2 of 7

Write now Article Tools

I was for almost 30 years, a Staff Nurse specializing in Psychiatry. Every day it was my job to nurse people suffering from depression. Then, one day about ten years ago, I switched sides and became very depressed myself. It was mind-bogglingly awful. It negatively affected every area of my life and eventually lost me my job and career - the euphemism was "retired due to ill health!" This left me with a tattered life, very little money and several suicidal plans.

I was given numerous appointments with Psychologists, psychiatrists and regular changes of medication. These all started out well but soon petered out as I seemed to develop a "tolerance" to their effects, and it was back to square one again as the Docs tried me with yet another medication.

Because of my background, I had completely bought the biochemical theory of depression - It was caused by a lack of neurotransmitters - i.e. serotonin - in the brain and could be fixed by the application of the new SSRI (Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors) wonder-drugs. A couple of weeks on these and I would be as right as rain - Wouldn't I?

Well no actually! Each new tablets effect was as short lived as it's predecessor. I couldn't understand it - Here I was, so full of serotonin that it was dribbling out of my ears - and yet I was still depressed. Then I read an article about CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). This was an up-and-coming therapy, which (in a nutshell) over the space of a couple of weeks taught depressives to monitor, identify and control their prevailing thoughts. The most interesting thing for me however was the statistics tagged on the end of the piece which stated that tests had shown CBT to be as effective or more effective at controlling depression as medication therapy.

Hang on! - AS effective or MORE effective than medication? As far as I was concerned, this if true, could mean only one thing - either this method magically caused the brain to squish out extra serotonin, or the whole serotonin thing was a bit of a red herring. Having had plenty of time to think about this now, I am convinced that although serotonin may be part of the mechanism that regulates the overall mood level, trying to control the mood level through serotonin is doomed to failure. You can pump in as much extra serotonin as you like - If the brain thinks it is too much it will just shut down its serotonin receptors and you will be back where you started - which is probably why all my new medications eventually petered out after a couple of weeks.

So the big question now was WHY was my brain overruling the medications attempt to bump up my serotonin levels - I think that I now know why - and I shall reveal all in my next article

Learn more about this author, William Jones.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about How to beat depression without prescription drugs?
We want to hear your view. Write now!