Life just sucks sometimes.

This is so incredibly true. That is why there are some people that can be happy in any situation, and some that cannot be happy no matter how good things are on the outside.

I do not take antidepressants, I do not take anti anxiety meds. I eat well, sleep well, exercise well. keep everything in balance. On occasion when things get rough maybe some fine Champagne or even a little marijuana, takes care of everything.

Have had several episodes of depression, twice requiring meds. I stopped them because they made me feel numb. Each time I uncovered the real reasons behind the depression, therapy was as effective; I see this trend of pharmaceutical companies pushing drugs, telling people if they feel sad for a mere two weeks, well thats clinical depression, taking a mind altering pill and your fixed; now the latest ads if the first pill doesn't fix you take another one alongside it. It scares me because who know what altering brain chemistry will impact us in the future particulary in kids. And two, why are we as a society hiding from the fact that yes life is hard, we all have things to work through, painful, time consuming, ugly as that might be. I don't see a happier society despite the meds. I have seen pts who needed the meds to get out of a chemical hole, but not without therapy in conjunction with it. Have seen the antidepressant numb friends, nothing bothers them, they live their lives through a window tolerating the intolerable. How much of this is more focused on profits for the pharmaceutical companies than for the advancement of treatment for mental illness?
Right now Im not at all sure.

Lexapro saved my life. It made me monotone, but that was a much better alternative than the somber, angry emotionally labile nut my children had to put up with. If I had been told the Lexapro would shorten my life by 20 years I would have taken it over living how I was living (I have substantial frontal lobe damage from a horseback riding accident that is a major contributor to the depression.) Life still sucked, and the Lexapro was far from a "happy pill" but I know I made better decisions and handled life better than before I was on it. It's not fair to lump the use of antidepressants in one or two (or even three) categories. No, children and teens should not be given antidepressants, people who think a pill will cure all their problems will be disappointed, but I'll vouch for what they did for me.

Awesome! Smart grandmother!

You're right. A lot of people are sad and its not because things are necessarily wrong with them. Many people I know go into deep depressions because life hands them impossible situations where they should be rightfully sad. Feeling sad is normal and like every emotion, is very valid and needs to be felt. However, sometimes the sadness can become overwhelming. Life can be very traumatic and filled horrible, terrible things that have no rhyme or reason (think about the jet that killed that whole family in San Diego last week). How does one make sense of these things? If my whole family had died in the house from some freak jet crash, I can without a doubt tell you that I would not make it. I would shrivel up and die. At times, things that are out of your control can lead to overwhelming feelings of sadness, which may become pathological and can really ruin many lives of the suffering victim and that of their friends and family.

I know you didn't mean this article as a statement against psychiatry, psychology, or therapy. Yet I feel some people may interpret in it this way. Personally, as someone who has experienced deep depression due to many traumatic and inexplicable events in my life, I would hate to see how my life would have turned out if I had not sought therapy. I would say medication helped, but the real progress was through therapy.

I love this thread. Your grandma is a wise lady.

What a wonderful read that was. Short and so true in all its aspects. That was just great. Sometimes life just is what it is. Someone wrote that this thread made them somehow sad. I find this thread relates just the opposite. It shouts out truthfullness and reality and hope.

That's funny, therapy didn't do a thing for me. I found rattling on about my woes to some uninterested stranger to be draining and annoying.

Therapy never helped me either.

However, Lithium is a life saver. Well...

Lithium, Effexor and Adderall.

Gotta love the people that think you can just deal with it.