Treating Depression: Soldiers of Misfortune Need An Arsenal To Fight The War Within

There are days when I feel like I’ve had well more than enough. That I need to run away and never come back, leaving everything behind. I’ll contemplate what it would be like, what it would feel like, to no longer have the mundane responsibilities and overbearing pressures in my life drowning me, that I have now. My mind squirrels away down every trail it stumbles across with whatever captivates my fancy, only to chase another sparkle down another winding path. If I didn’t get lost within the sanctity of my mind, I would likely do more than just contemplate my getaway, only to sorely regret it in once I arrived at the end of the road, wherever that may be.

We all have these kind of days. They’re the days that make you question what the greater good of everything in your life actually is. Whether or not the living in your life is worth the aggravated struggle it takes to keep it up. The kind of day when your emotions are stretched so thin that anything could become a trigger for the damn retaining the overflow of your soul to release. But, when you have Depression, these days come faster, harder, & more frequently. These kinds of days may be triggered by the outside influences of life weighing heavy on one’s shoulders, carrying enormous loads of stress, but, they are fueled by influences from the inside. The misfiring of nerves, the imbalanced brain chemistry, the racing or irrational thought processes, and the irregular cycles of intensified emotions and feelings of intense despair, among many others symptoms are the enemy in a never-ending battle for control. Those outside influences of stress give aid to the war cause, but, reality is, that the disease is ultimately what generals the army. Depression is The Commander In Chief and there’s no impeachment laws.

As we grow and mature from children to adults, we learn many ways to cope with, handle, and control the many different aspects of our human psyche. Seemingly, the most successful people in life are those who are truly in touch with their own psyche. They are able to control their actions and reactions and maintain a cool, calm, and collected presence in the most stressful of circumstances. This is a near-impossible achievement when you’re diagnosed with Depression. Depression manages to stay one step ahead of the opposing army, cutting off all attempts at preventing it from sinking it’s talons in, relinquishing the dark in replace of the light in one’s life. It takes a full array of life skills, coping mechanisms, maturity, wisdom, knowledge, and support under one’s belt to push back the frontline to one’s advantage.

The pharmaceutical companies take gamble on this factor of the disease. They prey on those genetically stuck between a rock and a dark place. They prey on the fact that therapy, the psychological reconditioning of one’s thought patterns and teaching of those crucial coping skills and survival mechanisms, takes time, dedication, and a willingness to work hard at make change. Instead, those companies advertise promises of quick, easy, chemically controlled cures. These cures only work so long as you take the medication ritually consistent, creating a physical and mental dependence on it to maintain control of the disorder. That fits right in line with the definition of addiction- the psychological dependence of a substance to satisfy a psychological need for the resulting affects of that substance. In this case, the need is instantaneously relief of Depression symptoms, the substance is antidepressant medication, and the affect is the feeling of sanity, a return to the bright side of life, or, at least, a way to keep the all consuming darkness at bay and maintain whatever misguided idealism of what a normal brain might be.

Now, the concept of taking medication for an illness or disease of any sort is not a ridiculous concept at all. It’s the fact that the pharmaceutical companies push these medications as cure-all’s and one-swallow-fixes, misleading people to believe that it is the only necessary method towards achieving that normal brain they crave, that’s ridiculous. That medicating is the only imperative for escaping the clutches of the piercing talons of that twisted, discombobulated Commander In Chief, Depression. Through the suggestive brainwashing of advertisement, the drug companies give credence to the fact that Depression is no different than flipping a switch or setting a timer knob on and off: at 8 a.m. the pill goes in, normal brain turns on; exactly 23:59 hours later the pill wears off. That is a cycle of symptom masking, not a cure of the actual disease! Human error and real life interference are an oversight, no forethought given that the medication will even be used continuously as prescribed, at the specified doses and intervals.

It is a grave injustice to the mental health community for this debauchery, this facade, of mental health care to continue to go on as it is. Family physicians may have enough training to recognize basic mental health symptoms and feel falsely confident under the persistent influencing by Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Representatives, in treating the more cut-n-dry of mental illnesses themselves- Depression, Bipolar, and Anxiety. They will suggest one see a therapist for “added benefit,” but it’s not mandated for treatment. Other alternative treatment options are typically only brought to the table when the patient does so themselves. Medication, alone, shouldn’t be the only answer given, because it doesn’t work as promised for everyone. There must be something more, something greater, enabling the promotion of every option possible and mandating therapy to increase one’s arsenal, in order to effectively combat the frontline, or else, Depression will always win.

