do we ever fully recover?

hi i have been trying to recover from this awful illness for 21 yrs now, iv had spells in hospital, good patches and still have my bad days where all i want to do is sleep to block my feelings out,
iv tried every sortof therapy out there, iv been in the priory, in nhs hospitals . iv undergone ect all forms of mood stabilizers and anti depressants,
herbal accupuncture, hypnotherapy and it never leaves me, i would love to totally recover some people do, as for me i think itssomething i just have to accept and just do my best day to day
does anyone else feel the same or am i alone ?

Hi there,
your definitely not alone! I have suffered for 13 years now and like yourself have been hospitalised,tried all sorts of therapies and have been on medication.
It took me nearly 13 years to come to terms with and accept that IN MY CASE it probably will always be with me.
Before this I think I kept setting myself up for a fall.Now i dont feel as much of a failure,in this respect, when my dark days arrive.
I'm not sure if this is going to be any help but I hope it is.

I have very rarely been free of depression in eight years . sometimes a brief window opens and I feel back to normal. This window may stay open for 20 minutes, or maybe a day. Once it stayed open for three consecutive days. The rest of the time I am depressed to varying degrees - sometimes very very severe and at other times minor depression. I think I will have depression forever. I have just learnt how to cope with it better than I used to. I know what I have to do to stay as well as I can and these things take extreme effort.

Hi

When things are bad we tend to feel that there is no 'light at the end of the tunnel' if you'll excuse the cliche.

I'm forty-five. Without cataloguing my entire history, depression is something I can always remember feeling - starting from a very young age (six years old or so). The first really bad spell occurred when I was twelve, and then off and on until I was finally diagnosed whilst I was at university - though I didn't receive any treatment at that time. The years between then and 1998, I suffered most of the time - and was on a variety of medications and saw a number of counsellors etc. Relationships with men started and ended badly, I lost my job as a result of long-term sickness, the usual ... To cut a long story short, I was finally hospitalised - the first of four admissions (one one occasion, I received twenty ECT treatments, causing me the 'loss' of most of 1997, and all of 1998). I wasn't able to do a paid job, and fairly much scraped by day by day - I'm sure I don't need to describe the hell that is severe depression. This very nasty patch lasted about five years - horrible! I basically did nothing but smoke heavily and vegetate (and hate myself).

I finally found out about a place in Newcastle, which deals with 'treatment resistant' depression, and managed to get a place there (this took about eighteen months). I spent four months there, where they put me on a different medication regime (which I'm still on), and recommended me for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. This was 2001. I began a VERY slow recovery, with the help of my CBT therapist and a feeling that this was 'make or break' for me. It's been really difficult, and I'm still not clear of it - not 100%, anyway. I got my first paid job for ten years in late 2007, and now I manage a charity shop, which is something that I never thought I could do.

I have bad times, but the difference now is that I nearly always know what triggers these bad times (which doesn't always change my black mood, but I feel sure it helps to know that it's not 'me'). I'm currently feeling extremely low as a result of a relationship that didn't work out - and I feel pretty much as terrible as I can remember feeling 99% of the time back then. BUT I KNOW WHY, and I know it will pass.

My message is that if we keep searching, and keep believing against all the odds, we can put it behind us - largely. I know I'll always have this tendency, but finally that's OK. Accept how you are, there are good things about feeling like sh*t - the times you don't feel that way are so much more enjoyable than for someone who hasn't experienced depression. This is very slender consolation, but it's there - and can be built on.

Acceptance of how/who we are is crucial, and knowing what is 'good' for us and what isn't is also crucial. Keep searching and keep the faith (however impossible it seems). I never thought I would be able to lead an 'ordinary' life, but - well, here I am.

I feel that 'fully recover' is a black/white way of looking at it - it's a process, and maybe it means that we will always be prone. But we can improve to a very large extent.

I hope this helps in some way.

P.S. It's only recently that family and friends have told me that they didn't think I'd ever 'come back', though of course I knew nothing of this at the time. My sister is a psychiatric nurse - has been for seventeen years - and says that she has *never* seen anyone with such a bad case as I had. Fact.

thank you everyone for taking the time to reply, at least we know we are not alone and have each other, im just trying to work on keeping myself up by distraction and structure but the lows still come , part of the illness i suppose its getting throug those thats the hardest but at least im out of bed and trying take care my fellow sufferers xsamantha

I have spent endless hours searching 'depression' sites and forums like this looking in vain hope for someone who has fully and permanently recovered from depression. I haven't found one. Sadly i think depression is a life long ilness. Certainly people experience remission. That remission may come about through all sorts of reasons. It might be medication, therapy, exercise or any one of a myriad of reasons. Often it may just be time itself in that the episode runs its course and the mood lightens. But there is no cure. I haven't found one person who claims to have been fully cured. Depression is part of our make up. We can only find ways to try and stop it returning or make it easier to bear when it does. I know that is depressing and not what we want to hear but it is what i believe to be the truth. Iam sixty years old and have suffered with depression all my life.

