, even when it's episodic, there are better times.  You might as well believe it will get better, it fells better than the alternative.
I would say my depression is episodic, this time it just does not want to go away, I have been working with the same psychiatrist for more than 25 years. He knows me and is trying, it's hard trying different medications especially when they don't seem to be helping. Yes, I am in therapy 1x per week, it's just so much is happening in my life that we never seem to get to any real issues because of the depression I am in and dealing with it day to day. I also have Borderline Personality Disorder, PTSD, severe anxiety, severe depression and OCD, which with all these thrown in together, how do I make sense of anything?
Me too.  I got all that when stopping Paxil destroyed me.  Before, I "just" had agoraphobia.  Well, I don't have borderline personality disorder, but I'm not sure I like those kinds of diagnoses.  Either you have something or you don't, and it's kind of a cop out for a doc to try to fudge it by making up these odd diagnoses, but I'm not the expert.  Just a patient.  I think with all you've got going, unless in therapy you find something traumatic that happened to trigger all this stuff, the thing to try is cognitive behaviorial therapy, which doesn't much care how you got this way, it just tries to teach you how not to think the way you're thinking.  But if you have PTSD, and genuinely have it, something did happen.  I think the best way to make sense of everything is not to try to make sense of everything, though that's very hard to do.  Mental illness has no known biological cause, so you just have to accept it's there and know you may never know why and try to make it not be there.  But if you do know why it's there, you have something to work on.  There are a million different ways to treat this stuff.  If you keep trying, hopefully you'll do better than I did and find the way out.  If you stop trying, you never will move past it.  As to real issues, you say you have PTSD.  That's a diaagnosis that is much overdiagnosed where it really doesn't apply, but when it does, it means something you went through for some reason of you having a certain predisposition triggered it, and so if it's a righteous diagnosis that's the thing to work on, but also do the specific cognitive therapies that have been developed for that.  If your therapist and psychiatrist don't know how to deal, no matter how much you feel comfortable with them, you're not looking for comfort, you're looking for healing, and if they can't deliver that, find someone who might.  Peace.
Yes, I had a traumatic childhood which has caused my PTSD and other diagnoses. My doctor is trying to get me into some kind of CBT or DBT so that I can learn how to change my distorted thinking. The thing is, with Covid-19, not much is out there right now except for online. I am trying to work on an online program through CMHA called bouncing back. I was hospitalized on August 23rd and was discharged today. My meds have been changed again and I have put in place some safety measures so that I have the support when I need it. I get it totally about Paxil as I am currently being weaned off it as it was not helping me at all. I am in therapy with a therapist who specializes in my childhood traumas, the process is slow though. I am also being referred to a program called STAT offered at the Hospital I was just discharged from which is intense psychotherapy runs for 5 days a week for 5 weeks, although with Codid-19, they are not sure about the availability of this program. I may fall and I really fell hard just before my hospital admission, but I have always had this little tiny spark of hope deep within me which is why I am still here fighting and trying to learn good skills for coping every day.
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