It’s a very morose state of unmet growing needs catapulted by financial greed, wealth of power, and a bit of political influence that the Mental Health care system is being controlled by these days. People walk around like brainwashed soldiers dedicated to the organization, oblivious to whether or not they’re actually benefiting from the system, getting the whole story, or being informed of all the truths. There’s a lot of misdiagnosis going on when Family physicians try to keep those “easy” patients, with their insurance monies and self-paying funds, presumptively lining their own pockets on someone else’s sanity. The only person monitoring a chronic, potentially debilitating and life-threatening illness is an overloaded physician of general practice with no extra mental health training beyond the mandatory six-week rotation in med school. Depression is not a drive-thru issue. It’s a serious mental illness and should be respected as such.

When the medical professionals representative of our own personal opinions of well-being don’t take an illness seriously, neither will anyone else. When those professionals covet their patients and refuse to show them the truth about their diagnosis, refuse to give them other options and mandate therapy, they are harming the mental health community. What good does that daily dose of antidepressant medication do when the day has turned rotten and running away is the only feasible option? It’s not going to magically kick your brain and say “Oh, wait a minute! I’m here. Let’s just change those thoughts about all the things that have gone wrong today and are bringing you down, then make you feel all rosy, sunshiny, and happy, again.”

The medications do the best they can to balance the brain chemistry that leads to those thoughts taking over, but they can’t stop them completely. Especially under a general practitioner’s care. They’re not apt to run any testing to make sure the medication is actually changing anything on the inside, they ONLY take the word of their patients, never looking at whether the medication is accurately effective at balancing that haywire brain chemistry. Those pharmaceutical reps will just continue to bait those physicians with their free samples and smooth-talking, hooking them with the guarantee to increase their revenue by treating cases of Depression themselves, leaving their patients vulnerable, misguided, and at risk.

If the stigma on mental health diagnoses is to ever change, so must our avenues of treatment. Therapy must become a requirement, so those of us with diagnosis can arm ourselves with the necessary weapons of control against this lifelong war on Depression- a fight that will not cease until our deaths. Alternatives to pharmaceutical medications must become readily available and easily obtainable. Changes to the structure of combat against this mental disorder are long overdue and necessary, because the next person contemplating driving off the face of this earth, might actually make it to their final destination without regret, lost to the war within their mind needlessly, sadly, unfortunately. An arsenal containing more than just man-made chemical compounds, could’ve saved that soldier of misfortune from being lost forever.

Raising a Reader- Mission Impossible?

There’s no doubt by now that the world knows I’m a lover of books, of words, of writing. I’ll read anything I can get my hands on if I’m bored enough. I’ve read through every bottle, box, & can in my pantry, all of the hair care products in the bathroom, every sign on every building & road between here & Timbuktu….. well, you get the point. I’m very ashamed of Cliff Notes, they’ve taken magic out of having to read a whole book, word for word.

I started off reading Dr Seuss at 3.5yrs old. By 2nd grade I had devoured the entire Boxcar Chidren series. I was introduced to The Babysitters Club in 3rd grade, which kept me occupied between classics like Judy Blum & Old Yeller. By 5th grade, I had finished off the entire fiction section of chapter books in my elementary school library.
By middle school, my love for books developed into a love of writing words, shaping them into short stories & poems. I read every book in my house, including my stepmom’s collection of Stephen King novels & my dad’s Physician’s Desk Reference book, all 6,000 pages of it.

No matter where life has taken me, I could always escape into a book or my own writing. It helped me get through several deaths of friends, the verbal abuse of my father, the rejection I felt from classmates or my stepdad’s extended family. So when I found myself pregnant the first time, I jumped on the “Please bring a book to start my baby’s library” bandwagon when I filled out my baby shower invitations. How could I not pass down my passion to my own child? And sure enough, this kid growing inside me had a pretty envious library before he even entered the world! Dr. Seuss’s entire collection of stories filled an entire bookcase. Another was filled with chunky, chew friendly books & classics such as Goodnight Moon, Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, & Just In Case You Ever Wonder. There was even a shelf full of old fairytales & Brother’s Grimm stories. I was so geeked to show my son the wonders within each bound cover. From the moment he popped outta me, I would read to him as I rocked him to settle him down. When his brother joined us barely a year later, I found it relaxing to plop em both on my lap & spend our time reading the day away together.

