>>105934640The pic is bleak reading, I think NZ isn't too far behind. >10% on anti-depressants, and that's stats from a few years ago so likely higher now. Not sure about other meds I can't be bothered to look them up.
I had chronic and crippling depression from my early teens until my late 20s. The reason was because I'd had a very bad life with a lot of bad things happening to me, people close to me treated me very badly, and as a result of that along with bad influences I became a bad person to be around. This made new people I met not like me and treat me badly, or they liked me because they were also bad people and reinforced that behaviour, and the feedback loop continues unless you actively stop it.
If I SSRI'd the depression away I would never have broken that cycle and would never have improved my life or myself. I might have killed myself, or gone deeper into drug addiction or alcoholism or some other escapism. Not that SSRIs really work anyway, but the point is I had to look at myself and the people around me and make some big changes, some very rude awakenings, not try to rely on drugs.
When I offer this perspective to people on meds they always say I'm ignorant. It's not just feeling sad, their brain makes them feel that way regardless of their situation. First of all, your brain makes you feel everything you feel so that's a pointless thing to say. Besides, I know in inordinate detail how SSRIs work and I can explain if anyone wants to know. But they don't want to know. It's completely obvious that I ruined my life due to my low self esteem to anyone who knows me, but they insist I don't understand, they have a special kind of sadness that only a select few have ever experienced, and somehow they know for sure that I am not one of them.
That's another interesting thing, I notice symptoms of chronic depression in a lot of people, but none of the SSRI fanatics ever seem to see it in anyone else. I'm not sure what to read into that.