Unprescribed antidepressants

Some nice things happened last week that cheered me up.

Normally I get quite cross about newspaper articles stating that antidepressants are being overprescribed, or that most forms of depression can be cured by a brisk walk, eating sprouting broccoli and taking nothing stronger than a deep breath.

They may well have a point about trends, and some of the advice is jolly useful for some people. Whatever works for you, is my motto. But if you’re suffering from moderate to severe depression, do you have any idea how unbelievably crap it feels to read that sort of thing? Basically, it makes you feel like you’re lazy, and you brought this on yourself. And that you’re choosing to continue feeling miserable, when you could just opt to pull yourself together, if only you were made of sterner stuff. And really good at yoga.

It’s incredibly damaging. Depression’s siamese twin is shame, and making people feel ashamed about how they feel only makes it worse. People with serious mental illnesses need serious medical treatment. The reason antidepressants are prescribed is not just because they get you out of the GP’s surgery within your 7-minute slot, but because a lot of the time THEY WORK. Does anyone really have anything against feeling better?

It’s not dissimilar from the annoyance I feel when people wax on about the importance of natural childbirth, how it doesn’t hurt if you breathe properly*, and then utter that blood-boiling phrase: “Women have been doing it for thousands of years”.

Well, yes, but they’ve also been dying in childbirth for thousands of years. And so have lots of their babies. The after-effects when things go wrong are devastating – heard of fistula? The idea that all these women in mud huts much prefer the way it’s been done in their village for centuries is absolute bullshit, and one of the most breathtakingly patronising things anyone who lives in Fulham or California could possibly say.

I actually know a bit about this because I used to work in Africa, with women in very poor or war-ravaged countries, who had nothing. And I can tell you that not one – literally, not a single one – would say “No thanks, I’ll stick with boiled banana leaf and and sing my special magic birthing song really loudly”. They are desperate for proper, medical help. So desperate that they will go days without food or sell their bodies so that they and their children can see a proper doctor.

I’ve got slightly (thousands of miles, even) off the subject, because as it happens I’m not depressed at the moment, or taking antidepressants. Though I probably wouldn’t be quite so melodramatic about the baby in my tummy having the audacity to be a boy if my mental health was 100%.

So I’m not really talking about alternatives to antidepressants for properly depressed souls, just the unexpected things that happen when you’re a bit below par. They don’t fix anything, but make you think – ‘Well, perhaps I’ll give the Shakespeare soliloquies a rest, whizz through a few chores pretty badly but at least they’ll be ticked off, then it’ll be rioja o’clocka in front of Strictly It Takes Two’.

Watching Logie dance in front of the telly is insanely heart-warming. His standard moves are fast running on the spot (until you fall over), turning round and round (until you fall over) and the arm movements from the Thriller dance. I taught him those, in front of the Halloween Strictly special, before I put my back out. He looks a little bit like a 1950s schoolgirl doing ‘moving to music’ exercises, and it also makes it quite hard for him to see out of more than one eye at a time, but it’s a great party trick.

The nice things that happened to me were 1) a muffin basket 2) friends 3) getting an e-mail from my hero.

I crossly hobbled to answer the door on Thursday, in time to discover a man getting back in his van and a basket of baked goods on the mat. Now maybe this has happened to you, or at least in your office, but this has never happened to me. NEVER. I thought it was a mistake, or a dream. They turned out to be from some people that I have only recently met, and just started hanging out with in a worky capacity. They barely know me! Which doesn’t mean they are nicer than people who do know me, but perhaps that my woe-is-me-ing works better on fresh meat. It was the kindest thing that anyone has done for me since my husband proposed – and I basically guilt-tripped him into that, so this was a genuine surprise.

Friends. I had three batches come to visit while I was ice-packing my back on the sofa last week, and several more messages of support. It’s extraordinary how okay they make everything feel. Not necessarily better, but as if life might just conceivably go on. They are like me (though mostly thinner with careers), they sympathise, they don’t have any answers, but they help. “Yeah,” they say, “I’d probably feel exactly the same too. Have a malteser.” And I perk up.

Esther Walker. This blog is basically a poor man’s version of hers – Recipe Rifle. If I were you, I’d unsubscribe from mine and sign up to hers. She’s funnier, and food makes much tastier reading than conjunctivitis and mood disorders. Last week I eventually got up the courage to e-mail her, and she e-mailed me straight back, which made my day. I won’t say any more, as sycophancy is so unattractive (and rare for me) but it gave me a real boost.

*I can’t help noticing a theme in this post about breathing. Clearly I’ve been doing it all wrong, and it is the key to everything working out just tickety-tonk in life. Can you do it with a blocked-up nose? I did once try an 8-week course in mindfulness meditation, which focuses a lot on breath. I mainly fell asleep, or spent the sessions climbing my internal walls, silently screaming to get away from the noise of other people breathing. But it is one of the trendiest, non-pharmaceutical mood-lifters recommended by doctors for depression at the moment, so like I say – whatever works for you.