So I've never received an official diagnosis or anything, but I have most of the symptoms: really low self-esteem, weepy, persistent rumination, difficulty with certain (usually unfamiliar) tasks, making decisions, focusing, memory, feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, guilt, paranoia over what other people think of me, made worse with sleep deprivation or alcohol where I feel numb and bleak, like NOTHING can ever make me happy. And there's this constant looming sadness that never really goes away, and I feel like something is just wrong with me.

My mother has had depression my whole life. She takes anti-depressants, and as far as I can tell, they don't do shit. But I'm wondering if you guys could give me some hope?

My symptoms get worse at work around people I want to be around, but something about being around people whose approval I really want makes me feel even worse since I have low self-esteem and feel like I'm boring/weird/unappealing (especially due to being unhappy) and that I'm just generally unacceptable. I feel very lonely and I just wish I could be happy and joke around with people. My job is relatively new and I recently moved to a different state. I also can't stop ruminating (even though it's been months), about the fact that I moved here because the guy I fell in love with picked another girl over me and I worked with him. I couldn't take it anymore so I quit and fled to where I am now. I feel like his coldness and lack of acceptance for me made everything so much worse and just fucked with my head.

I have tried exercise, which works somewhat but then working out is harder when I'm miserable since it's not exactly motivating. I often don't feel like I'm worth therapy, like I should just be able to get over things and manage. I can manage somewhat, some days are better than others. Today felt shitty because at work I had to stop to cry and went to a room in the back and turned the lights off/locked the door and my supervisor walked in to put something away and caught me. I hadn't quite had the tears yet so he didn't know why I was down there and it was just...embarrassing. I hate the smallness of my problems, my life is fine, it's just my brain. I hate not being able to explain myself and I hate...myself.

SO...how are anti-depressants? Can they help me?

Anti-depressants can be part of the solution, but I think what is really needed is a therapist that can help you manage your depression. Whether that be through anti-depressants, exercise, better sleeping, talking about what you're going through, finding better coping mechanisms, etc.

A certain anti-depressant may not work for you, but perhaps another one will. Trying out different medications and doses to find the right fit for you is what mental healthcare providers are there for.

Also, please don't be embarrassed about things that are outside of your control. The stigma around mental health sucks, but it isn't your fault your brain reacts differently. Everyone has days where they can manage fine and others where they need outside help. Everyone is worth therapy if they want to improve their quality of life. It's okay to seek out help if you want things to be better for yourself.

I've been on antidepressants for a long time. Since I was 12? 13? Somewhere around there, anyways. My depression is...kind of controlled I guess, but it definitely could be better. I feel like, I'm not sure if it would be better were I off of it, maybe so, but maybe not and I don't really want to take the chance I'd feel worse.

My job is my main trigger, but I can't quit because bills and life, you know? It's so difficult to find a job around here as it is, that I feel like I don't really have the choice to find something, and most days I can't really find the motivation to bother.

Seeing a therapist has never been an option for me, as I do not open up to people I don't know. Hell, I don't even talk a lot to my parents, and hardly ever about my mental health issues. I have anxiety and a form of synesthesia on top of the depression.

I'd say though, see your doctor, your general health practitioner - they can refer you to a therapist if need be, or possibly prescribe something for you themselves. Once you're on that, it might be easier to exercise if the pills/therapy make you feel better. Also, have them do blood work. I recently found out I have thyroid problems, which can cause a whole host of problems, including mental ones.

Exercise helps when I can force myself to go and do it. I have to bitch internally at myself to go to the gym or to get my ass out and take a walk, even though I always feel better when I go. Once I'm done with my workout, I'm pleased with myself that I did it and all the endorphins coursing through my system leave me happy for the rest of the day. It's just making myself do it that's hard. I think the reason is that I would rather be doing something else, something more fun and sedentary, like drawing mainly video games.

Here it's damn difficult to get prescribed anti-depressants (guess my doc would rather saw off her own legs than prescribing me sth) and like impossible to get therapy - there are usually waiting time 6 months+ for a lousy appointment. I don't know, mental issues don't seem to count as an actual illness here, more like sth you are making up because you are seeking for attention or have no other hobbies. So yeah, no meds for me, no therapy - just dealing with my shit on my own.

Well, in my experience... no.

I've been told time and again that I'm "too young" for anything remotely close to depression/anxiety/etc to warrant effective medication so I got a misdiagnosis of depression and repeated attempts at varying medications that either made me feel like hell, made me sick as hell, or in the case of one... made me gain 50lbs.

I finally threw a shitfit at the doctor about the medication last week and asked how old I had to be to be taken seriously (I'm 28 and getting told this "too young" nonsense) and get the one medicine - not an antidepressant but works great for my anxiety so I actually engage in things, which in turn helps my "depression" - that worked for me. I got the script filled last night.

