I’m sure that many of you have been asked this question. A lot of people are therapy-sceptics; a surprising number seem to believe that there is, or will be, some sort of “happy pill” (rather like “Soma” in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”) that will rid you of depression if only you take enough of it for long enough; some of the newspaper reporting on SSRIs in the 90s encouraged this view. And there are plenty who will advise you just to have a few drinks and “join in the party” – truly terrible advice, I am sure most of you will agree. But some of us here – I suspect most – are never really “cured” of depression, no matter how may pills we take, or courses of CBT, group therapy or whatever we go to.

I’m very conscious of this, having had a bad December, in which my Moodscope scores have been 10-15 percentage points below my long-term average. None of my bag of CBT tools seem to be lifting me out of my trough for long; so, I have been asking myself how useful all the therapy I’ve had has been.

My answers:

1. 1. I’ve not had a great year, but my Moodscope scores were significantly lower in 2011, 2013 and 2020 (covid lockdown year). Things could be worse. And if I had been on Moodscope in the early 200s, I’m sure my scores would have been much, much worse than they have been over the last month, for a period of 2-3 years.

1. 2. I’ve dealt with my depressed period much better than I did with the early 2000s, and rather better than I did in 2020. I’ve been comfort eating and my alcohol consumption has been 30-40% higher than usual over the last month, but I haven’t fallen to pieces, drank to oblivion, put on large amounts of weight, stopped exercising or stopped doing regular chores like shopping, cleaning and money management. And I’ve arranged some positive things for next year – theatre, live music, holidays and suchlike. I believe, at least most days, that better days will com.

So – what are your thoughts on this? In your darkest days how useful has your therapy been?

Oldie But Goldie

A Moodscope member