BELL JAR

My experiences with depression are painfully similar: high functioning woman with slight disassosiative tendencies, encumbered with the care of a selfish mate, a slow slide into oblivion. I have a long history of "non-responsiveness" to anti-depressants, and a couple years ago one psychiatrist used that to recommend me for ECT (electro-convulsive therapy). Man, you really know you're crazy when they want to shock you. Luckily, another shrink put me on Effexor (in the same class as Cymbalta, which is being prescribed more and more often nowadays), a serotonin AND norepinephrine re-uptake inhibitor. I'm so glad we have these medicines today; fifty or sixty years ago, I most certainly would've been committed and given shock treatments. Makes me wonder how many people were institutionalized back then who could've been fully functioning if only they'd had more treatment options.