Posted by racer on December 26, 1998, at 21:28:23
Hi, a couple of you have read some things I've posted here in the past, so I'll give the short version today.
I'm not working. At this point, I'm pretty incapacitated by major depression. My community has no resources for me: the county has one dr to see adult psych patients, the children's dr won't see me, I have less than no rapport with the dr I can see. There is no counseling program available, the lowest fee for the low fee sliding scale program is $34 per hour, pay as you go. The county recognises this. I've called the Psych Emerency hotline, and the only thing they say is that they can hospitalize me. (No thanks. Still no therapy, but lots of other s__t.) I have no insurance, so can't go to a private dr. The county medical plan covers only meds or hospitalisation. None of this is perception, by the way. They all admit it's a sucky situation.
The meds can't work without talk cure, I've been through this before (though every time it seems as though it's much worse this time, you know what I mean?). This drug doesn't seem very effective for me at all. The dr keeps telling me that the drug is working fine, but I'm not responding right to it (!!). My sleeping is disturbed, my eating is disturbed, my mood is disturbed, and I'm more hopeless now than ever. Today is the first day I've gotten out of bed for a week. This is not working, and I'm not coping.
Here's what I need: medication, talk therapy, and someone to give me some talk therapy about the medication. It's not made available to me. So, is there anything I can do to make it available? It's hard for me to sustain any sort of effort right now, because of the depression, but there are moments, like now, when I can try. There must be something I've overlooked. Is there a national depression group run like AA? Is there an organization like the lion's club that will assist in finding treatment options in communities like mine? Is there something I'm just overlooking, like instant therapy in the supermarket? Just add water? Please, I can't do much right now, but I can do something, but I don't know what to try.
This situation reminds me of that joke about there being a heaven for atheists: it's empty, because no one knows it's there. There's got to be something, it's just well hidden.
Thanks for listening, and thanks for any (non-commercial) suggestions you can make.
poster:racer
thread:1762
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19981201/msgs/1762.html