Long, but really nice poem about recovery at the end of this page. Read it!!

http://anxietynomore.co.uk/blog/2012/05/04/280/

Hiya! I always think of myself as in recovery... at the moment I am feeling good. I lost everything , my marriage, my home because of depression. It has been an uphill struggle to change my way of thinking from negative to positive, but Im doing it day by day. I am now helping others but helping to run a support group and in turn it is helping me

Let's just say I'm not optimistic about it. I began therapy at age 16 and have been hospitalized prolly 7 or 8 times, attempted suicide, wasted my life, been on every med known to man and in and out of therapy (mostly in)--and at 57 I feel worse and more hopeless than ever. I just want to get it over with. No cure for me.

trying: I don't think mental illness is something one recovers from, I think we just learn how to adapt to it, how to ride it out better. This is just my opinion - I don't mean to be pessimistic or depressing, and I don't find it so. Now that I am older (43), and have lived with mental illness for as long as I can recall, I've personally accepted it as just part of who I am, like I accept my nose or my large feet. Having survived this long, I've learned along the way what harms me, and what helps me. Any time I find something helpful, I just add it to my mental toolkit.

Having said this, I have read some interesting articles about advancements in neurosurgery. One article (25 Jan 2011; The Telegraph) describes a woman who underwent surgery that has, so far, relieved her life-long depression. I believe psychosurgery or genetic research will be the future in mental health treatment. While I am wary of psychosurgery (lobotomy, anyone?), and I certainly don't want to be a surgeon's guinea pig, the prospect of a permanent cure is exciting.

I'm actually having one of my bad days now. It's a struggle to get out of bed, take care of myself, and get down to studying (finals time) - as you can see, I'm dithering about in these forums instead of writing my research paper. I may heed the siren call of my bed and return to it's sweet oblivion, but I'm trying to forge ahead despite depression. It seems you are, too, and that you are not alone, here.

take care

Hiya! I always think of myself as in recovery... at the moment I am feeling good. I lost everything , my marriage, my home because of depression. It has been an uphill struggle to change my way of thinking from negative to positive, but Im doing it day by day. I am now helping others but helping to run a support group and in turn it is helping me

I am similar. I lost everything too. Id really like to help people like myself and i just wanted to commend you on what you are doing. *commends*

Im having a good period right now and trying to remain positive. I agree with much of what has been written and it is vitally important to recognise your condition and triggers in order to move on and deal with this. Ive suffered on and off for just over 20 years now and for the first time in my life i am accepting that this is the way it is for now. Im not 100% but im doing okay with what i have! Its amazing how a little acceptance can lighten the burden!

It is my goal that through this illness i will emerge a better person than i ever was before. My journey may have been a "fucking hell" but i am hoping that i will be better for it. Im smirking as i write as i know that if i had replied to this a few weeks ago it would not have been any where near as positive.

Im not really sure if after a bad bout of serious depression we can have a realistic view on what recovery is? I sometimes feel my expectations are rather rose tinted now due to my altered state of mind.

Ive waffled.....

Hello i've just read all the posts here and agree.it's a relief in a way because i thought i was a failure for not recovering completely from depression,but i have learnt to live with it somewhat.it started in my teens and i know what triggered it and i am now 61 years old.

melancholic: sorry you have suffered with depression for so long. You must have amassed a few of tried & true coping skills to help you live with it. Anything you'd care to share I'd love to hear.

These forums have provided me with a lot of perspective - I felt like a failure for years for not functioning a well as I thought those around me were.

i can't remember a day when i have ever felt sane.

I think that once you have suffered, you are never quite the same and even in recovery you tend to view things differently. I would never have considered that I suffered from depression until I crashed in my forties and realised that I had to change the way I approached life if I was to carry on surviving and that the tendency for it had in fact been there all my life, I just hadn't triggered it before. I just keep reminding myself that 1 in 4 of us experience this illness so some of us must be able to recover enough to get on with life.