So here we are, ten years later, & struggling with those same boys who loved to hear me make up silly voices for each character we read. Struggling to keep them focused on school, keep their grades acceptable, keep them at their appropriate grade level for all things. Math is a piece of cake for the oldest & comes naturally to him. The younger one grasps it almost as easily. What is it that they are floundering in most? Reading, writing, & spelling! It’s like living in a waking nightmare. How can it be that I did everything in my power to raise reader’s yet I have two boys with refusing to touch a book on their own accord, with levels two grades behind?

When they were in kindergarten & first grades, I attended every seminar our school district & our intermediate-school district held about sharing the love of reading with your child & I would roll my eyes & scoff under my breath at some of the implications in their teachings, because I had already surpassed those stepping stones with my boys. I’d bash other parents in my head while listening to the spiel, thinking I had this all downpat, that it would never be my kids that needed the intervention programs within the school program for at-risk kids. I never, for a second, contemplated the fact that my kids would be classified as at-risk one day.

Here we are in fourth & fifth grades with that dreaded label attached to them. I’ve tried every bribe, every punishment, every suggested technique, to get them to pick up a book & read. They cry. They scream. They storm throughout the house, slamming doors, pushing the younger siblings about, & destroying toys, being angry & bitter because they have to read for twenty, pathetic, minutes. I cry. I scream & yell. I feel like a parenting failure, because I can’t do one of the only jobs required of me to prepare my children for adulthood. How can they be successful in life without good reading skills? I wish someone would tell me to go find somewhere quiet & lose myself within a book for any amount of time. Reading is a reward for me, so how can it be that it’s a painful chore to my own flesh & blood!?!

Even their dad is a reader by nature, a seeker of written knowledge & power through words. They see us reading constantly. They accuse us of ignoring them sometimes because we’ve been so absorbed into the world created by the book in hand that we were unaware of them standing in front of us trying to catch our attention. They have public library cards, a book exchange program at school, plus access to the school library to allow them to find something, anything, that they’d be interested in to read. We still have the library quality collection of books from their babyhood that has grown beyond my house’s capacity as we added to it throughout the years, as we also added two daughter’s into our encompassing family unit. They have all the skills within them, imbedded by my example & teaching from the moment of their births. Yet, they have come to hate written words as much as I hate child abusers. I’m at a loss with this. I don’t know what to do, how to fix it. It almost feels like my boy’s are broken somehow, because I just cannot see past my own passions to understand their immense dislikings. It’s one of seven great wonders of the world to me. If I ever found the genie’s lamp & was granted three wishes, without a doubt, my very first wish would be to grant the boy’s the ability to love reading & writing, gain a desire to excel in each.

Already, I can see the same passions I failed to pass onto my son’s, developing in my daughter’s, which only compounds my frustrations. How do they inherit the gene, but my boys did not? ‘What did I do differently’ or ‘where did I go wrong’ are questions that plague my thoughts constantly. I search for answers, for advice, for understanding. To read is to have power- power over others through word manipulation, power to absorb written  knowledge through vision, power to change someone’s perception through explanation, power to express thoughts, feelings, emotions, & situations, & power to escape into another world when life gets boring. So much power is held within words, written, spoken, & read. If my boys cannot read well, they will never know the magic of this power, one that I have mastered & always assumed that they would as well.

So I continue to drudge along, seeking a way to break through their barriers & open their minds. I pray to God, I wish upon stars, I beg them directly. Deep inside myself, I look for acceptance in the fact that they are not like me or their father in their passion for reading. Acceptance to the fact that they will still be alright, that they can still succeed as adults, have a wonderful life without a love for reading. I will still read aloud to them, hoping that the magic in my voice will speak to their soul & change their perceptions. The pages continue to turn, the chapters continue to grow in number, as we write the story of our life, & maybe, just maybe, I’ll stumble across the part where the boys discover their desire to read all the things on their own. Until then, I have willing & able girls to work with, & somehow that’s gotta be good enough for now.

Sunday Confession: Read
This blog post was brought to you by the wonderful, More Than Cheese and Beer, thanks to her prompts with her Sunday Confessions series. You’ll find more great blogs with the prompt Linked In with hers & anonymous confessions from her page followers on FB. You can follow me on FB at The Daily Rantings of an Angrivated Mom.