Coping with Depression and Other Ailments

It’s like walking through molasses

“It was difficult to understand everything. What was depression, anyway? Whether or not to take medication was a hard decision. The doctor assured us that the medications were safe, non-addictive, and were not “uppers” or tranquilizers.
Insertion comment by Jenny Hatch – This is a bald faced lie, anti-depressants and completely addictive and getting off of them is one of the most difficult things most people will take on in their lives-
I was worried that taking medication was just putting a bandage on the problem and not getting to the root of it. Nevertheless, not being able to function, I finally agreed to try medication.

Yet still not understanding, I insisted on the lowest dosage possible. The doctor held back a smile and said, “Elaine, they are not handing out medals. You take whatever dosage is right for your body.”

Well, I thought, I want a medal! He was not LDS so I couldn’t explain to him that I had grown up listening to stories of pioneers crossing the plains. I believed that I was supposed to “pull myself up by my bootstraps,” just like the courageous pioneers had done through their trials. Relying on medication seemed to be the easy way out.”

This is a huge problem in the LDS Community. So many members are strung out on anti-depressants. I can understand Ann Blake Tracys frustration with the deceptions that have occursed by the medical people as they have been taken for a very long ride by the makers of these drugs. Some of them are speaking out and fighting back.
I get very frustrated watching my various friends who I know are taking these drugs. The most diabolical side to them however is the many children who are being given them. A dear friend just had her son diagnosed with diabetes this past week. The poor child has been taking psychiatric meds for quite a long time. If she had known that his pancreas was going to be ravaged by them, would she have given them to him every day??? This mother is one of the best, most devoted homeschooling moms I know. She has sacrificed everything for her little boy. Yet parents are not being told the facts of what the drugs will do short term and long term to their childrens bodies and minds.
I have shared my story of how I got off prozac in 1990 and what I did to prevent depression in my book A Mothers Journey, my story of healing after Post Partum Psychosis.
Until the LDS people get out from under the thumb of the doctors and the pharmaceutical companies that give them their marching orders, we will never achieve the sort of health and spirituality we all desire. The blackest time in my life was the year I spent doped up on psychiatric meds. I felt very little of anything, and when my moods were blunted with the drugs, it felt like all connectivity with heaven was also severed.

Jenny Hatch in depression.
Jenny Hatch