The Limits of Medication and Therapy

Whenever I talk about my depression, the immediate response I get is people saying I need a good therapist and some medication. Sometimes they suggest a particular medication that helped them or someone they knew. But I will tell you that from my side, it can sometimes (often) feel like people want to tell me the “solution” to depression and then have me stop bringing them down. Other times, it just feels like people want to push away my pain and tell me to deal with it in the appropriate, prescribed way.

The problem is that I haven’t found one solution to depression. Maybe you have. Maybe your body chemistry is different than mine. But over the last sixteen years, I’ve tried eight different medications, each one worse than the one before. I apparently get all the side effects: nausea, dizziness (to the point of not being able to stand), and ironically, depression. The medication made me more depressed than my depression did.

Therapy has been much better for me, but it is also extremely expensive. When people say, “get a good therapist,” I often wonder if they have any idea how long it takes to find a good one and how little most insurance pays to cover therapy. I don’t even think I have bad insurance. I’ve lived without insurance, but this isn’t that. Insurance often covers only a small subset of therapists or only a set number of visits (like 4). This is so stupidly inadequate…