A client of mine kindly provided some feedback on his counselling process with me and what he thinks of medication:
How counselling helped you during the past months?
Looking back, it’s difficult to remember how I got myself into such a mess.
At the time, though, it was very real, destructive and dark.
My sessions … were like a lifeline.
One of the most important factors was feeling that I had a team around me.
That you shared my different battles and that I was not alone.
Your wholehearted approval (and surprise) when I mentioned that I had gone sailing while in the very depths of melancholy was especially memorable!
Various insights you offered – and a couple of the books you recommended – helped me to better understand my depression.
Some of the techniques and words of advice you shared helped me to create a toolkit to dig my way out of the hole I was in.
Where you would draw the line to medication and other measures?
As you will recall, I chose to go onto Prozac during all of this.
In retrospect, it’s hard to know what role, if any, it played in my recovery.
In fact during the first ten days, it made me worse.
However, there was a watershed point about 6 weeks after I started the Prozac when I began to quickly and steadily recover.
At the time, it felt as if I had absorbed a sufficient level of Prozac and my brain was now being flooded with happy chemicals.
However, I have no way of objectively quantifying what was the Prozac and what was my natural recovery mode kicking in.
If I were ever to go into serious depression again (God forbid), I would probably go back onto anti-depressants.
I would certainly immediately go into counseling.
I hope these comments are helpful.
(anonymous)