Not to mention, depression doesn't just have to be staying in bed and going "WOE IS ME!" It can manifest in different ways and not all antidepressants are going to treat your specific symptoms right off. It can be, like with me, a ton of trial and error and doctors seeing that depression diagnosis and something else goes unnoticed or largely untreated. (Not to mention that gender unfortunately has a huge factor in all of this, which is just so outdated and sexist, words cannot express my disgust towards this particular subject matter.)

But that's my little special case. I've only relayed all that so it can be a tale of caution and knowing that it's not going to be easy, realistically. I'm not at all trying to discourage you seeking treatment, quite the opposite. If you feel that you need to be seen by a therapist, go do so. There's absolutely nothing wrong in seeking that little extra help of talking to someone.

Yes, they have helped me. I went through crying everyday and being super emotional to stable. With antidepressants, the effects of the medication can take about a week/month to take effect. You have to be patient. I am one semester away from my bachelors in Psychology so I can tell you that medication is only a bandaid applied to a wound. The wound is still going to be there. It just needs to be mended with therapy as well. If I had another way I could've dealt with my symptoms, I would've never started antidepressants. They are SUPER addictive. I can't even function without mine anymore. This medication has stabilized my mood, but sometimes I really do want to cry but can't.

The medications that are available in the United States for depression are not addictive. This has been proven.

Antidepressants do change the way I think and will alter your personality. This has been proven. I say nothing at all as to whether any such change will help you. Each kind of antidepressant works in its own way and will make different alterations.

Talking to other people is better than any therapy by my experience. You haven't replied.

Oh my goodness, thank you to the kind soul who sent me gifts, including wishlist items! That's so very sweet. Best wishes to whoever did that!

I'm sorry to all who are also struggling. Thank you everyone for your responses. Rereading my post, I hope I don't exhibit too much self-pity, just looking for solutions to my emotions. I hope everyone gets their way in terms on their mental health.

I see there's no clear answer to the anti-depressant thing. I knew it varied a lot, makes it seem more difficult and intimidating. I guess it's something that I'll have to try. I keep monitoring my mood, some days are better than others. Yesterday I felt better because we were busy at work -- that makes me feel better because I can be useful to my co-workers, and that's very important to me.

, I find that kind of surprising, I was always under the impression that getting anti-depressants was easy (due to the stereotype that everybody in the modern world is "drugged up" on anti-depressants). My brother was once diagnosed with depression in his early teens and was offered anti-depressants, which he declined (he's fine, and he's in his 30s now).

I hear you on the appointments thing though, Sirius. Last year I tried reaching out to a mental health institute and they put me on a waiting list that took months for them to give me a call, at which point I already had things in motion to change and move elsewhere.

Annnnd that thing about being too young for anti-depressants is ridiculous. Actually everything you had to deal with sounds ridiculous. Glad you finally found something that worked!

Yeah, my mom was addicted to Zoloft, she can't go without it either, or she'll become overly weepy and have symptoms of withdrawal. Don't know if you experience it the same way but I'm sorry you have to deal that.

Thank you for the kind words, your response was comforting. I'm becoming more and more convinced that therapy is the direction I ought to go in.

I know I need to talk. Annnd let's face it: the internet has a lot of depressed people on it, so I came here, knowing people would get me and have advice. Thanks for the response! It's interesting to see it from that perspective...to think of something ultimately altering my personality.

Sorry to hear your job has to be a trigger for you. For most people that's where most of their time is spent, so that really sucks. Exercising has been on/off for me lately, it's not easy. Video games and indoor activities are usually enjoyable to me too, I get where you're coming from.

AIDS is treatable, but there isn't a cure for it. If you stop taking your antiretrovirals you do feel sick again because you still have a small amount of it in your system that the medication cannot get at and it will start replicating again once it is no longer suppressed. That those afflicted with HIV still need to take medication for it is NOT a measure of addiction.

My heart fibrillates. I take a medication for it that suppresses this, but the fibrillation is due partly to a weird shaped heart and bad electrical signals due to brain damage. In no way does this medication repair my heart's split-ends and make it's protein strands stronger (yeah, I have been shopping for a new hair conditioner does it show?). Nevertheless tangle free hair is good and being able to walk without wheezing is good.

Your mom may need Zoloft. But she is not addicted. Asserting that she is is failing to recognize that depression is a thing or failing to recognize that antidepressants are a treatment and not a cure.

