OneAndOneIs2

So, about that doctor's visit.

I phoned first thing Monday morning and got an appointment for a couple of hours later. I made it there in good time and hung around in the waiting room until it was my turn. I went through and met with my GP for the first time in.. six or seven years, I think. I'm not in any way a regular, so I generally expect to be taken fairly seriously when I make a GP visit.

I explained, in detail, why I thought I had been suffering from depression for several years. I made the point very clearly that I wasn't unhappy because times had been hard; times had been hard because I'd been depressed.

After I had gone through the whole thing, he summed up his understanding as: "So basically you've had a bad time and now you're miserable"

So clearly, he'd been paying close attention... Strike one.

His proposed solution? To put me on some (In his words) "happy pills" AKA antidepressants.

And that's strikes 2 and 3 right there.

Firstly, ADs are NOT "happy pills" - they do not make you happy. They cure below-normal levels of neurotransmitters that are often a part of depression. They help you stop being depressed, they don't make you happy. A good metaphor might be that throwing a lifebelt to a drowning man will help stop him sinking, but throwing it to a floating man won't help him take to the air.

So if he had concluded that my problem was being unhappy due to events, not depression, he had absolutely no business prescribing them to me. ADs are for treating depression, not unhappiness.

And secondly, even the NHS' own website states that Antidepressants are not usually recommended as a first treatment.

So even if he thought I *was* suffering depression.. he still shouldn't have made that his first (and only) treatment for it.

Mind you, my county's services for treating depressives any other way are, it appears.. nonexistent. Every one is listed as "Not available"

Given that there are 3/4 million people living here, and 1 in 10 people will suffer depression in their life, that's over 70,000 people who are apparently going to go without proper treatment. That's pretty appalling, IMHO.

So I left the place with a 3-week prescription for Prozac. Lucky me.

I said before I had a poor opinion of how antidepressants were prescribed. I now find that opinion justified and possibly amplified. If you're in West Sussex and you think you're depressed.. get the hell out of the county before you go ask your doctor for advice.