I don’t know why people seem to think depression and anxiety isn’t an actual illness when so many people suffer the most debilitating physical effects from bad episodes. It can feel like a chronic illness

Intense physical shaking, headaches and migraines, brain fog and inability to make decisions, constant vomiting and diarrhoea, weight loss, picking at skin, hair loss, dry painful skin, chronic fatigue, loss of appetite, complete aversion to food and drink, menstrual issues...

Not to mention then the actual mental effects that are hidden: loss of personality, dark spiralling thoughts, restlessness coupled with inability to think, suicidal thinking, crying, self deprecation, hopelessness, impact on family and friends, domestic tensions..

if anyone who has never suffered with depression before thinks about commenting on the severity of it. Who can honestly live with that range of symptoms all coinciding and interweaving together at once, and work and function as a human normally? It’s such a serious illness

And yet there is such a social aversion to anti depressant medication which can literally save lives. It makes me so angry because so many people put off seeking help they truly need and can access because “I don’t want to go on antidepressants” like it’s a dirty word

Yet it can be so useful and helpful rather than suffering with complete neurological chemical disorder in your brain that is no fault of your own. No other illness evokes such aversion to medication than depression. I really hope people suffering seek the help they deserve

well meaning people who don’t grasp the severity of the beginning signs of the onset of a serious depressive episode aren’t really helping either, because we all collectively despise anti depressant medication and decide that natural approaches work just as well

Because depression is so broad and varied depending on experience, some things can be fixed without medication. Like running, or cuddling your pets, or reading self help books. But what about those who have done that for five weeks straight and nothing has changed