Mind Forg’d Manacles

Since the 80s, when raves became as commonplace as a school disco, parents feared their darling offspring would succumb to peer pressure and the vices of a whistle-blowing, pill-popping generation.

Yet it’s not a disaffected youth we should be concerned about but a slightly older generation, who it appears are becoming dependent on a different form of “happy pill” – Prozac.

Prozac was one of those words people used to mutter like a ventriloquist. “She’s on Prozac” was just as scandalous as saying, “She’s got the clap.” It was generally assumed that Prozac was for the minority who had “lost the plot”. Not so anymore. In today’s society there’s a worry that anti-depressants are handed out as readily as Mr Whippy on a hot summer’s day. In fact the number of prescriptions written out for anti-depressants has reached an all time high with more than 31 million written last year – 6% more than the year before.

Depression isn’t a new, modern condition by any means. History has been full of tortured souls from Van Gogh to Peter Sellers. In the 18 century, the depressed were interpreted as mad, thrown in a lunatic asylum and purged until their bodies were cleansed of their poisoned blood.

But perhaps the increasing need of Prozac lies in this ‘status anxiety’ society in which we live. Are our expectations of ourselves too high? To be a good parent, a high achiever at work, to own the highest tech mobile phone and to wake up every morning looking like you’ve been air brushed. Our whole lives have become one long report card of some ‘Bs’ but mainly ‘Cs’ and always a comment at the end saying “Could do better”. It’s no wonder we feel like failures.

Nelly Hunter hit hard times in her early 20s. She says: “It was an accumulation of everything. It got to the point where I didn’t get out of bed for three weeks and the only thoughts I had were about how I was going to kill myself. I went to the doctors and they issued me antidepressants for a period of 12 months.

“I think in one way, it was a good thing because swift action was needed and I felt better after a month. But it was a strange and uncomfortable happiness because my mood had lifted but nothing in my lift had changed. I still didn’t feel in control.”

Over the next seven years, Nelly suffered various bouts of depression and each visit to the doctors resulted in a different response. One doctor refused her anti-depressants as he thought she may become addicted and offered her counselling instead. But as Nelly points out: “I wasn’t ready for counselling, I felt like an open wound when I was there. At one point the counsellor said ‘you don’t have to be here if you don’t want to’ and I thought thank God.”

It was only a couple of years ago that Nelly thought that she was actually ready to see a counsellor and accessed one through work. That is where she learned to deal with her problems differently.

“I think the increase in depression comes from the shallow society in which we live. Years ago, people’s purpose in life was survival, in today’s society we have no purpose apart from making money and focusing on materialistic things. In the end it makes you miserable.”

Elaine Hanzak is only too aware of the pressures she put on herself to be perfect. Elaine suffered post natal depression so badly after the birth of her child, it resulted in the most severe type of postnatal depression, puerperal psychosis. Now fully recovered Elaine has written a book called Eyes Without Sparkle and is a well-respected speaker at conferences on post natal depression.

“Four months after having my son, my General Practitioner recommended that I went on anti-depressants and go to a support group, which I was happy to do because I wasn’t coping. I had got so bad that I couldn’t decide whether to boil an egg or make beans on toast. I felt like I was permanently wearing a lead jacket.

“The support group didn’t help as I was quite a severe case. I started to misinterpret everything they were advising. So if they said ‘You don’t need to be perfect. Good enough will do,’ I interpreted that as I wasn’t good enough. I twisted everything.
    
“I never asked for help from anyone. I thought I was a failure because I couldn’t cope. I kept on saying that classic phrase characteristic of women of ‘I’m fine,’ which generally translates as “I’m f****d up, insecure, neurotic and emotional.

“No one stressed the importance of diet and food. I couldn’t be bothered to cook and shopping was just too much. Nobody told me the importance of sleep which was my biggest downfall. The practicalities were never offered like someone doing the shopping for me or just having a bit of me time.”

It was only when Elaine became a self harming wreck and hospitalised for two months on a psychiatric ward, that she could begin her recovery. Elaine was issued Prozac and given one to one supervision and strongly believes that Prozac did actually help her to a certain degree.

“Prozac did help me at an appropriate stage of my condition. The tablets sliced off my major highs and becoming giddy over things that weren’t funny and they shaved off everything being totally black. ”

But Elaine also emphasises that it’s not just about the medication and people shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help. “Mental health is embedded in the fact that it’s all about medication. Other things should be tried first like hygiene, health, happiness and exercise. If that’s pushed more, you feel in control.”

With the help of her community psychiatric nurse, who helped to convince her she was normal and that it was ok to ask for help, she was able to wean herself off Prozac over four years and make a full recovery.

Dr Chauhan from Barlow Medical Centre, Didsbury believes that there isn’t a sudden increase in depression, it’s more a case of people recognising the signs and symptoms of depression earlier and not being as afraid to admit there’s a problem. He also questions the fact that that Prozac is issued so readily.

“People think that anti-depressants are handed out like sweets. But that isn’t the case. In my personal experience, the first line of action is to try to find the cause of the problem and the trigger. People are advised self-help strategies which they find useful and we try to address the issues. Most of the time the answer lies within the patient and they just need someone to talk to understand for themselves what the problem is.

“After that, the anti-depressants are considered. We check the guidelines set by Mental Health Charity MIND, see how the patient scores on a grid and decide how they will respond to medication. The medication is not the solution for the problem. It just gives them the stability they need mentally and emotionally while they address their problems.”

MIND also recently released research which supports the theory that simple, practical solutions like going for country walks or “talking therapy” should be introduced by the NHS to help sufferers of any type of depression. And this has led to calls for “ecotherapy” to become a recognised treatment for people with mental health problems.

It was literary figure Samuel Johnson who once said: “To have management of the mind is a great art.” And in the words of another great communicator BT “It’s good to talk.”

Maybe the key is not to suffer in silence.