Even if it's not "addictive", you still develop a dependance on it. I do not get overly emotional after being off the pill, it just makes me feel like complete and utter crap if I don't take it. It's crap to quit and if you are a woman and thinking about having a baby, you will have to wean yourself off of medications that harm the baby. so going through pregnancy while weaning yourself off medication is going to be hard as hell. If i had a choice, I would've tried therapy first then just prescribe medication. I wasn't in any state where I was suicidal, so urgency wasn't needed. If you NEED something in order to function properly and can't without it. Sounds like addiction to me.

I find 's phrase "develop a dependence on it" disingenuous. I do not like it. Someone with HIV hasn't developed a dependence. I can stop my heart medication. We'll get sick and probably die, but we're not dependent on it in the way that the word "develop a dependence" usually means.

If you take a strong dose of aspirin several days in a row, but stop taking it on the fifth day you WILL get a rebound headache. If you suddenly stop taking (instead of tapering off) an antihistamine because pollen season of whatever thing you are allergic to is over or you moved out to the country, you WILL get clogged sinuses as a rebound. Not all medications are nice sweet happy medications full of sparkly unicorns and rainbows.

Nobody considers or describes aspirin and pseudoephedrine as addictive or dependence causing.

Can sometimes Zoloft be a mean ol' nasty medicine that takes awhile to wean off until you can get a better medicine? Yes, it it is. Zoloft is mean. There's a reason it's not OTC. Depression? Goddessdamned depression? Depression is a fucking shit and is super dangerous. Using words like addictive and develop a dependence can be super harmful when some folks become depressed because they really did use/do something addictive or dependence-causing.

Thank you anonymous for the wonderful gift. ❤ Love you anonymous boo~

There MIGHT be research out there that disproves that anxiety medication is not addictive, as claimed BUT anyone with a research background will KNOW the fundamentals. When we talk about results, we never use the word PROVE ever. We can only describe significance of our results, but there are never ways to PROVE something unless there is enough evidence to back the claim up where it becomes common knowledge that everyone (all researchers) can agree on. And if you'd taken any Psychology courses, you would know that not everyone can be placed into a box of defining characteristics. Each individual has different experiences/genes that rewire their brain. So while in some cases depression medications such as SSIs may not be addictive to one person, it can be completely different in others. Just like how some people can quit cigarettes and not have any side effects from doing so, while others cannot.

If i'm deemed disingenuous then I am afraid to see how you would respond to a normal layperson that HASN'T went to college and major in Psychology, HASN'T had research experience, and HASN'T taken the medication and HASN'T dealt with anxiety/depression themselves.

It is sad I cannot share my views without name-calling. Sorry hun but I won't stoop to your level.❤

Here's the thing about mental illness: we group things by symptoms that tend to fall together, but there aren't many hard lines between certain conditions. There's a lot of overlap, and honestly, personally, I don't trust most psychiatrists to make the right diagnosis, which is why I research like crazy so I can tell them myself what they're going to diagnose and treat me for. Part of that research is getting opinions from people with experience, so good on you!

I have a thrilling cocktail of mental illnesses, and I've been on antidepressants for... something like seven years, and from where I stand, I'd say that you have a good chunk of ADHD symptoms as well as depression. People with ADHD often suffer from executive dysfunction. Your executive functions are crucial, and it's difficult to describe what it's like to live with them so inhibited, but several things you described, including difficulty with certain tasks (especially task initiation if that's relevant to you), decision-making, focus, and memory, are all problems with executive dysfunction. You also mentioned feeling even worse when around people you particularly want approval from. There's a term for that, used just about exclusively by the ADHD community: rejection-sensitive dysphoria. You described RSD to a T, pretty much.

For many people, medications work wonders. For others, they don't notice a thing. There are a million different types of medication (both for depression and ADHD, if you want to look into the latter), and some work better for certain people. It's kind of a crapshoot. Most psychiatrists will prescribe the one that works best for others in your demographics (age and symptoms are the big ones), and then tell you to come back anywhere between two weeks to two months later. If it's been a while (my dude says 4-6 weeks for antidepressants) and they aren't doing anything, you can either up the dosage or switch the medication. Some psychs are overbearing and don't want to work with you (they just wanna tell you what to do), and I won't tell you how to live your life, but if a psychiatrist is pushing something you hate, you don't have to put up with it. I had to fight tooth and nail a couple years back because my meds were doing zilch and I was on the verge of suicide, but my psych kept insisting that I needed to wait for the effects. To avoid ending up dead before the drugs did a damn thing, I ended up admitting myself to a psych ward, where the onsite psychiatrist basically talked to me for three minutes before prescribing an extra medication that gave the antidepressants a kick in the rear.

