Many people hop along to their GPs for anti-depressants thinking that they’ll be the answer. They think their mood will be lifted, all their troubles carried away and we’ll all live happily ever after.
In some cases, usually temporary “life event” type depression they can work. This temporary lift from depression allows people to carry on with life, and then when they stop taking them, the mind has gotten used to being not depressed so carries on being so.
But for people with longer term depression, or other conditions such as general anxiety, it’s important to realise that their use can only ever be a crutch, not a cure.
Their use can be very useful if a person needs support to get them through a difficult time, or to get them working again. When the patient stops taking them again, they very well may find their old conditions returning. This is mainly because nothing has been done to treat the cause.
The best way to use anti-depressants is with another form of treatment, probably a therapist-directed course of treatment involving one of many different techniques, to try to change behaviours at a deeper level.
Personally, I resisted taking prescribed anti-depressants for many many years, knowing that they weren’t a cure. I tried lots of other methods instead. More recently though, I have been taking anti-depressants and their efficacy is to be debated! They’re certainly not a one-shot simple solution.