Coping After Seeking Professional Help
“So imagine you've been living without any regulations and self-discipline and everything like that,” Prabha said. “You never showered, or you didn't wake up, you didn't eat or whatever. Now all of a sudden you're trying to be functional, trying to wake up in the morning, take your food.”
These are the lifestyle changes Prabha had to make after being diagnosed with depression.
Prabha recalled how she forgot to drink water for days and get extremely dehydrated.
“I don't know, I felt thirsty but drinking water wasn't a priority,” she explained when I asked how that’s possible. “It was that phase. So another thing is people don't really factor in the physical toll depression takes on you.”
People with depression often experience weight loss or weight gain. In Prabha’s case, she experienced weight loss because she mostly missed meals and didn’t get the nutrition she needed in her growing years. Her parents noticed she wasn’t eating, but equated it to a teenage phase.
Now she has family and friends constantly reminding her and making sure she drinks at least a couple bottles of water per day so that she doesn’t get dehydrated. However, despite the constant reminders, one year after the diagnosis, Prabha says it still hasn’t become a habit.
“So it's small things like these that take a huge toll - it's like a collection of small things like these,” she said, describing the emotional toll of depression.
Prabha is also taking medicine for her depression and anxiety, two psychological disorders that share high comorbidity. If you have one of them, you’re highly likely to have the other disorder as well.
She was taking Attenrol for her attention disorder, Clonax for anxiety, and two antidepressants, Bupropion and Pramipex at the time I spoke to her.
Taking these medications didn’t immediately cure her depression though.
Psychologists follow a rule of thirds for antidepressants: Antidepressants only work for one-third of the population, and for those that they work for, they only reduce one-third of the symptoms, according to Madeline Meier, who teaches abnormal psychology at Arizona State University.
“So the thing is it's a very slow process,” Prabha said. “This time last year is when I started my medicines, like May 2017. And initially I was having really terrible side effects and I thought my medicines are not helping.”
Side effects Prabha said she had included nausea, convulsions, extreme thirstiness, body aches, lots of headaches, and dizziness. She has convulsions even now, so she said she has tremors and can’t hold her hand straight.
Prabha said that since you’re introducing something foreign into your body, your body’s bound to react. But she feels that perhaps taking medication and dealing with these reactions is better than not taking medication and getting worse with her mental health.
Although she can’t pinpoint exactly when she started feeling better, Prabha said she is definitely way better now than she was last year. The key is patience, she said.
Prabha stressed that it is important to stick with the lifestyle changes, visit the doctor regularly for follow ups, and take your medicines on time. Eventually, when you compare yourself between two points of time, you’ll see a difference.
“Yes, it's really difficult to do that even now,” Prabha said, “but whatever I'm doing now is definitely better than not doing it at all.”