Exercise is good, and so is routine, but believe me, I get it: sometimes you drag yourself out of bed and that's it, that's your exercise for the day, you don't have the energy for anything else. As for the "smallness" of your problems, I kicked that to the curb a long time ago. People complain about hangnails and their keyboards having a sticky key: I'm allowed to complain about my brain effectively trying to kill me. It took me a long time, but I've reached a point at which I'm chronically honest and entirely unashamed. I'm mentally ill, and it sucks, and I'm doing my best, and that's all I've got, and I don't care who knows it. When it comes to not being able to explain yourself, it's a lot of work to expand the way you explain things, especially your own feelings. It's probably best if you can regularly practice with another person, but journals are good in a pinch. Do it more than once a day, even if it's just in your head or talking to yourself. Just try to take whatever mess is in your head and put it into words. It's okay if you don't do it perfectly. Leave any fear of failure at the door.

Just to cut through the haze of whatever disagreement is happening re: the addictive properties of antidepressants: most antidepressants do not create emotional dependencies beyond the individual's attachment to the favorable effects (ie. "I very much like NOT being suicidal, so I feel as though I need to keep taking the pills that make that happen") but they fairly regularly form moderate physical dependencies: the body gets used to working with the drugs, and if the drug suddenly disappears, it doesn't know how to function without it anymore. That's what withdrawal is, and it's an incredibly unpleasant experience, but most of the time if you're gonna stop your meds, they'll be tapered off so you don't quit cold turkey, and withdrawal symptoms are minor.

I think it's a really good idea for you to talk with a therapist and see how things go. I think a mixture of both that and a medication that works for you will really help you improve your mental well-being.

I've been on anti-depressants for almost a year now (though probably should have been on them a lot earlier), and they've helped me a lot. Of course I still have rougher days and things, but it definitely helps make things more manageable. My anxiety was what I was struggling with the most, and this has definitely helped calm it down.

Depression is a gross, ugly thing and I really hope you can start to get some control back, and that things work out positively for you :)

Hm, I do appear to exhibit signs of ADHD, I took a test online and I have a few other traits besides what you mentioned. Interesting to know, so thank you for that, and everything else, you provided quite a bit of info so I appreciate it.

As for getting my thoughts together and explaining things, I'm very introspective and I'm pretty good at pinpointing what's bothering me and articulating my thoughts, but even then I don't expect people to necessarily understand - many people just don't get mental illness, and oftentimes you can kinda tell who can and who can't.

I've also thought about the journal thing. Every source I go to seems to bring up writing things down. I've always been skeptical as to how that would help but having tried it a couple times I see the benefits.

Thank you for the response!

I am looking into it, thank you for the good wishes c:

I can tell you that I would not be functioning at all without my anti-depressants. Therapy just doesn't work for me. The only problem is that I'm on such a high dose that missing my medication by like a couple of hours makes me feel like I'm going to die. I know most doctors and psychiatrists agree that a combination of both works the best

and ALL others on this thread who are suffering: First of all, let me reaffirm for you that you are beautiful, amazing, and worthwhile. You are the winning sperm out of millions of others. Clearly, the best of the bunch. ;) Let me also say that every problem, every emotion, every concern, no matter how 'small' or what it stems from, is valid and real.

Now, that aside, I had unchecked depression when I was a young teen. I was a self-harm kind of person and it was pretty bad for a while. I didn't know that what I was feeling was wrong. Over a few years, it got better and I noticed I didn't feel as bad anymore, didn't have bad impulses, etc.

Now I'm in my mid 20's, and have been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and General Anxiety Disorder. My career was what really pushed the depression and anxiety back up in me and made it manifest again. One of the major things I had to do as part of my healing process I'm going through is switch careers. I could NOT continue on my career path and live. I had coworkers literally tell me that they were afraid for my life if I kept doing what I was doing. So, I found a doctor and left my job.

My doctor has me on anxiety medication and antidepressants, and I do think they are helping. However, let me be completely honest- this is my 3rd or 4th prescription, and the first few I tried were garbage. All kinds of side effects and none of the helpfulness you expect from the medications. The one I am on now is helping, I believe, but it is no miracle worker. Instead of crying everyday, I cry two or three times a week. Instead of staying in bed for 90% of my free time, I'm in bed for about 50% of my free time. Instead of feeling hollow, lost, and hopeless everyday, I feel that way about half of the week. This is a VAST improvement, but it's not a quick-fix. I've been working on this healing journey for about 4 months now, and my depression and anxiety became really apparent to people around me about 2 years ago... I just denied it until recently. So maybe I let it go too long, and now it's harder to claw my way out of the hole I dug myself, who knows. Medication is certainly a good place to look when you're already making other healthy choices and they aren't helping much, or if you're desperate for professional opinion in general, but just keep in mind they don't fix everything right away and it may take a while to find one that works with your body chemistry.

TL;DR antidepressants can certainly help some people, I feel like I benefit from them right now, but it's quite a journey to healing yourself and it's not only about the medication. Also, not all antidepressants are created equally.